You know Vacarro shot the war with a C3. I bet he still has it and I bet it still works.
You know Vacarro shot the war with a C3. I bet he still has it and I bet it still works.When the Capa's jeep was blown by a mine in Vietnam he had a Nikon S with Kodachrome hanging from his neck and his old Contax II in the hand with BW, I'm curious if that Contax was a veteran of the Omaha beach...
Those Pro cameras were made to resist more than the war photograpers...
Yes... The LX is EV-5.5 to EV20... it makes 125s automatic exposures... but comparissons between brands are a bit difficult because we have to account for the precission in the extreme readings, and every brand has its own criterion to force the analog reading amplification (Op-Amp, suposedly) reading to the point they want. I would compare that to today's max ISO of a digital camera. Of course the LX is an impressive body...
The LX uses an "Off the film metering" derivative (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Through-the-lens_metering#Off_the_film_metering) similar to TTL flash control, that it cannot be directly compared to the F2 metering system. Still not many Pros used the LX, being lighter it was as capable camera as the F3 and the Canon F1. For sure the LX it's an exceptional machine, but Pentax never had been strong in the 35mm Pro market...
Personally, I have Pentax in a high estim, I use the 67II a lot as and I shot often with Pentax Program A, mostly with a 50/1.7...
You know Vacarro shot the war with a C3. I bet he still has it and I bet it still works.
The LX can aperture priority autoexpose a scene for as long as it takes, all the while monitoring the scene for changes in lighting and adjusting exposure time accordingly.
You know Vacarro shot the war with a C3. I bet he still has it and I bet it still works.
For what it is it's a great little unit. It's very rarely irreparable and it can be calibrated very easily. If I were shooting combat in WWII I'd rather the medalist I, however.The C3 is an unsuspected combat camera.
I'd have to check my PDF's to see if that was the case in the late 30's when the camera was launched, but I bet it was. I never liked the finish on those latter-day C series cams.And of course it came with a lifetime warranty that I have never seen offered on any other camera . . .
I understand that in A priority mode the LX integrates the light reflected in the film, so the exposure is not decided before shutter release, so it does not require an instant reading, so integrates the reading during all exposure time... it is a sound system, similar to the minolta at the time...
The drawback is that reading is not center-weighted...
View attachment 261895
https://www.mir.com.my/rb/photography/hardwares/classics/pentaxlx/metering/metering.htm
Instead the Photomic had a very well defined center-weighted reading, with only a 1.5 stop loss (1977) compared to the LX. Probably the Nikon system would be well preferred by a Pro of the era, a Pro is not shooting much in the dark, while the center-weighted metering was quite a desired feature.
IMO, at the end, the metering system of the LX was a principal factor for many Pros to not consider its usage. And in that scenary Pentax abandoned that market when large investements were necessary to compete in that segment in that late 80s and beyond, not having Pro customers you don't develop Pro glass...
So we cannot praise those LX 120s without telling it prevented having the desired feature of the time, the center-weighted metering, that pitfall contributed to a remarkable failure in the Pro market segment...
The main drawback couldn't have been because it is not center weighted because it definitely is as confirmed by lab testing by both Modern Photography and Popular Photography at the time.
BTW, in the MIR sited you referenced, it states, "One of the strongest asset for the Pentax LX is at its metering system. It is not too unreasonable to quote in terms of sophistication, the Pentax LX has the best metering system found in top rated SLR cameras during the early eighties."
Similar to what Minolta at that time? I have Minoltas of that time and I am only aware of the Olympus OM series being similar as they all metered OTF.
Les... the OTF of the LX was a total pitfall for most of the pros !!! it fails totally with backlighted subjects !
Imagine you are a wedding photographer, you have the couple there and background is a bright sky, you severely underexpose that people ! If you have all day long to take the shot then you meter the face nearing the subject and later you shot manual at right exposure, but if you have to shot several dozens of rolls in that wedding you don't have all day long to make a single shot...
Today's sophisticated metering is almost magically good.This "problematic backlighting" you speak of is actually identified in most manuals and how to overcome it. In fact I believe my Argus C3 manual even has it.
Today's more sophisticated metering can automatically compensate for a lot of problematic lighting conditions. You may not be aware that pros - and nonpros, have encountered this scene long before today's more sophisticated metering systems and managed to get proper exposure. Back then they were even shooting Kodachromes which have far narrower latitude then today's Porta films.
