[LargeFormat] RE: Victoria

[Les Newcomer]

I' guessing either its a bad battery/dirty contacts or the second curtain is
leaving the gate early.

Now my story is with my wife's Pentax MG. Yes that realy is a camera, but I'll
swear it has Lucas wiring.

She and I can have the same film set at the same asa as either my minolta ivF
or my Minolta x700 and her camera will give her at least a stop and a half
under what I read.  In my back yard in mid summer it's full shade-- a mature
walnut, locust and three maple trees assure us we won't get sunburned.  I call
this middle to deep shade. and yet  she can take well exposed pics with asa 100
film in the  f8 @1/125 area.

and yet her negs come out fine.

Les

"Wilkes, Don MSER:EX" wrote:

> Hi, everyone.  This started out as a reply to Brock off-list, but just
> before I sent it, I thought I'd see if the rest of you have any thoughts on
> my metering woes.
>
> Dear Brock,
>
> > Dave pretty much invited the list to join him on the Berg
> > Lake hike he's
> > planning for this year.  Perhaps some of us should call his
> > bluff and make
> > it a LF expedition?
>
> Two small problems: (a) my 4x5 is an old Calumet rail, and packed in its
> case it's quite large and heavy; (b) I absolutely loathe camping :}
>
> Apart from that, it's a great idea!
>
> Dragging the gear around has proved quite a stumbling block for me, and as a
> consequence I haven't been doing much shooting at all.  Pity.  I've been
> toying with converting an old folding golf cart into something that will
> carry the gear box (about 25"x12"x14", and at least 25lb), but I'm still
> scratching my head a bit over making it stable.  What I really should do, I
> suppose, is trade in the beast on a field camera, which I could fold and
> stuff into a backpack, and get out there and *shoot*, instead of whining.
> But, inertia reigns...
>
> In the meantime, my small format stuff is giving me fits. This actually does
> have bearing on my LF stuff, so bear with me for a minute... After a lot of
> frustrations with thin/questionable/inconsistent frames of B&W [FP4], I
> happened to shoot a roll of Kodachrome recently.  Now, I've been banging
> away with this trusty old Nikon F for almost 30 years, and I think I'm
> pretty decent at metering, so I was shocked --if possibly enlightened-- by
> what I got back. The first bunch of exposures were bang on, just as I'd
> envisioned.  Then, during the same session (yer basic fall scenics), things
> started coming out underexposed by about two stops. The middle of the roll
> was shot another day and was also grossly underexposed.  And the last couple
> of frames were back to being fine.  What the heck??  What changed? Lens,
> shuttter speed, phase-of-the-moon? Time to lay them all out and grope for
> patterns.  I can't imagine it being the lens, because if the leaves were
> sticking, it would cause over, not under-exposure, right?  My best clue is
> that during shooting one of the bad shots, I recall thinking that it seemed
> a slightly high shutter speed for K64.
>
> So, I think there's something seriously, and intermitently, going wrong with
> either the shutter, the meter, or [god forbid] both.  Argh.  There was a
> Nikon clinic at one of the photo shops about two years ago, and at that time
> it checked out just fine.
>
> Until I finally got a spot meter late last summer, I had to use the Nikon as
> my only meter for the 4x5, so this could explain a *LOT* about why my LF
> negs have been so frustratingly inconsistent, and frequently thin.  It's not
> (necessarily) that I'm an idiot at metering, but that some mechanical or
> electronic gremlin is rearing its head from time to time.
>
> I wonder if if could just be a dying battery?  Hmm.  A bit of grunge in the
> battery contacts?  Double-hmm... Obviously time for some probing and deep
> thought.  I really don't wanna drag the old F into the shop for an expensive
> bout of diagnostics and CLR if it's not necessary!  If you've got any
> thoughts about this, I'd love to hear them, Brock; I'm pretty stumped.
>
> In a weird way, there'll be some symmetry to the whole thing: instead of me
> dragging the F around as a light meter for the 4x5, I'll be dragging the
> Pentax Spot Meter around to double check the readings for the Nikon. Oh,
> won't that be fast and convenient <g>.
>
> Anyways, I'm rambling a bit, so I'd best get on with the day.
>
> Cheers,
> \dw
>
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