Testing Kentmere 200 with D23 1+1

mshchem said:

I don't know that you can buy a darkbag manufactured today that's actually light tight. Use with caution in a dim room.

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Not exactly today, but the Paterson bag I bought about four years ago hasn't given me problem so far https://patersonphotographic.com/product/paterson-changing-bag/

npl said:

Not exactly today, but the Paterson bag I bought about four years ago hasn't given me problem so far https://patersonphotographic.com/product/paterson-changing-bag/

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I will get one on order when B&H comes back online Saturday evening. Thanks for the info!

Two things:

1. In my experience, changing bags easily leak light around the elastic wrist cuffs. Make sure you wear enough on your arms to give a good tight fit. And remove your wristwatch if it has luminous points!
2. The 160 ISO negatives clearly have better shadow detail, and that ISO may give you better results in general. But that conclusion is founded on how your camera metered your test scenes, as others have pointed out. Look into how your camera’s meter is claimed to work (eg centre spot, centre weighted, multi-point averaging, etc) and think about the kind of scenarios that would be likely to fool it into unhelpful exposure choices. There’s always a smart way of working with whatever system you’ve got.

npl said:

Not exactly today, but the Paterson bag I bought about four years ago hasn't given me problem so far https://patersonphotographic.com/product/paterson-changing-bag/

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I was able to order a Paterson bag. People give very positive feedback, only complaint is that the elastic is tight, kinda has to be tight, right

snusmumriken said:

Two things:

1. In my experience, changing bags easily leak light around the elastic wrist cuffs. Make sure you wear enough on your arms to give a good tight fit.

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Will do!

snusmumriken said:

1. The 160 ISO negatives clearly have better shadow detail, and that ISO may give you better results in general. But that conclusion is founded on how your camera metered your test scenes, as others have pointed out. Look into how your camera’s meter is claimed to work (eg centre spot, centre weighted, multi-point averaging, etc) and think about the kind of scenarios that would be likely to fool it into unhelpful exposure choices. There’s always a smart way of working with whatever system you’ve got.

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This is what the PetaPixel review says for this camera:

"The light meter is based on a partially center-weighted averaging metering and therefore does a good job when light levels are even across the frame. It will struggle the same way that a vintage manual film camera will when it comes to predominantly light or dark-toned scenes as well as compositions containing bright light sources towards the camera. New users to the analog experience may have to put in some effort to learn how to predict when the meter will struggle and apply the right amount of exposure compensation."

From an earlier discussion with Matt, I've learned that, because the light meter likes to make everything 18% so if (for example) I'm photographing something like pure white snow, and I need to add exposure otherwise the camera will try to make the snow come out yucky muddy gray.

dcy said:

Will do!


This is what the PetaPixel review says for this camera:

"The light meter is based on a partially center-weighted averaging metering and therefore does a good job when light levels are even across the frame. It will struggle the same way that a vintage manual film camera will when it comes to predominantly light or dark-toned scenes as well as compositions containing bright light sources towards the camera. New users to the analog experience may have to put in some effort to learn how to predict when the meter will struggle and apply the right amount of exposure compensation."

From an earlier discussion with Matt, I've learned that, because the light meter likes to make everything 18% so if (for example) I'm photographing something like pure white snow, and I need to add exposure otherwise the camera will try to make the snow come out yucky muddy gray.

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Does your camera have the option to ove-ride the meter and set exposure manually? Or an exposure lock? If you have either of those options, you can always fill your viewfinder frame with something you expect to be mid-tone and determine exposure from that; then re-compose and shoot.

Yes, a reflective meter will give the exposure to get middle gray. This is great with a spot meter, allowing us to use the Zone System, but there's shortcomings when it's an averaging matrix :

Simple experiment to do with a digital camera in center-weighted metering mode or simply your phone camera : point it at a scene in bright daylight with equal foreground and sky. Chances are the foreground will be underexposed to protect the highlights (the sky). Move the camera/phone slightly upward (more sky), this will increase the phenomenon further. Move it downward, the exposure on the foreground will be better, and the sky will be brighter, probably overexposed. With digital, we can easily see that in real time and adjust our exposure, and the default computed exposure (foreground underexposed, highlight protected) is actually good. This is because digital sensor have low tolerance in the highlights, but there is a large margin to boost the exposure of underexposed areas in post, especially when shooting raw.

