In a recent spare moment, I looked through photos I’ve taken with my Pentax SLRs, especially my Pentax ME, for photos to include in the book I still plan to self-publish this year.
Spare moments have been rare this summer. My wedding, a celebration for Margaret’s parents’ 60th anniversary, and planning for our honeymoon in Ireland have consumed us. I’ve also made several trips to the doctor to try to figure out why I’ve not felt well off and on all year. I haven’t had much energy left to figure out the book. But I still want to publish it, and plan to produce it after we return from our trip.
As I sifted through my back catalog, I couldn’t help but look at photos from many of the other cameras I’ve tried. I looked especially at cameras that had no onboard light meter. I vastly prefer to meter in the camera, especially when I can set aperture and let the camera choose shutter speed.
But I’ve gotten some mighty satisfying work from my meterless cameras. About half the time, I shoot Sunny 16: set the shutter speed to the closest value to the inverse of the film’s ISO (e.g., 1/125 sec. for ISO 100 film), and set the aperture to f/16 in bright sun, f/11 in partial clouds, f/8 in overcast, and so on. The rest of the time I’ve either used my GE PR-1 meter, a meter app on my iPhone, or even a metered camera.
Here are some of the photos that made me happy when I came upon them.
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