Today's sophisticated metering is almost magically good.
C41 is incredbly forgiving. There's that Kodak stuff Portra?What's really magical is the latitude of most color negative and b&w film. I can shoot meterless and get perfect exposure during daylight hours no problem. OTOH, my flash dependency is still high but TTL flash and again film's ultrawide latitude is equally forgiving.
Les... the OTF of the LX was a total pitfall for most of the pros !!! it fails totally with backlighted subjects !
Imagine you are a wedding photographer, you have the couple there and background is a bright sky, you severely underexpose that people ! If you have all day long to take the shot then you meter the face nearing the subject and later you shot manual at right exposure, but if you have to shot several dozens of rolls in that wedding you don't have all day long to make a single shot...
The F2/F3/CanonF1 were smarter because the center-weighted metering delivers way more consistent Auto Exposures than average metering, specially when people is there, you don't want the background have too much weight. From the F2 (1971) to the F6 all Nikon cameras also included the center weighted mode, and none has the average mode.
Also center-weighted was to pave the way to advanced matricial metering, while OTF had no future. In fact F3 an beyond do include an OTF meter, but they use it only to control the flash, having to mount two meters because the OTF is a total pitfall in Auto mode, subjects are severely underexposed as background goes bright !!!
What happened with Olympus/Pentax with the OTF? No Pro wanted their meter, and they disapeared from the Pro segment. Instead Nikon, Canon and Minolta got that market.
Yes, as MIR tells the LX has the best meter, but I only agree this for night photography. If you are to shot people don't use those cameras, at least if you want to shot Auto and you are in a country with bright skies.
Why do you think the (for the rest) excellent LX was not sold? The meter was a pitfall for the Pros !!
Sorry, it was a short circuit, I wanted to say Olympus... , I had been a frequent user of a borrowed OM-2, before I could afford a SLR.
If someone cannot figure out how to set a camera for back lit subject, I feel sorry for them. If that is the camera's only problem, that is not much of a deficiency.
Backlighting?If someone cannot figure out how to set a camera for back lit subject, I feel sorry for them. If that is the camera's only problem, that is not much of a deficiency.
Omaha beach? Maybe. In 1937, a Contax II was half the price af a Ford V8 coupe. A third or so of a grade school teacher's salary. Or, 450RM at Foto Franke on Potsdamerstrasse, Berlin, 3 July 1937.When the Capa's jeep was blown by a mine in Vietnam he had a Nikon S with Kodachrome hanging from his neck and his old Contax II in the hand with BW, I'm curious if that Contax was a veteran of the Omaha beach...
Those Pro cameras were made to resist more than the war photograpers...
Compensation for backlighting was known and used as early as 1839.If someone cannot figure out how to set a camera for back lit subject, I feel sorry for them. If that is the camera's only problem, that is not much of a deficiency.
If someone cannot figure out how to set a camera for back lit subject, I feel sorry for them. If that is the camera's only problem, that is not much of a deficiency.
Compensation for backlighting was known and used as early as 1839.
Back then they were even shooting Kodachromes which have far narrower latitude then today's Porta films.
But not as narrow as people seem to think.
Exactly my point. 138S stated that since the LX did not do that one thing that the camera was the worst ever built and sold and that the company should have been destroyed and erased from history. I would hate to see the reaction if he had trouble snapping the paper tab on a 120 roll of film. Oh the tragedy of it all.
Everyone's boggled about a Nikon shutter making over a million cycles? Big deal.
And see, I shoot b/w much more precisely than I shoot color neg. I like to have a good starting place for further processing, and that means contrasty. I try to nail it dead on or underexpose slightly. I'll shoot color neg all day and barely touch the settings, as long as I'm in open daylight, maybe go up two stops in light shade, but I never like the results of the same method on b/w... Means too much processing for my taste, and I prefer natural contrast to artificial contrast.What's really magical is the latitude of most color negative and b&w film. I can shoot meterless and get perfect exposure during daylight hours no problem. OTOH, my flash dependency is still high but TTL flash and again film's ultrawide latitude is equally forgiving.
The point was not if a Pro knew how to deal with a backlight, the point is that F2 center-weighted offered way more consistent exposures to a Pro than bare uniform Average (LX) when he had no time to play much attention to exposure.
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