On Wed, 5 Nov 2003, frank theriault wrote: > Everytime I walk out of the house with a camera around my neck, I play a > little game. I "guess the exposure", set the camera accordingly, and then > see how it meters. I'm rarely off by more than a stop; usually I'm withing > 1/2 stop.
I did exactly the same thing for several years in college, plus still doing it sometimes at work. I can eyeball a gym to within half a stop because I'm in gyms three nights a week for several months. > And, I'm truly not saying that to brag; quite the contrary. I'm saying that > if I can do it, likely anyone with a teeny bit of experience can. It ain't > tough. And, it teaches you a thing or two about exposure and your camera. > I know, we're not talking tough, low light exposure conditions here, but > still, it's a good thing to know, like if the batteries go dead, and like > me, you use a mechanical camera. It is also nice to develop a relatively accurate "eye-meter" so that you know when your fancy-dancy built-in meter is lying to you, either because it is not working right or because it is mishandling tricky light. This is the reason I've never used any of those multi-area "intelligent" metering patterns. I don't know how they are processing what they see so I don't know what to think of the meter reading. Last I looked the better multi-area meters were supported by a database of 50,000 exposure patterns. At 1000 shots a week for 15 years I've been in a lot more situations than that! DJE
