Out of Range

lilmsmaggie · Sep 22, 2009

This past weekend was spent at Point Reyes National seashore in California, with an unsceduled jaunt to the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco.

While shooting the beached fishing boat as well as other subjects, my X-700 meter's over/under range indicators kept flashing. I had never seen or experienced this behavior before. It took me several hours later to figure out what the camera was saying to me. Apparently, due to certain light conditions with certain films, you can exceed the meters range to determine proper exposure. I finally figured out that the meter was telling me to stop down to a smaller aperture, or use a ND filter to reduce the amount of light.

I was shooting with HP5+ using a 50-135 f3.5 Rokkor lens.

I was actually trying to take shots for a shallow depth of field assignment, so stopping down to me would have defeated the purpose.

Has anyone had a similar experience with other cameras?

thebanana · Sep 22, 2009

With the amount of light you had available to you at that aperture, your options are slower film speed or ND filter(s).

Q.G. · Sep 22, 2009

Or a (camera with a) faster shutter.

shotgun1a · Sep 22, 2009

Yep, sure have. Any electronic camera will behave similarly when the input exceeds the electronics' ability to calculate with it. The old follow-the-needle meter would have just pegged at the top. You'll see it happen in the dark in the other direction. Rarely do I shoot in conditions that have that much light, but I usually have a 2-stop ND and a polarizer in the bag for, among other reasons, that situation right there.

jeffreyg · Sep 22, 2009

He also didn't mention what he was metering off. The meter is averaging the scene and probably has a fairly wide angle of acceptance esp. at 50mm. It would probably would have been helpful to have a gray card and perhaps to have used that ie an incident reading. I would think that camera would have a shutter speed of 1/1000 a sec or even faster. My guess is the iso may have been set incorrectly or the camera was pointed into the sun or some spectral light source.

lilmsmaggie · Sep 22, 2009

jeffreyg said:
He also didn't mention what he was metering off. The meter is averaging the scene and probably has a fairly wide angle of acceptance esp. at 50mm. It would probably would have been helpful to have a gray card and perhaps to have used that ie an incident reading. I would think that camera would have a shutter speed of 1/1000 a sec or even faster. My guess is the iso may have been set incorrectly or the camera was pointed into the sun or some spectral light source.

I was metering off the hull of the fishing boat. I don't have a handheld meter and I didn't have a gray card. The Minolta X-700 camera I was shooting with has a max. shutter speed of 1/1000 of a sec.

It was after 2 p.m. in the afternoon. The sun was behind me and to my left. The ISO was set to 400.

Same thing happened at the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco, except heavy fog shrouded the sun creating bright diffused light coming from the left of the central dome. This time I could see the sun behind the fog to my left as I faced the POFA.

jeffreyg · Sep 22, 2009

It's possible that there is something wrong with the meter. I would check it against another one and also check the status of the battery. I don't shoot 35mm and do use a hand held meter - most often a spot meter but I do use HP5 and Delta 400 and think at f3.5,4 or 5.6 at a fast shutter speed you should be okay. I generally shoot stopped down with the camera on a tripod with the shutter speed determined by my version of the zone system. It is very rare that I use a ND filter although I do use colored filters if the subject calls for one and they have filter factors.

eddym · Sep 22, 2009

And what aperture were you trying to set? I know you wanted a shallow depth of field, so were you trying to shoot wide open? On a bright day at 400, you're probably not going to be able to open up more than about f8 or f5.6 at 1/1000.

jeffreyg · Sep 22, 2009

He could also rate the film at a slower iso and adjust the development time.

Nicholas Lindan · Sep 22, 2009

If you are shooting B&W you don't really need an ND filter - an appropriate color filter, red, green, orange, would work just as well if not better. If you really need to cut down the light stack a blue and and an orange. Also polarizers and crossed polarizers.

