Inbetween Exposure Readings

pauldc · Jan 24, 2007

What do people do when shooting slide film when the exposure meter reads something in-between the various stops? Do you always favour slight underexposure to slight over?

My Bronica SQA only has full stops on the aperture and shutter speed so I cannot set half stops

My Gossen Lunar meter often gives light readings that of course do not map these full stops

I never worry with black and white film because of the latitude and I always favour a bit extra exposure. But slide film is so much more tricky!

I know one answer is to bracket - but what other rules of thumb do people follow

Likewise when using manual flash and converting aperture readings from the flash guide charts - often I find here that over exposed settings are better

Any thoughts always appreciated!

Rolleiflexible · Jan 24, 2007

If it's B+W film -- alway overexpose.

Lee L · Jan 24, 2007

Can you set the aperture between stops? A friend of mine shoots Olympus OMs, which have no half-stop detents (IIRC) and very wide spacing between full stop detents, so he interpolates and the aperture stays where he sets it. This worked out very well for accurate exposures on demanding Velvia. He brackets in 1/3 stops. Perhaps this would work for you as well. It's been nearly 25 years since I handled a Bronica SQA, so I can't recall how it's set up in this regard.

Lee

Leon · Jan 24, 2007

Lee's right - if you're using the old "s" lenses which dont have the 1/2 stop settings on the aperture ring, you can still set them between stops, even though there is no proper click to stop it at - 1/3 stops are possible too

joshverd · Jan 24, 2007

Yeah, I do the same thing Lee L described, and it works with all cameras I've ever tried it with.

Lee L · Jan 24, 2007

Some lenses with closely spaced, heavily detented stops will pop into a preset position when you fire the shutter, so you may need to test this procedure (setting between detents) with your equipment before relying on it. If you have half stop detents, you're still very close to ideal exposure even if the aperture ring does pop into a preset.

Lee

David Henderson · Jan 24, 2007

Not only does it work but you can see it work. Set your lens to (say)f8, depress the dof preview (which stops down the lens to the selected aperture) and turn the aperture slowly in the direction of f11. You can see it stopping down as you move the ring. You could view the aperture control as being continuous with the click stops there only to tell you that you've reached a conventional setting. Indeed you could argue that the click stops on the PS lenses make it more difficult to set a value other than full or half stop than it is on the S lenses.

Lee L · Jan 24, 2007

One reason I really like the designs of the Leica M5, CL, SL, and SL2 (and I believe the Canon EF also had this feature) is a continuously variable shutter speed dial on manual mode with these cameras. (There may be others that do this as well.) Just like a continuously variable aperture, you can nail your exposure with the shutter dial. Of course automatic exposure and electronic shutters brought this feature to most cameras in auto mode, but not to mechanical manual models. The models mentioned all had a large shutter dial with ridges for finger traction, and some overlapped the camera edge so that you could just roll the shutter dial with a finger to zero out the meter.

Lee

pauldc · Jan 25, 2007

Thanks everyone, really useful advice.

I have looked at my Bronica lenses (all older S lenses) and yes I have now found the way to set half stops - brilliant!

Inbetween Exposure Readings

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