Much better said than I could myself.
If this is a leaf-shutter camera, TTL metering would be very difficult or so complex that you would be asking for mechanical/electronic problems at some point.
A leaf shutter is normally closed and only opens when the exposure is made. To enable TTL metering, you would need to change how a leaf shutter works so that it's open, which would require a blind at the film plane, if you wanted to read the film plane. Taking a photo would then require the leaf shutter to close, the blind to retract, the leaf shutter to make its exposure, the blind to then close and the leaf shutter to then open. These require mechanical precision on the first exposure as well as the 10,000th exposure.
Then there is the problem of reading the film plane, which is considerably larger than 35mm. Do you simply center-weight it? Spot meter?
Now I know some of you will think that you could do away with the blind and have exposure determined at the time the photo is taken. All good and fine, but then you'll never get a preview of what the exposure is, unless you add a second meter cell on the body. That would add complexity and cost.
Or, alternatively, you would need to insert a sensor in front of the leaf shutter blades, which adds complexity to the design, because you need to account for extraneous reflections from the shutter blades, as well as the extra light that comes from the sensor being located so close to the front element.
All in all, neither is a workable solution.
Leica mounted the metering cell on an armature just in front of the shutter curtain that swung out of the way before the shutter fired in the M5 and CL. Light doesn't necessarily have to be well focused to be metered. The M5 and CL had spot metering. Some TTL rangefinders have curtains painted entirely or partially gray, some have a white reflective spot in the middle. The Minolta CLE had a pseudo random set of white spots for averaging. The meter cell can sit in the floor or top of the shutter box and point back at the film/shutter, just like on some SLRs.Aha! Use the shutter curtain as a mirror/screen!
That's exactly the kind of pleasing cunning solution I was hoping someone would reveal... I can see now why the leaf shutter in this new camera might cause a problem with that technique, though
That was the first solution I'd originally envisaged, but it seemed deeply inelegant. It also seems to me you replace mirror-slap with sensor-slap, which takes away one of a rangefinder's purported benefits over SLRs.Leica mounted the metering cell on an armature just in front of the shutter curtain that swung out of the way before the shutter fired in the M5 and CL.
Well, that depends entirely on how large and how accurate your spot is, surely!Light doesn't necessarily have to be well focused to be metered.
I'll level with you, as a trained engineer with electronics and embedded systems experience, I'm thinking the offset-from-full-aperture part is trivial. All the other problems already outlined with metering in a rangefinder ono the other hand, less so... It seems to me the idea that TTL metering in a RF is 'simple' compared to SLRs depends very much on ignoring all the problems of the former and concentrating solely on a very minor problem of the latter.The thing that makes TTL metering an RF simpler than an SLR is that you are always metering with the lens stopped down to working aperture, so all you need to calculate the shutter speed is film speed and the amount of light hitting the metering cell. You don't have to know the aperture or anything else about the lens, and don't need electronics coupled to the lens. With modern SLRs at minimum you have to calculate the offset from full aperture readings.
Not something I've ever used either - personally I use multi-point spot and nothing else - but I understand it is well used by other people, which suggests that it isn't useless.I'm not the one to ask about matrix metering.
or the format that your enlarger may force you to accept.
David, I agree with you about Fuji not manufacturing any B&W 220 film, but that doesn't mean that they won't consider it for their own camera, I would have thought.
I have been quietly pleased at the information contained in this thread, it appears that the group of people who have collectively designed this camera, really thought long and hard at just what could be achieved.
The icing on the cake has to be the ability to shoot in square or rectangular format to suit either your choice of format, or the format that your enlarger may force you to accept.
There are bucket loads of 6x6 enlargers out there, especially in Europe. Anyone with a 6x6 enlarger would have thought about a 6x7 camera, but more than likely have dropped the idea.
I have noticed in my travels that certain areas of the world have a predominance of enlarger and camera types. Australia, although well endowed with various 6x6 cameras, is a very big 6x7 roll film market. The secondhand enlarger market reflects that as most enlargers I see are usually 6x7, and I'm on the lookout for enlargers, so I see what's around.
Having travelled extensively in Germany and some surrounding countries in the last 26 years, as well as visiting some photographers and their darkrooms, I noted a big difference. The majority of enlargers I encountered were either 6x6, or, to a far lesser extent, 6x9.
Sure there are now quite a few 4x5" enlargers on the market, but mostly they have come from labs, including my own.
I have contacted Voigtlander to offer an APUG discount!!!
Wow, the sudden addition of 66 format suddenly makes me wet my trousers in anticipation!
To put in a focal-plane shutter of any kind would have significantly enlarged the mass and bulk of the body.
I find the speculation about ttl/otf metering for this camera amusing - folks, this is a leaf-shutter camera. To put in a focal-plane shutter of any kind would have significantly enlarged the mass and bulk of the body, and it would not have been pocket-sized anymore. You would also run into problems with flash sync speeds - at best you'd get something around 1/90th because of the shutter size.
I'm not the one to ask about matrix metering. It's always seemed like a useless marketing gimmick to me for film, as I've been getting good exposures without it on narrower dynamic range transparency film for four decades. My questions about matrix metering are: How does it know if I want a low or high key exposure? Why does it think that I want the same exposure as the closest color and brightness pattern match found in a database of 2^N other photos someone else took? I can see that matrix metering might be useful for non-analog cameras so that you don't blow pixels out on the bright end when you're measuring the brightness of each pixel. But I don't see it yielding better results than a regular meter used by a photographer with experience and a brain.
Lee
A spot meter and a (human) brain will beat any matrix system every time.
Well I would guess it will be heavier than your Moskwa 5 as there will be also electronics and batteries inside. I still do hope that it will be lighter than my Rolleiflex T.
You won't be alone in that case. Last time it was in 84 (Canon F1 New) and I also got the feeling to reach what I expected for a long time!First time in 10 years That I'll buy new camera equipment, apart from some filters and cable releases.
We use cookies and similar technologies for the following purposes:
Do you accept cookies and these technologies?
We use cookies and similar technologies for the following purposes:
Do you accept cookies and these technologies?