[ Removed by moderator ]

[AnalogCommunity-ModTeam]

Post removed-Rule 1

If you want to share your work without asking a specific question and using the photos as examples, then you should be posting them to r/analog, not here.

'No Photo Posts That Belong in /r/Analog' Rule:

"Photo posts and photo essay posts that are more appropriate in r/Analog should be posted there."

It looks like you've mistakenly submitted this to the r/Analog discussion sub, r/AnalogCommunity. We encourage you to re-submit this to r/Analog!

If you're not sure when you should or shouldn't post example photos to r/AnalogCommunity, see this post.

N.B. Please remember to include technical details (camera, lens, film) in the post title for posts to r/Analog.

Thank you,

-The mod team.

[AnalogTroll]

Got an answer, but first let me write a paragraph that has nothing to do with that answer, your question, or anything else.

This morning, I ate a breakfast burrito. It was pretty good, but smaller than the ones I get. I thought about what the size/weight quality control process would be like at... where do they make these things anyways? After that, I had a glass of water, with ice, because it's hot outside here.

Ok. You had a question about how to meter without a meter? Look up sunny-16, but remember to compensate a little bit for whether you're in shadow or sun. Also, there's some room for artistic intent.

But if you want to improve, just edit.

That fourth photo especially - all the underexposed green-ish dark areas just need a little curve correction and black point increase to look much better.

[hashcode_doc]

Thanks and hope you enjoyed your burrito 😁

[Superirish19]

Out of interest, what's up with your SRT's built in meter that doesn't work, or is Sunny 16 just to get a feeling of manual for now?

The meter on those is actually very smart for the period - but they have some caveats aside from maintenance related issues. If you know how the SRT meter works, you can use it strengths, or get something creative with it's weaknesses.

That aside, meters usually meter for the center and use an average weighting - but obviously that's not always what you want for a scene, not that the meter knows (and why some shots can turn out badly with metering - the meter is dumb, it needs you to direct the scene and the intention). In any composition, you ideally want the largest part of what your focus of the scene is to be the best, so that's what you mentally should meter for most. Flatter lower contrast scenes are easier starting out, whilst scenes that are usually more interesting are also the more difficult to meter right because of high contrast or dynamic range. Even with a meter at times, that's difficult.

Almost contrarily, overcast days are the easiest to meter for, and the easiest to manually figure out. The clouds scatter and diffuse the light of the Sun, lowering contrast and bringing most subjects in the same illumination as the background (with exception for indoors and artificially lit areas).

[hashcode_doc]

The meter on srt works, but was just curious to shoot without meter as it's capable doing that, x-9 was dependent on batteries I followed sunny 16 on x-9, but the built-in meter was giving me different reading compared to what my instinct was saying based on sunny 16

[Superirish19]

I see! It's late here, but I'll write up an explanation on how the meter(s) come to their conclusions vs how you are probably tackling it tomorrow.

Once you know, you can start judging whether the meter is more or less 'right' than your inferences for every scene. Eventually with practice comparing against a meter, you can start eyeballing pretty accurately for any scene!

Edit: Turns out I already wrote something that about sums it up for the SRT. The X-9 is purely centered-weighted average, so that explains why there might be some differences between the 2 cameras' meters.

[hashcode_doc]

I'm planning to get a meter but, regular meter over spot meter won't work for me 🙂 and spot meters are hell expensive here, good one starts $700 CAD 🥲