The camera does not make a better photographer. I have been working
with my C-5050 as a metering tool - the histogram function in
particular. What I discovered at a recent workshop is that spot
metering requires a known tonality to use accurately. For example, if
you spot meter the green leaves of the trees in the background, there
are greens, speckled highlights, dark shadows, and it may be difficult
to determine how much of each is influencing the spot meter. Using the
histogram display with the C-5050, the spot meter portion is displayed
in green on top of the overall histogram. If you get a sharp spike in
the green histogram display, you are spotting on a known tonality, if
it is spread out, you don't have a known tonality. Aiming the C-5050 at
some background trees, sure enough, the spot meter portion is not a
sharp spike. Aiming at the sky, it sharpens up to a spike.
So, rather than buying a spot meter for you MF system, get a C-5050 for
your light meter. It is like 5 million little spot meters. :-) And it
will record the scene and its choice of exposure info, and you can
store a short voice memo with each shot. What light meter will do that
for you? And if you decide 8x10 is good enough, it has lots of
control that will allow you (require you) to be a good photographer
as well.
Snapping vs. discipline is in the photographer. You are speculating on
what you would do with a digital. The instant review on a digital
camera display is almost useless. You still have to upload to a
computer to really evaluate your shot. You cannot judge exposure on the
LCD because you are usually not in consistent lighting and there is
just not enough contrast range to know. Nothing works better than good
photographer judgement of the scene, where to place the highlights,
what part of the scene needs proper exposure - where do you want your 5
stops of range to be? It is true that if you just snap away and let the
camera decide for you, you will just get what you get without learning
much or controlling your exposure. The same with matrix metering on the
wonderbricks. Do you really know what decision the camera has made for
you. The cool thing about the histogram display is you can get some
idea of what the camera is thinking. Too bad the matrix metering on the
wonderbricks don't have a histogram display - at least then you might
have some clue what it is deciding for you and whether you need to
compensate.
All camera systems have strengths and weaknesses you have to work with.
I can take perfect photos of boring stuff with any of them. Get a MF
and a C-5050 light meter.
Wayne
At 09:50 PM 9/1/2003, Albert wrote:
<snipped>
> MF will make me a better photographer (I think) as I'll get a
> spotmeter for it, breath, think, and actual take good photos; vs.
> digital, where I will snap snap snap, look at the picture I just
> taken, "What? Too dark? Add 1/3rd stop. Not saturated enough? +2 on
> the saturation...etc.." And I might become forever a "shoot, review,
> adjust" person... which doesn't make me a better photographer, but I
> will have all pretty shots and have deleted all the bad ones..
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