Locked Exposure

This will be nothing new to the gurus amongst you, but a small anecdote for the newbies. I recently shot five rolls of 100 asa slide film on a Nikkormat with a dead meter. Lighting was flat and even, and I took exposure readings from a phone app roughly every 30 minutes. The exposures were spot on. Last weekend I shot two rolls of Tri-X rated at 1600 on a Yashica rangefinder, and locked the exposure at 1/250 at f11 for both rolls. The exposures were once again correct, and more consistent than a typical auto-exposure camera. A reminder that if the light source doesn't change, neither does the exposure.

In a bid to test the point and shoot capabilities of the Yashica, I also locked focus at about 7ft, just to see how many shots will be in focus with a 45mm lens at f11. I haven't scanned them yet, so it'll be interesting to see. With a Copal shutter the Yashica is almost silent and has one of the fastest (if not the quickest and quietest) shutter of any camera I own. If the resolution of the scans holds up, and the grain is controlled, I'm tempted to use the Yash as my regular street camera.

Which Yashica are you using for this?

OptiKen said:

Which Yashica are you using for this?

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Minister D, 2.8 lens, Copal shutter. I've owned it a few years, and the rendition is not unlike old screw thread Leica optics.

I guess it depends on which auto exposure camera you're comparing it to. I have a Nikon n8008s w/ spot meter that exposes just fabulously. No way can I hand meter as good as it can (it has exposure lock, so you can lock the exposure in difficult lighting). Light may not change too much in 30 minutes, but where you're pointing the camera does change. Your next shot could be in shade, so one would need to re meter for that. Once I pointed the camera straight up into the sky w/ the sun to my back, and slowly lowered it to the horizon while watching the meter. It varied 3 stops from straight up, to about mid way, to the horizon! So much for sunny 16, or sunny 22 here in Florida.

Still, I know what you mean. I also have a Nikkormat w/ a dead meter, and I am always surprised at how well the negs come out of that camera w/ hand metering.

My standard technique with my manual cameras (most of them) is to take a general light reading and to only change that if conditions noticeably change. That means I can spend a generous hour without worrying. In these northern climes (UK) after an hour or so, particularly at this time of year, the light does change and needs a new reading.

momus said:

I guess it depends on which auto exposure camera you're comparing it to. I have a Nikon n8008s w/ spot meter that exposes just fabulously.

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I also have AF Nikons with matrix, spot, average metering, etc, but like all camera meters they measure what's through the lens, not an incident reading of the light source. If it 'senses' the reflected light has changed, it alters the camera settings. Depending on the subject this may be undesirable.

blockend said:

In a bid to test the point and shoot capabilities of the Yashica, I also locked focus at about 7ft, just to see how many shots will be in focus with a 45mm lens at f11.

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According to the online DoF calculator your DoF at 7ft with a 45mm lens and f11 is from just over 5ft to just over 10 ft so quite small.

However set your hyperfocal distance to even 5 ft more i.e. focus at 12 ft and you will have a DoF of just over 7 ft to just over 30ft which gives a big margin.

It really depends on what focus range you need with street photography. Maybe 5 ft is enough but it seems quite a small range to me

Best of luck

pentaxuser

I wanted to use it for street photography, and 5ft roughly represents a torso shot, to a 10ft whole figure, with a 45mm lens. I'm thinking of Tippexing two dots on the barrel, one for 5ft, and another for 10 ft+.

I've come round (after 40 years!) to the opinion that an SLR is not the ideal tool for street photography. A number of pointers lead me to that conclusion. One is I found shooting on a zone focus folder no more inconvenient, or slower than an SLR, I liked the frame within a frame of rangefinders, allowing me to see what was entering the shot, and I disliked the instinctive turn of the lens SLRs require before focusing. I'm currently experimenting with a Bessa L + viewfinder, and the Yashica rangefinder.

We're getting away from the exposure discussion, but they're related in so far as changing any camera setting must slow down the time it takes to grab a shot.