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I was going to suggest the OM-G, because I like using mine.
Any one of your cameras will work just about as well as any of the others, but they might be a bit of a pain to use with an 85B filter on all the time.
Nothing like loading up an ancient camera with slide film and waiting for the results.
A drifting/dud meter or even a small error will be glaringly obvious.
There is a winner in the list, and I can speak of it. The F3HP (with MD-4) saw service with me running hundreds of Kodachrome 200 through it on around the nation travels 30 years ago. There was nothing to fault in it, save for it being far from an "instamatic" suitable for bicycle touring!
The A2 (EOS 5) would have been my second pick (I used one in parallel with an EOS 1N for about 10 years, but it didn't last anywhere near the still in-service 1N!).
Incident metering of the hlightlights is best. But a smart camera like a Canon EOS A2 have a multi-metering mode that will work well for most situations.
The A2's evaluative meter is superbly capable of handling exposure of slide film correctly, but you must be shooting in favourable light to bring out the best of the slide film, not the meter! This cannot be emphasised enough. If you want to shoot in all light, not just that which is best for slide film, then use negative film.
Highlights will blow out if you are shooting in bright light. Shadows will also block for the same reason. Evaluative metering will be excellent (I speak from experience with the A2 and also the EOS 1N) in handling the scene if the light is favourable to the film (as I said above). It's not all about how competent or clever a meter is, but how knowledgeable the photographer is of the film he or she is using! Slide film can be shot successfully in all lighting with a hand-held multispot meter to sort out luminance values and balance everything. It can still be a tightrope act, but it can be done.
Shooting at noon with sun overhead is not very good for slide film.
Better idea would be to move subject into shade or wait until some clouds move in or late afternoon.
Then again these rules apply to all photography.
I was going to suggest the OM-G, because I like using mine.
Any one of your cameras will work just about as well as any of the others, but they might be a bit of a pain to use with an 85B filter on all the time.
I'm going to take a stab at this and tell me if I'm right. Shooting at noon with sun overhead is not very good for slide film.
I'll second the suggestion of the F3 or F3HP as a very capable camera for slide film. For years I noticed that I seemed to have a higher percentage of correctly-exposed slides with my F3 than with other cameras, and it may have something to do with the heavier center-weighted meter pattern of 80/20, versus 60/40 for most other cameras of the era. But with slide film you definitely need to evaluate the scene and lighting yourself, rather than blindly depend on the meter, as opposed to B/W or color print film. I've shot a lot of Velvia, and that can be a very tricky film in bright light or high contrast situations. Provia has been my film of choice for awhile. I'm looking forward to trying the new Ektachrome, especially if it's more forgiving.There is a winner in the list, and I can speak of it. The F3HP (with MD-4) saw service with me running hundreds of Kodachrome 200 through it on around the nation travels 30 years ago
My advice is use any camera you want and determine exposure with an incident light meter.
You know, tungsten film under tungsten light can be very beautiful. You might try using it indoors.
Of course modern technology being disruptive as it is... you might be hard-pressed to find an indoor location that is lit by tungsten.
But if you bring your own light, say change all the bulbs in the living room and kitchen at your friend's house... and then document a party... you can catch your friends wearing their party hats...
Hi,
With the announcement from Kodak that they're bringing back Ektachrome I guess it's time for me to load up some of my old stuff from the freezer and learn to shoot slide. I've never shot E-6 before and I'm not sure which camera to use. I have a bunch of camera but only a few with functioning accurate meters.
Nikon F3HP
Pentax K1000
Pentax ME Super
Canon AE-1
Olympus OM-G
Canon EOS A2
The OM-G, F3, and A2 are out for now because I don't want to tie them up with a roll that's going to take months to use up (It's cold and winter, slow rolls take a while). And the OM-G sucks.
That leaves me for now with the AE-1 or the Pentaxsisis.
Any suggestions? I'll be using Ektachrome 160T with an 85B filter.
Don't worry about the meter. How accurate are your shutter speeds?
Use a camera with an accurate meter, be aware of the luminence of your scene, and forget silly "rules" about when to shoot and when not to.
Ektachrome has a good dynamic range. The highlights won't "blow out" unless you totally screw up the exposure, in which case in which case the frame will be ruined anyway.
An OM-G was my first camera! When I was a kid, my dad bought one. I was curious about it so he showed me how to use it. I used it so much over the next couple years that he went and bought another one for me so he could have his back. He gave it to me for my 11th birthday. Its not by any means the best camera Olympus made (in high school I got an OM-4T) but it got me hooked on photography. I'm 41 years old now.
Wish I still had my OM-G. It got broken in a car accident when I was 16. Totaled my first car and broke my first camera.
It's fairly lousy for any type of film actually.
In areas where there are shadow and highlights in the scene that require to be preserved, shooting at noon in bright sun is going to send things nicely ... pear-shaped. But, there is nothing to stop you from screwing the film and shooting a family group on the beach in those conditions.
Shooting in the shade in bright conditions will cause a blue cast, endemic to E6 films. Personally I like this effect, but for others they view it as jarring and off-putting. And the second part of your statement is correct, assuming you get enough clouds to create a lovely, diffuse light situation where shadows are smoothed through, highlights twinkle gently and the film can be seen to be enjoying the experience. These conditions are typically what I shoot in rainforests: in bright sun the shadows are catastrophic to the point where track and trail are near-impossible to make out, never mind about how slide film would fare! Then the clouds wander along (hopefully with a drenching thunderstorm!) and everything, everything, makes sense again!
But those rules (or "rules of thumb") apply especially to understanding how slide film records both bright and diffuse light.
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