I often use a Canon compact point & shoot as a light meter when shooting with manual film cameras.
Sometimes I even manage to get a decent photo with the compact.
Here I was using a cheap Canon compact point & shoot camera as a light meter while shooting around Sydney Harbour with my medium format Mamiya 645 SLR.
This old Mamiya 645 SLR is a big, heavy camera. It's fully manual, with no light meter. (I do have a power winder for it, but it takes a dozen AA batteries, and adds way too much size & weight to take out into the field).
The tripod is an old aluminium Manforotto tripod - it's big, heavy, versatile and solid as a rock. This things holds any camera as steady as you could hope for.
The lenses for this camera are all really sharp, but all primes lenses (meaning they're not zoom lenses - they're fixed at one focal length each. If you want a wide angle shot, you have to put a wide angle lens on, if it's a portrait you have to put a longer lens on.
So if you want some versatility you end up carrying the camera body, plus half a dozen lenses, which are also really heavy, plus a tripod, because unless you're shooting in bright sunlight with fast film, it's too heavy to hand hold even a reasonable shutter speeds - anything below 1/125th sec can get shaky.
Throw in a box or two of film, some filters, cable release, pen & paper, tripod etc etc ....
It's a lot of gear to drag around!
Compact camera as a light meter
This is a great technique. You have to set the ISO on the digital camera to the same as the film you're using, then take a shot with the digital camera, check the exposure on the screen, adjust shutter speed/aperture until you get the result you looking for, the transfer those settings to your manual camera.
Of course, some films behave differently under different lighting conditions, but it's all about getting to know your tools and leveraging the quirks of one film or lens to your advantage.
Levels & curves were tweaked in PhotoShop
#mirra ~ #literature
Hey there, loved this article !! Great way of bringing back the quality of true film to our eyes !! I loved the film and the things it would do for the light !! You i think cannot compare these new video captor cameras with the old and trusty real film camera images !! I used to have a beautiful Voightlander view camera i bought it in Paris, it had an amazing lens and beautiful leather folding " souffle " ! I took some great pictures with that thing, but the problem was of course the light measurement !! This technique would have been immensely useful back then, i used to measure the light with a strange little contraption which you would look through to see how many little yellow circles were visible, this would believe it or not give you a pretty accurate aperture setting !! both the light reader and camera were built in 1910 , to give you an idea of my bazaar !! was fun, digital is a lot less fun, mainly why i dont bother too much now with this !!
Sounds like a nice camera. I always wanted a large format view camera, but they're just so big, and good lenses are still quite expensive, even old ones. At least if you buy second hand you should be able to get your money back when you sell/trade them
yeah sure they are always expensive !! because they have value and work well !! I truly commend you on continuing with this older more purist if i may say photography !! Id love to see some of you photos from the Mamiya, is a beautiful thing !!! Also be very interesting to see a direct comparison between the images made with your numerical camera and this beast ,of the same subject and same light conditions, to see the true proof we need to see the pudding, or something like that !!! lol