The problem with film camera is that we can't see how the camera metered the scene, and with black and white negative film we want the opposite : give the shadows enough exposure and not worry so much about the highlights because i) moderns general-purpose B&W films can register a ton of informations in the highlights but don't like underexposure very much ii) we'll handle the density of the highlight when developing. This is the famous "expose for the shadows, develop for the highlights". For theses reasons using the camera built-in light meter, while convenient, is the least recommend way of metering : an incident meter or a spot meter are much betters tools*

BUT, if we're stuck with the camera's built-in meter, there's still techniques we can use. I'm going to paraphrase my go-to book, "The Zone system for 35mm photographers" by Carson Graves, pp.32 and 89-91

1) Walking up to a coherent part of the scene until it completely fills the viewfinder, while being careful not to cast our shadow on it : the snow, a patch of green grass ... and take the meter reading. Now we use the Zone System to place that part of the scene where we want to. As an example adding one stop to place the snow in zone VI, or leaving the sun-lit grass in zone V. Basically, it's the same as if we metered the zone from afar using a spot meter.

Of course it's not always possible or practical to do so. An other option is to use our hand as reference :

2) The book is more detailed (taking a reading in light AND shadows, giving an indication of the overall contrast and therefore the N/N+/N-development to use) but a simple way to explain the technique is to place the palm of our hand in a position where it reflects the greatest amount of available light, fill the viewfinder with it (while being careful not to cast shadow on it) and take a meter reading. We assume that the hand in light is zone VI, so as the camera gave the exposure to get Zone V, we add one stop, and that's the exposure for our shots as long as the light remain the same.

*Unfortunately spot meters are ridiculously expensive, even used one. Incident meters are cheaper. I use the Sekonik FlashMate L-308X and it's one the best investment I did.

snusmumriken said:

Does your camera have the option to ove-ride the meter and set exposure manually? Or an exposure lock? If you have either of those options, you can always fill your viewfinder frame with something you expect to be mid-tone and determine exposure from that; then re-compose and shoot.

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It does not. No meter override, and no exposure lock.

dcy said:

It does not. No meter override, and no exposure lock.

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Isn't it a Pentax 17? If it is, see page 29 of the manual:



1) look at your scene;
2) gauge how much, in stops, the total centre area of the scene varies from an average of mid gray;
3) use the exposure compensation dial to adjust accordingly.

Naturally, step number 2 is something that is harder to do when you haven't much experience, but it becomes easier to do with practice.

I learned how to do this with Kodachrome slide film - a sort of forced rapid learning curve

dcy said:

It does not. No meter override, and no exposure lock.

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Ah yes, I looked back at other threads and see you have a Pentax 17. Looks like your only control for individual shots is the exposure compensation dial. So you will need to anticipate the kind of situations where the camera will tend to over- or under-expose, and guess (or learn by experience) by how much. I can see why you were quite interested in Thornton's 2-bath developer!

Step one with a camera like the Pentax 17 is to familiarize yourself with the meter reading pattern - where is that centre weighting?!

MattKing said:

Isn't it a Pentax 17? If it is, see page 29 of the manual:

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Miscommunication. For some reason I took "meter override" to mean that you turn off the meter and set the exposure manually, but of course that's not what "override" means.

Yes, it definitely has an exposure compensation dial, and that's what I rely on to coax the light meter in one direction or the other.

MattKing said:

1) look at your scene;
2) gauge how much, in stops, the total centre area of the scene varies from an average of mid gray;
3) use the exposure compensation dial to adjust accordingly.

Naturally, step number 2 is something that is harder to do when you haven't much experience, but it becomes easier to do with practice.

I learned how to do this with Kodachrome slide film - a sort of forced rapid learning curve

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Yeah. The nice thing about having 72 shots is I can spend a lot of shots simply testing the light meter. I frequently take a shot twice at different EI so I can test and figure out what works.