Re: [Leica] M7 Exposure

[Rolfe Tessem <rolfe@ldp.com>]

- --On Saturday, December 14, 2002 9:39 PM -0500 Don Dory 
<dorysrus@mindspring.com> wrote:

> I had to jump right in here about a high contrast exposure.  A white horse
> and a black horse equals what?  Why middle gray of course.  The real
> question is can your film handle five to six stops of exposure latitude
> which most films can handle.
>
> A major Japanese manufacturer that came up with the first evaluative meter
> has been advertising their wares with pictures with bright and dark areas.
> Their claim was the fabulous abilities of the meter solved a difficult
> exposure problem when in reality sunny 16 would work for the scenes shown.
>
> The hardest scenes to meter are those where you want detail in very bright
> light and in the dark shadows.  Most of the time you have to decide what
> to bury in shadows which no meter can solve:  your brain needs to figure
> it out.  Even fill flash only works where the foreground needs to be
> brought up in value.  What good is it when the background needs lifting?
>
> The M7 makes sense if you want a quicker camera or a quieter camera.  It
> also makes sense if you don't have time or don't want to deal with setting
> exposure.  It doesn't make sense if you want to explore light and shadow
> with creative mistakes or are afraid of the dead battery syndrome.

It also doesn't make sense, IMHO, if you use wide angle lenses and usually 
include a lot of sky in your shots. A typical M6 user will meter the street 
or ground and then shoot around the scene without metering again unless the 
light changes. Of course, this is impossible with the M7 in auto mode, 
since you can't lock the exposure in for more than the current exposure. 
You can use the M7 in manual mode, of course, but in this case it is simply 
a more expensve M6.

- --
Rolfe Tessem
rolfe@ldp.com
Lucky Duck Productions, Inc.
- --
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