Steve, I get the feeling that you are the only one that actually understands what I'm saying.
On Jan 29, 2012, at 11:20 AM, steve harley wrote: > on 2012-01-29 05:29 Paul Stenquist wrote >> >> On Jan 29, 2012, at 12:16 AM, steve harley wrote: >> >>> on 2012-01-28 21:57 Paul Stenquist wrote >>>> That's basically what today's best meters do. But they still can't gauge >>>> reflectivity and color as well as the human eye can. The meter makes a >>>> call and a good photographer makes the necessary adjustment. Most of the >>>> time the meter will come close enough for all practical purposes. for >>>> those times when it can't the photographer has to lend a hand. It wouldn't >>>> be much fun if machines did all the work. >>> >>> i submit that most of us don't have "today's best meters" >> >> The K-5 comes somewhat close, but no it's not at the top of the heap. But >> it's more than good enough when photographers use their brain as well as >> their meters. > > that may be, but i suspect that 1) most of us don't have K-5s, and 2) even > much worse metering systems are "good enough" — we can learn to compensate > for anything; some of us whose professions are to designs ways to exploit > technology, however, will instinctively imagine extending tools as far as is > possible and efficient This is exactly what I'm doing. My career is to write embedded systems software. Designing and writing the software for setting the exposure of a camera would be a job that my 30 years of professional experience is almost ideally suited for. I recognize the limitations of the automatic systems, know to check the exposure against the aids (histogram and blinkies). What is frustrating is that those tools could give me exactly what I need, but they don't. They tell me if the JPEG, which I don't use, would be properly exposed, I want to know what is happening on the sensor. Rather than red blinkies for over exposed and blue for underexposed portions of the jpeg, which will change if you change the color balance, how about red blinkies if you are clipping the data on the sensor, and yellow blinkies if you are close enough to the limit of resolution that you'll get posterization (or whatever you call it when you get those annoying lines in the sky). > > so as i gravitate toward a more manual process, i imagine the kind of tool i > want to work with; the histogram (preferably representing RAW exposure, and > live) simply offers a more direct means to an end; a camera's meter just > gives one data point; we have to guess how it has evaluated the scene to get > the what histogram gives us directly (or spot meter several points); i think > the histogram is a better tool for using our brain in conjunction with our > meters, and is better suited to intelligent but spontaneous photography Exactly. There are times when metering off the sensor would slow things down too much, use too much power, generate too much heat etc. But there are also times when it is the perfect tool. > > i could even appreciate an interface that applies a little more calculus to > image data to indicate where in the image, and at what levels, the angle of > the histogram's curve is steepest and shallowest, which is part of what i > sort out (less effectively) with my brain now I also wish that they'd tell me exactly what each of these modes does, rather than when I'm supposed to use them, and let me guess what the camera is doing. I understand that most people are happy with a magic box that does their thinking for them, so that they don't have to think about anything but composition, but at least tell those of us that want to know so that we can decide when to let the camera think for us, and when we should think for ourselves. Instead, I'm left with having to always check the histogram and blinkies, which *almost* tell me what I need to know. It's interesting how many people seem to despise the viewfinder that doesn't show the whole image, but don't seem to mind the histogram that doesn't show all of the information. I also agree with Godfrey on ease of manual use. Part of the issue with digital exposure is that there is so much more information potentially available that a simple match needle would through away too much useful information. Another issue is that digital isn't as tolerant of missed exposures as film, though at ISO 100 the K-5 may be far more tolerant of underexposure than most film. When I got my K-5 I thought that I would not need to get a katzeye screen for it. The stock screen seems a lot better than previous cameras, and the autofocus is a lot better. However, I still find myself missing focus in so many cases where if I had a good manual focus screen, it would be trivial to nail focus perfectly. Again, it's a case of optimizing the system for the automatic functions, that don't always work as well as manual. > > -- > PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List > [email protected] > http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net > to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow > the directions. -- Larry Colen [email protected] sent from i4est -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
