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[OM] Re: OM1 light meter

Subject: [OM] Re: OM1 light meter
From: Andrew L Wendelborn <andrew@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sun, 14 May 2006 23:00:16 +0930
At 5:57 PM +1000 2006.05.14, Marc Lawrence wrote:
> > Andrew L Wendelborn wrote:
>> ... it gave up while I was on a short trip to Sri Lanka using
>> it to document some places I visited. So it was guessed
>> exposures for a while.
>
>...and how did you go with your "guessed" exposures, Andrew?
>It sounds like a useful skill to acquire


Hello Marc, hope all is going well. I thought Sydney was always sunny and
that you'd hardly ever need to change to change exposure :)

In that particular case in Sri Lanka, they came out quite well. Of the four
rolls I took, only a few were unusable, and most were nicely exposed. The
latitude of the print film I was using (Press 800) helped of course.

I'd been able to build a fairly good idea of outdoor light levels before
the meter died, so didn't have too much trouble with outdoor stuff (sunny
16 with some minor variations).

The indoor pics were a bit trickier though. I did that by taking a reasonably
familiar reference point, such as light through an open window, and estimating
stops difference in the position I wanted best exposure. It mostly worked,
but when I didn't have a reasonable reference point to start with, things
sometimes got bad. I needed quite a few indoor photos (labs etc).

A major contributing factor to reasonable success here was that I'd just been
going through a lot of exercises in exposure (trying to figure it out
from basics upwards). Hence I had a reasonable number of typical situations
in my head. It was more a matter of recognizing a given situation than
actually judging the light level in a measurement sense -- I'm not very
good at that.

Yes, I think it is a useful skill to acquire. It helps in making adjustments
for effect, when you're working with either a broken or meterless camera,
and to understand what your meter is telling you -- and to have the
confidence to override it (which is what I was lacking before I went through
the exercise). I don't intend of course to give up using a meter (especially
spot metering), just to able to be be independent of it when I want to be.

It dose need practice to keep it up. As I found when I tried a roll of
guessed exposure a couple of weeks ago. The light was tricky, and most were
hopeless. But at least I have figured out why.

The main reason I'm trying this Black Cat guide is that it is a fine
grained categorization of typical scenes, and hence good to help remember
typical situations.
See http://www.blackcatphotoproducts.com/guide.html And also because it
covers situations beyond the scope of my spotmeter, which gives up at EV1.

>Cheers,
>Marc
>Sydney, Oz (Sunny 16...degrees Celcius)
>


best wishes
  Andrew in Adelaide (18% grey all day :( )

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