Look ma, no light meter!
Michel Hardy-Vallée

Look ma, no light meter!

Just an example that working in tricky light situations without a light meter is easy if you have a good starting point. It was a bright sunny day, after noon, and at my latitude I have 1/250 for f/11.

For this shot I knew that the garage would be darker than normal shadows, so I must have opened three stops, knowing that the only highlight that would blow off would be the little shaft of light coming from the ceiling.
Equipment Used
Kiev-4a, J-8M
Exposure
1/250 f/4
Film & Developer
E200
Paper & Developer
Slide scan
Lens Filter
none
Wow, you certainly nailed that exposure! Very hard to do with slide film... Great job!
 
I agree with ER. It appears a bit under, but the colour is surprisingly close considering the mix of manmade and daylight. I would have expected far mor yellow/orange than the amount of blue/cyan seen in the scan.
 
Yep, I agree with the underexposure. Sadly my J8 does not even have half-stops!

Although there are artificial lights in the background, most of the light comes from the garage's open door in which I stood (cf. the reflection in the windshield of the bus), hence explaining the rather neutral balance.

The only manips I made on the scan was to adjust levels in order to get a decent black. I'm not sure if this has a big impact on color balance, but on the original slide the colors are similar to what I see on screen.

Oh, and for bragging rights: I did not even bracket! That's the only shot I took. :D
 
Thank you, Garry!
 
good shot, not bad with no meter.
 
It feels so incredibly liberating to operate without a meter, and to have decent results! There's no meter this, compensate for that, point somewhere else, hesitate, dither, etc. For negative film in 35mm, it's a technique I'll try to keep sharp, at least to make sure that I'm always pre-set to a useable shutter/aperture combination.
 

Media information

Category
Technical Gallery
Added by
Michel Hardy-Vallée
Date added
View count
783
Comment count
9
Rating
0.00 star(s) 0 ratings

Image metadata

Device
FUJI PHOTO FILM CO., LTD. SP-3000
Filename
f1000024.jpg
File size
174.9 KB
Dimensions
799px x 533px

Share this media

Photrio.com contains affiliate links to products. We may receive a commission for purchases made through these links.
To read our full affiliate disclosure statement please click Here.

PHOTRIO PARTNERS EQUALLY FUNDING OUR COMMUNITY:



Ilford ADOX Freestyle Photographic Stearman Press Weldon Color Lab Blue Moon Camera & Machine
Top Bottom