The best way to meter a sunset shot into the sun is with a spot meter. Pick an area in the sky that you want to be approximately the same value as 18% gray (such as a medium orange or red) and take your reading there.
Paul
On Feb 29, 2004, at 4:33 PM, Mark Cassino wrote:
At 10:16 PM 2/27/2004 -0800, Pat White wrote:
Welcome to the Brotherhood, Mark! You may find the non-TTL finder just
fine, since the TTL meter is full-area averaging, and not as accurate as a
hand-held meter, in my experience, at least.
thanks Pat.
I feel pretty comfortable using the hand held meter, except that I'll be using it as a reflective meter or as a spot meter in some instances, as opposed to simply using it as an incident meter. While I use my hand held meter a lot, it struck me that I'm not entirely certain how to use it in some some circumstances - like when shooting a sunset (into the sun.) But heck, I can always use a 35mm slr as my "meter" in those cases!
As for image quality, it's all there, but you may find all your errors are
more obvious as well. The shallower depth of field of the longer lenses
makes focusing more critical, for example. Well, if it was easy, everybody
would be doing it, right?
I have to say that focusing without the split screen leaves me feeling a bit uncertain - the focusing screen in my Spotmatic had the same configuration and I never felt too comfortable with it. But the built in DOF preview in every lens is a help!
- MCC -----
Mark Cassino Photography
Kalamazoo, MI
http://www.markcassino.com
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