Walt,
Your advise is very sensible and practical. When I look back, the
underexposed shots were in the ff situations:
1). Beach scene.
2). Midmorning (9:30 am) view of a pond with trees (Sun a bit low)
Maybe I failed to spot the correct areas?
Titoy
----- Original Message -----
From: "Walt Wayman" <hiwayman@xxxxxxxxx>
To: <olympus@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Saturday, May 17, 2003 2:07 AM
Subject: Re: [OM] Defending multi-spot metering
> I'm going to disagree a bit with Jan and Bill, and others, who
> don't seem to think much of the multi-spot metering thing. And
> I'm feeling like a bit of a hypocrite, since I said yesterday that
> incident readings were the absolute best way to determine
> exposure, particularly when shooting color. That's still my
> story, and I'm sticking to it.
>
> But I nearly never use an exposure meter, incident or otherwise,
> when shooting with my OMs. Instead, I almost always use multi-
> spot metering, and have for 20 years. I wouldn't be without it,
> as evidenced by the fact that of the nine OM bodies I have, seven
> of them have multi-spot metering capability. There is, however, a
> learning curve involved in using it effectively.
>
> The world is full of things that are essentially 18 percent gray.
> (For the purpose of this discussion, I will ignore the fact that
> recent studies indicate that the world, on average, is 13 percent
> gray, not 18. That's a topic for another day.) So, let me
> suggest that you go out and about for an hour or two with an
> exposure meter, or an OM-3 or 4, and an 18 percent gray card and
> compare readings from the card and from the world in general, and
> you should soon learn to spot (pun intended) these things.
>
> For instance, you will find that green grass, most foliage and
> rocks, dry tree trunks (but not black walnut or sourwood, which
> are black, or birch or sycamore, which are white), and even a
> clear blue northern sky fit the bill. There's lots of other stuff
> you will find that may be peculiar to the kind of photographs you
> take. Remember these. In addition, with practice, you will
> quickly be able to spot stuff that is about the right shade, even
> if you've never seen it before.
>
> Using this knowledge, I generally take spot readings of two or
> three things, sometimes even four or five, in the frame that I
> judge to be approximately 18 percent gray, ignoring the extremes
> of light and dark, then fire away, usually storing the result in
> memory first. At the risk of dislocating my shoulder from patting
> myself on the back, my percentage of correctly exposed slides is
> at least 95. And I almost never bracket. For the second coming
> or a flying saucer, I might. Otherwise, no, not today.
>
> Now, as for incident readings, which I so highly recommended
> yesterday, and still do, I religiously use my Sekonic Digi Master
> L-718 with my medium format gear. It does everything: direct,
> incident, spot and flash readings, and averaging. I use it almost
> exclusively as an incident meter, though it has this really neat
> little attachment that allows it to read directly off the ground
> glass. I consider that to be the greatest thing since the cable
> release for doing macro work with medium and large format
> cameras. No more bellows factor calculations!
>
> Incidentally, since I actually do practice what I preach, at least
> sometimes, I'm feeling a little less hypocritical now.
>
> Walt
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