Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2002/04/05

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Subject: Re: [Leica] M7 heaven! :-) UPDATE.
From: Peter Klein <pklein@2alpha.net>
Date: Fri, 5 Apr 2002 12:55:50 -0800 (PST)

John Brownlow <lists@johnbrownlow.com> sez:

>funnily enough the way people describe shooting with the M7 is exactly
>how I shoot with an M4 and an incident meter. I never really think about
>the exposure, not consciously anyway... unless the light is really
>baffling. Like Ted it's been many, many, many rolls of film since I had a
>duff exposure. (The latitude of neg obviously helps).

Match-diodes (or needles) is nice, AE (under many but not all
situations) is nicer.  But it isn't needed.  One of the traps of TTL
metering on *any* camera is that you think you have to meter every shot.
That can slow you way down. 

When I'm out shooting, I try to use an my Luna Pro Digital as an incident
meter--I just stick the dome in full light and shadow, and then say to
myself, "OK, 1/500 at f/8, open up 3 for shadow."  Then I just go at it,
and I don't meter again unless the light changes.

For existing light, I do something similar relative to main light sources
and shadow.  If I'm being really critical, I try to take several
measurements of actual highlight, midtone and shadow objects, or something
of similar tone and lighting if the real thing can't be approached closely
enough.

If I can't do incident metering, I just measure the palm of my hand in
lighting similar to the subject, and open up one stop. In other words, 
your palm is a built-in gray card plus one stop.  Your milage may
vary depending on your degree of skin pigmentation--I've head of
dark-skinned people whose hands reflected just like a gray card. A quick
comparison of your hand reading and an incident reading will "calibrate"
your hand.

When in doubt, guess, and err on the overexposure side if you're not sure
(with color negs or B&W).  And if you see something interesting, shoot
first and worry later.  Film latitude is a wonderful thing.

Sure, If I had enough discretionary income, I'd buy an M7 in a minute. But
an unmetered Leica is better than no Leica at all.

- --Peter Klein
Seattle, WA

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