Why meterless cameras are important to photography

Well, in the last two years after all my pro bono work at Emory University Rehabilitation Hospital, I sold our MF gear and started back working with 135 BW film and developing, processing and using your chart and Sunny 16 with my M2. I use all of my old manual focus Nikons these days and find them enjoyable as well. It’s nice to use their meters, but nicer when I can check exposure without a meter, too.

Many thanks!😃
 
Way back when (more than 50-years ago) I learned photography on an M3 (no meter). I've come to appreciate the fact that this is the only way you'll learn how light works (film-speeds) and how your shutter-speeds and f-stops work together. If you start off using a meter (much less auto exposure) you'll be lost if your light-meter battery goes dead and you're not in a position to easily replace it.

With some experience, using Sunny-16 is faster and nearly as reliable as any meter (excepting full auto mode, of course).
 
Bill Blackwell said:
Way back when (more than 50-years ago) I learned photography on an M3 (no meter). I've come to appreciate the fact that this is the only way you'll learn how light works (film-speeds) and how your shutter-speeds and f-stops work together. If you start off using a meter (much less auto exposure) you'll be lost if your light-meter battery goes dead and you're not in a position to easily replace it.

With some experience, using Sunny-16 is faster and nearly as reliable as any meter (excepting full auto mode, of course).
Click to expand...

If something happens to your meter, all is not lost. Use your backup body. If something happens to both meters, Sunny 16 will get you in the ballpark. It is hardly a catastrophe.
 
Last edited:
Adventure before dementia!

I am convinced that my mind is sharper now than before I really took Sunny 16 seriously. It has been great daily exercise to use the M2…shooting with no meter is both liberating and healthy! 😂

Adventure indeed!
 
Last edited:
What Obi Wan really said "Luke! The Targeting computer is a sophisticated piece of equipment that helps you hit the target" One of the funniest lines from Thumb Wars.

With digital- less latitude than film More like shooting slides. Shooting B&W negative film, processing it yourself- you would have to be way off to make it unrecoverable. Like hitting the Death Star at all instead of just the exhaust port. Digital- more like slide film. With either, use the meter and know when it is not going to be accurate.
 
There was a time I could pretty reliably nail the exposure settings with my M4 by eye. Not so much any more. It takes practice and skill. I think it really teaches you to SEE and understand light, the film's reaction to it, and the developer that produces the image. It's also completely unnecessary in today's world, I grant you that...but when you get it right, it feels good. It also teaches you to not get too attached to any particular shot, because there's a good chance you'll blow it. I'd usually err on the side of overexposure, figuring I'd be able to compensate in the printing. Underexposures were more likely a lost cause.
 
I still have both. I use metering on my digitals but I have a Pentax H1a, Rolleicord III & Super Ikonta 531 that are all meterless. I have a Sekonic L-208 that I'll throw in my pocket and use when I need to but I'll often eyeball it much of the time. With XP2, it's quite easy to get away with that. Now if i have a roll of Ektar loaded, I'll meter more often because it's much more slide like in it's lack of latitude.
 
Keith said:
One of my very early posts here on RFF was to share an exposure chart made to pocket size that was based on sunny sixteen. There is still one of those in my battered old Domke and at the time it was 'THE' most important part of my learning process. At some point in the near future I intend using it and a manual camera to remind myself how simple photography can be.
Click to expand...
Lets see the chart
 
I like the idea of meterless cameras and, other than my Minolta Autocord CdS-III, none of my TLRs have meters. (Well, a couple of them have old selenium-cell meters, but I don't even consider using them.) I tend to use handheld meters, however. In the case of my Autocord CdS-III, the onboard meter is so good that I have always just used it with that camera.

I shoot slides/transparencies, where a half-stop can make all the difference between a successful exposure and a disappointment. I usually meter and interpret the reading, take one exposure like that, then do a bracket one half-stop under that one.

