Can I rely on My K1000's Centre Weighted Metering?

[Andrew O'Neill]

 

[film4Me]

Interesting. I have the same meter in my Pentax KM. I've often walked up to the subject and taken a reading and mostly ignored the surrounds. This video explains the situation clearly for achieving extra shadow detail. In the past I've also taken two readings of a contrasty scene and averaged the readings, which I found works pretty well too.

Thanks.

 

[mshchem]

My first real 35mm camera was a Pentax SP 500. Eventually added a Pentax ES, screw mount cameras. I made great pictures with these cameras. Just matched up the needle, or with the ES set to auto. I had to be cool so I traded these in for Nikon F2S, this camera is more center weighted. I bet my color slide success rate dropped by 75%. I rarely use in camera meters unless it's something like a Nikon F5 with matrix metering on auto pilot. I'm better off guessing. I'm actually pretty good at guessing. I use an incident meter. Pretty boring approach

 

[RalphLambrecht]

My first real 35mm camera was a Pentax SP 500. Eventually added a Pentax ES, screw mount cameras. I made great pictures with these cameras. Just matched up the needle, or with the ES set to auto. I had to be cool so I traded these in for Nikon F2S, this camera is more center weighted. I bet my color slide success rate dropped by 75%. I rarely use in camera meters unless it's something like a Nikon F5 with matrix metering on auto pilot. I'm better off guessing. I'm actually pretty good at guessing. I use an incident meter. Pretty boring approach

As far as reflective meters go(which measure lumination) and not illumination, as incident meters do, matrix metering is by far the best, followed by center-weighted systems. Average metering is only reliable with average scenes. Incident metering is great with scenes that are well illuminated but have objects of large contrast distribution (white in front of black or visa versa). Nevertheless, the results are similar to 'sunny 16', which often works just fine. A center-weighted reflected system is a good choice and with some experience, a pretty robust way to go.

 

[loccdor]

With shade that isn't deep on a broadly sunny day on negative film I found the shady f/4 rule works with no metering required. If there are sunny spots in the image you go up some amount toward sunny f/16 or hazy f/11 depending on the overexposure latitude of your film and the importance of the highlight vs. shadow parts to the image.

 

[pentaxuser]

I thought Andy weighted was marginally better in most of the shots but preferred centre weighted in the shot with a lot of highlights. It's probably a matter of taste in most occasions where darker shadows look better to some users and lighter is preferred by others.

pentaxuser

 

[cliveh]

Doesn't it depend on what is in the centre of the frame when you take the meter reading?

 

[DREW WILEY]

My first camera was an early Honeywell Pentax with an externally coupled averaging 45-dgree CDs meter. Rather primitive. But I soon got accustomed to it, and never botched even fussy Kodachrome exposures. But for the past 55 years, I've standardized on handheld Pentax 1 degree spot meters with silicon cells, for all my cameras.

Relying on film "latitude" is like betting that every "hail Mary" football pass will be caught. But I have worked from memory based previous analogous shots or scenes which were metered.

One can get away with way more using a consumer color neg film like Kodacolor Gold designed for careless variables, rather than a highly tuned high contrast color neg film like Ektar (which I'm about to print again soon - looks more like chrome work than traditional color neg).

 

[Melvin J Bramley]

When using my Nikon FE in difficult lighting , I meter from something that is close to 18% grey.
The results can be taken care of with either film development or the use of split grade printing.