Look, Ma! No lightmeter!


The most important factors in taking a good photograph, in order, are

something like having an interested subject, having a good composition

and only then getting technical matters like focus and exposure just

right. So, this post is all about the least important part.

Since I got into photography about three years ago or so, I have only

ever used cameras with lightmeters in them - that is, a small

electronic circuit which measures the amount of light falling on the

camera (usually through the lens, except in very early models) and

compares that to the ISO rating of the film to figure out a

combination of shutter speed and aperture which will result in a good

exposure. For the most part, getting a good exposure on a camera with

a lightmeter is just a matter of adjusting your settings until the

meter tells you you are in the good zone and then you shoot. Piece of

cake.

Of course, cameras are older than this technology, so in the Good Old

Days, Real Photographers had to look at what they were shooting,

think about it and Just Know for themselves what the correct exposure

settings were. The more mortal amongst them relied upon a rule of

thumb known as "Sunny 16". On a sunny day, when your subject is in

direct light, you set your shutter speed as close as you can to the

reciprocal of your film speed (e.g. 1/500s for ISO 400) and then your

apterture to f16 and you're good. If you want to open the lens up a

bit more you'll need to choose a faster shutter speed. What do you do

if it's not sunny? Then you need to estimate how many stops darker

than sunny it is and adjust accordingly.

I've kind of wanted to try my hand at this for a long time. Of course

it doesn't require a camera without a lightmeter, you can just ignore

the lightmeter that your camera has, but where is the fun in that?

Some time ago to my surprise at a local thrift store I came across a

FED-3 Soviet rangefinder at a reasonable price. I had been curious

about these cameras for a long time and so I got it. Very shortly

thereafter I was generously gifted an earlier, but IMHO superior,

model, the FED-2, by pkotrcka[1], who is probably the Lord of

Rangefinders in gopherspace. These are very rudimentary entirely

mechanical cameras with no lightmeter whatsoever, so a great

opportunity to practice using Sunny 16!

I took an awfully long time to put my first roll of film through the

FED-2, but last week I finally dropped it off for development and

scanning. I am pretty happy with the results! There is no great art

in there, and many of the shots are imperfect in some way. But the

vast majority of them either have really good exposure, or are within

one stop of good exposure. Which means I didn't fail miserably at my

Sunny 16 judgements, and with a bit more practice it seems likely that

I will be able to shoot confidently without a lightmeter.

This is a very liberating feeling! A lot of good old cameras have

lightmeters designed to work with old mercury batteries, which are now

banned for environmental reasons in most of the world. They need to

be used either with comparatively expensive modern substitute

batteries with sort lifespans, with external lightmeters (nowadays a

lot of people use phone apps for this, but there are none in FDroid so

that's not an option for me) or without a lightmeter at all. Some

early lightmeter cameras don't need batteries at all because their

lightmeters use selenium cells which are kind of like tiny solar

panels, making the meters self-powered. This neatly sidesteps the

problem of obscure old batteries, but the problem here is that the

efficiency of selenium meters degrades with light exposure, so old

cameras which have been carelessly stored with the meters uncovered

for decades can often be inaccurate. Several times in the past I have

encountered otherwise appealing cameras for sale in one of these

categories and put them firmly in the "too much hassle" basket and

moved on. I realise now that with just a little practice these kinds

of camera can be very usable in non-critical applications.

Maybe it's not a good thing, though, that I have one fewer excuse to

I'll put a couple of the new FED photos in the photo section of my

gopherhole[2] shortly. A big thanks to pkotrcka for the camera!

[1] gopher://gopher.club:70/1/users/pkotrcka/

[2] gopher://zaibatsu.circumlunar.space:70/1/~solderpunk/photos

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