I never felt the need to be independent of a meter, so I haven't put the effort into learning that skill. I suppose that if I went out to take pictures and had forgotten to bring a meter (very unlikely), I could still go ahead and take some shots without it.

- Murray
 
In cameras so-equipped a built-in exposure meter is a convenience I prefer to have.
IMO any exposure meter - built-in, shoemount or handheld - offers only a suggestion.
One must learn how to use it, and know under what conditions it is likely to be misled.

Chris
 
Working at a newspaper back in the 1980s, I went for almost two years without a working meter in any of my cameras. I was pretty good at estimating exposure back then plus I was shooting Tri-X in mostly familiar settings where I had shot many times before. Film latitude and familiarity avoids many exposure pitfalls.

Today, I use digital cameras with fancy matrix metering. The exposure systems are so good I hardly ever use exposure compensation and I just shoot in aperture priority auto all the time. I'm a battery-dependent photographer today. It's my reality. I'm okay with it.
 
I transplanted the working Meter from a dead Retina Reflex-S to a Retina IIIS. If the cameras with Selenium Cell Meters were left in their fitted cases, tend to survive. There is a specific screw in the camera intended to hold the long pulley in place to change out the meter as a unit. I just like things to work the way they were intended. Also tended to "Spot Meter" up close to the subject, then walk back to compose and shoot.
 
I'll quote at length from a post I made on another forum on the subject some time ago:

"Like Sunny 16, the chart will get you in the ballpark. If ballpark exposures are good enough for you or your application, you can dispense with a meter. Some photographers prefer more precise exposures so they use a meter. Photography is a big tent.

I have asked a couple of times why Sunny 16 didn't change when ASA removed the safety factor in 1960 and ASA film speeds doubled even though the film didn't change. After all, ASA speed is in the denominator in the formula for determining shutter speed under Sunny 16.

I think I remember reading that back in the late 1800s, film speed was determined by how bright it was in Washington, D.C. on the first day of spring. Whoever was running the show prepared a little chart that everyone used for that year. That lead to the Sunny 16 rule so you wouldn't have to carry around a little chart, which in turn led to meters because photographers missed carrying something around, which in turn led to meters in cameras because photographers decided that carrying around meters wasn't all that it was cracked up to be after all. Then film manufacturers invented wide latitude film so no matter what exposure system you used, if you used one at all, you would get good photos. More or less. Kind of. Acceptable for 3 1/2 x 5s in a family album.

I like telling this story about this guy who was making a presentation at a camera club meeting I attended a while back. Naturally he told us all about what cameras and lenses he used as if that made the slightest bit of difference. Then he told us all about his background, where he was born, the first time he used his mother's Brownie, and all the rest, and his culminating remark was that since he had a BFA in photography he didn't need to use a meter. Then we had to look at his photos. I guess it goes without saying I thought he would have benefited from using a meter."
 
Last edited:
What I look for in any camera is simplicity of operation. Whether a camera has a good focusing and viewig system is important, whether it has a meter and/or autoexposure is all fine, as long as it will do what I want. Many of the later, higher-end film and digital cameras have so many modes and configuration options, on both focus and exposure systems, that I find them exasperating. Who really wants to have to understand all that just to set the focus correctly, set the f/stop and exposure time correctly?

Usually, with older film cameras, a meterless camera is less expensive to have serviced if the camera has been sitting around for decades. For example, I love the Kodak Retina IIc and IIIc cameras, have several of them. All of the IIIc cameras have problems with the ancient selenium cell meter. I've had three IIc cameras serviced and they now work like new, perfect, and are instant pleasure to use. I'd like to get one of the IIIc serviced but the meter is dead and unresurrectible, and it has a big ding in the top cover ... but I want to use that Schneider 50mm f/2 lens: a stop means a lot when I'm working with an ISO 40 film. So I have another otherwise beat IIc with a good top cover and I'll have the IIIc transformed into a "IIc Plus" with no meter.

