I have been having a lot of fun over the last few weeks trying out some folding roll film cameras with a couple of folding 35mm cameras thrown in. Not a rangefinder or lightmeter on any of them - pure photographer by 'wet finger in the wind method', and it has been loads of fun!
[smug]
What I have discovered is that I must be a pretty fair judge of distance, as most of my guesstimated focussing is usually ok.
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With exposure, using the sunny 16 rule and common sense, I do fairly well, but with some errors. These are nearly always under-exposure. I suspect the reason is that your pupil dilates so you don't realise it's as dark as it is. It doesn't seem to work the other way around, very rarely do I over-expose. So that is the error, at least for me, to watch out for.
Thing is, with a digital camera (I have moaned about them considerably on another thread
) the mega-techno multi sensory zone compensated whatsaname metering system seems to get constantly fooled by black cats in coal cellers and white ones in the snow... and ALWAYS, ALWAYS by backlighting. And lets face it, most people shot outdoors have a bright sky behind them. Focussing too, the damn thing is always autofocussing on the wrong thing.
I find my success rate at getting a reasonably sharp, well exposed image by guesswork on a film camera averages out at about 80 to 90% I hope this will improve, now I've spotted my main error.. With the digital it is sometimes less than 50%.
Obviously with the digital you know straight away and delete half the pics and start again... but, my point is that no automatic metering system can beat a bit of common sense and a BRAIN. Even an old pickled one like mine.
Ah... I've just read the excellent Fred Parker article and he's said the same thing, only better... :rolleyes: