Toss your meters, fools!

[removed the crossposting to .digital groups]

joe mama wrote:
Dateline, 7-6-06

Meters are useless

forget zones, compensation ev's, et al, just look at a perceived image, and
MAKE it. sunny 16 has worked since the dawn of photography. no new-fangled
means of trapping light have ever fooled it. in fact, it can't be fooled. it
is almost as constant as the light we surreptitiously chase!

it has never failed me, and i won't begin to tell you how many images have
been wasted by frittering with meters!


You've obviously never shot slide film.

It is a useful exercise to shoot a roll of film by eyeballing the
exposure, then check the density of the negatives. Or guess the
exposure, and then check with the meter and see how close you were.

With color negative film, you should easily be able to get good enough
at estimating the exposure because the film has enough latitude to cover
your mistakes. Color reversal film is not forgiving enough (Ever heard
of bracketing? and that's when you *have* a meter) I dunno about B&W, I
suspect you can get an image if you're just trying to document something
and don't care about the quality.

Best regards,
Bob -- shoots sans meter sometimes when using an old folding camera

zxcvbob wrote:

[removed the crossposting to .digital groups]

joe mama wrote:

Dateline, 7-6-06

Meters are useless

forget zones, compensation ev's, et al, just look at a perceived
image, and MAKE it. sunny 16 has worked since the dawn of photography.
no new-fangled means of trapping light have ever fooled it. in fact,
it can't be fooled. it is almost as constant as the light we
surreptitiously chase!

it has never failed me, and i won't begin to tell you how many images
have been wasted by frittering with meters!



You've obviously never shot slide film.

It is a useful exercise to shoot a roll of film by eyeballing the
exposure, then check the density of the negatives. Or guess the
exposure, and then check with the meter and see how close you were.

With color negative film, you should easily be able to get good enough
at estimating the exposure because the film has enough latitude to cover
your mistakes. Color reversal film is not forgiving enough (Ever heard
of bracketing? and that's when you *have* a meter) I dunno about B&W, I
suspect you can get an image if you're just trying to document something
and don't care about the quality.

B&W is about as forgiving as color negative film.

You don't absolutely HAVE to use a meter. There are methods to estimate
the exposure by looking at the scene and guesstimating exposure based on
the how much variance you have from a nominal 18% gray. Bracketing works
too.

I use them all, especially if I've been in the stupid room and left the
meter at home.

But it's easier and more accurate to take a meter reading and adjust
exposure accordingly. You can still apply the methods for compensating
for variance from a nominal 18%

"zxcvbob" wrote in message
...

You've obviously never shot slide film.

I've shot thousands of chromes. the only difference may be to bracket a stop
one way or the other. funny how i've never heard of people who use meters
relying on bracketing ;=)

and chrome's latitude by nature are limited, further proving my point.

okay, so B&W large format people get a break. but i still shoot tons of 4x5
stuff without meters, all without problems.

and the original post was specific about dawn to dusk shooting, outdoors. of
course you need to meter for falsh. but i still can figure most low-light
situations, including adding the reciprocity factors. it's all a matter of
knowing the stuff.

to me, light meters are the training wheels of photography. try doing some
stuff without them for a while and see if you can free yourself from he
crutch. what does it matter if you are bracketing anyway?

ciao