John Koehrer · Sep 22, 2009

If you need a gray card or two PM me & I'll send you a couple. I've got about adozen floating around here.

lilmsmaggie · Sep 22, 2009

Nicholas Lindan said:
If you are shooting B&W you don't really need an ND filter - an appropriate color filter, red, green, orange, would work just as well if not better. If you really need to cut down the light stack a blue and and an orange. Also polarizers and crossed polarizers.

Doh! - I didn't think to bring a polarizer. It did pickup a Hoya (G) Orange filter for $20. I'll see if that makes a difference. Trying to shoot wide open was probably a mistake. But I assumed that I would have trouble controlling the amount of DOF behind or in front of the subject.

Chan Tran · Sep 22, 2009

There is quite possibly something wrong with your camera. Which exposure mode did you use? A, P or M? And was the over or under range LED flashing or both? It seems under a typical outdoor scene at 2PM with ISO 400 you could get an over range (not likely unless you use very large aperture) but impossible to get under range indication.

phenix · Sep 22, 2009

Anyway, overexposure is less harmful than underexposure.
I experienced this too, with two Pentaxes (ME & ME-super). But when using needle-matching cameras (Ricohs in my case, which, BTW, I love far more than the Pentaxes), I use to pay much more attention to the light meter and avoid unnecessary overexposure. And, when I don’t chose a compact camera for simplicity, I usually take with me two SLRs or RFs: one with low, fine-grain film, and another with high-speed film. Most of the time I use only one of them, but there were several situations when I needed the second one for only one or a couple of shots, which finally proved to be some of the best shots I’ve ever done. Two cameras with two types of film – this is a worthy habit.

Sirius Glass · Sep 23, 2009

Chan Tran said:
There is quite possibly something wrong with your camera.

Maggie,

Do some sanity checks with your light meter. For example if the film is 400 ISO:

On a sunny day the reading should be f/16 @ 1/500 second [1/100 for ISO 100]
On a sunny day the reading in the shade should be f/11 @ 1/500 second [1/100 for ISO 100]

Ask several classmates or your instructor to check their metering of scenes against your camera.

Steve

lilmsmaggie · Sep 23, 2009

Chan Tran said:
There is quite possibly something wrong with your camera. Which exposure mode did you use? A, P or M? And was the over or under range LED flashing or both? It seems under a typical outdoor scene at 2PM with ISO 400 you could get an over range (not likely unless you use very large aperture) but impossible to get under range indication.

Yep! both LED's were flashing. I was shooting in Manual (M) mode.

I think a ND or polarizer would have solved the problem. I'm convinced now that there was too much light and I needed to stop down. I'm going to try again this weekend. Hopefully, the weather will hold. I should have similar light conditions. This time, I'm taking the polarizer and an orange filter.

With the orange filter, that should give me about 2 stops less light.
The polarizer has a filter factor of 3-4 stops.

Sirius Glass · Sep 23, 2009

lilmsmaggie said:
With the orange filter, that should give me about 2 stops less light.
The polarizer has a filter factor of 3-4 stops.

Use the meter and meter through the filters.

IIRC a filter factor of 2 is 1 stop [2^^1 = 2]; a factor of 4 is 2 stops [2^^2 = 4]; s filter factor of 8 is 3 stops [2^^3 = 8].

Steve

shotgun1a · Sep 23, 2009

Don't forget that a colored filter will affect your tonal balance because it doesn't filter all colors equally. If you just want less light, it's really advisable to use the polarizer or an ND. My experience with polarizers has been they cut me by about 2 stops, depending on how they're rotated and which way they're aiming.

lilmsmaggie · Sep 23, 2009

Just got back from shooting my coworkers WWII NAVY biplane trainer that she co-owns. Way Cool aircraft! I shot a 24 exp roll of HP5+ with an orange filter. Same kind of strong, bright light I encountered in Point Reyes. No wacky meter issues this time. I think I got some good shots.

Looks similar to this one: http://www.airventure.de/warbirdmus_kissimmee/pe-02-Stearman.JPG

Out of Range

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