Be that as it may, when I was young, my first 'real' cameras (beyond box cameas) were a 1963ish Minolta 16-Ps that I bought myself when I was about 8 or 9; then when I started high school, a 1949 Rolleiflex that my grandfather loaned me, and an Argus C3 that my mom gave me (her old camera, my father bought her a Retina IIIc). The Minolta had an exposure guide built into the camera ... 1/100 and 1/30 second shutter speeds, f/stops from (I think) f/2.8 to f/16 with symbol markings for exposure zones. That taught me a lot. The exposure guide that used to be printed inside the 35mm film boxes taught me a lot. A little later, I found my uncle's ancient Weston Master exposure meter that made accurate exposure much easier. This all happened quickly, over the course of about a year, because then my uncle helped me buy a Nikon F Photomic FTn with 50/1.4 lens and ... WOW! I had TTL metering and focusing! The quality of my photos made a giant leap with ALL the cameras. I understood much more then! The Nikon allowed me to see exposure and focus zone so much more clearly, understand the relationships and trade offs between them!

As the years have flowed by, I've owned and used so much equipment of all kinds, first film and then digital, that much of that early joy of learning is diminished. So much of today's equipment has a 300 page book to describe 25 different AF system optionss and 46 different exposure automation modes and conveniences ... It's just too much, my brain and eye don't want to deal with it. Trying to learn all of that and actually take advantage of it is more tedium than learning joy. So my equipment has slowly migrated back to mostly pretty simple to operate cameras ... simple if you consider manual focus and selecting an aperture and shutter speed (with or without a meter) a relatively trivial matter.

(And I find that with most modern cameras with built in meters, manual focus and aperture priority automation ... working the EV compensation by judging scenes with my eyes ... still works the best for me. And if I don't have a meter in the camera, I take a reading with any meter I might have available to get a baseline, and then guesstimate by eye.)

I just acquired another new camera, the new InstantFlex TL70 Plus from MiNT. I am delighted that the camera was easy to figure out without looking at the 20 page instruction book. I put two packs of film through it, using both manual and auto exposure modes. And discover again that it takes me more time to understand the in-camera meter and automatic exposure evaluation it can do than it does for me to guess, or use my incident light meter.

It is what it is. I love making photographs, and I like my cameras to be as simple as I can get them to be as long as that's complex enough to do the job in a wide variety of lighting and subject situations. I like seeing what everyone else does with their cameras too, regardless whether they are "frame the picture and push the button" photographers or "fuss and worry over every specific details" photographers. It's all good. :D

G


Decorated Rocks with Twigs - Santa Clara 2023
Leica M10 Monochrom + Summicron-M 50mm f/2, Green filter
ISO 1250 @ f/8 @ 1/180​
 
ptpdprinter said:
I like telling this story about this guy who was making a presentation at a camera club meeting I attended a while back. Naturally he told us all about what cameras and lenses he used as if that made the slightest bit of difference. Then he told us all about his background, where he was born, the first time he used his mother's Brownie, and all the rest, and his culminating remark was that since he had a BFA in photography he didn't need to use a meter. Then we had to look at his photos. I guess it goes without saying I thought he would have benefited from using a meter."
Click to expand...
Having received a BFA in photography in the seventies, I know for a fact that one could go through the four-year program without ever really encountering a discussion about exposure reciprocity, film latitude, or, heaven forbid, how to use a meter. We were "artists", dammit, not technicians, and we were there to express ourselves! Maybe the chap at your camera club went to the same school, which will remain nameless.
 
Transpariencies and digital … yes, for best results one needs to be precise. For anything other than casual photos I use a meter with those.

Instant photos with full exposure control such as with the old Goose (Polaroid 600SE)? Hah! Even with a meter my instant photos require about three experimental shots to get one that looks good.

On the advice of my longtime camera-repair friend, I now give my color photos an extra stop - essentially sunny 11. With color negative film the extra density doesn’t hurt and you won’t lose detail to the shadows. Unlike digital or transparency film, you won’t blow the highlights.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top