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Old 9th July 2020, 09:35 PM
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skellum skellum is offline
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Join Date: Dec 2011
Location: Isle of Lewis
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Good evening Nat.
Youre looking at two completely different ways of working.
5x4 makes use of indiviual sheets of film. Each sheet can be exposed at a particular EI and given a specific development to expand or contract the tonal range. The spotmeter allows you to first measure the range of tones by picking out the lightest and darkest tones. Once you've decided if the scene needs N, N+ or N- you have the EI you're going to use for that scene. Then, spotmeter the most important tone in the scene and decide how you'd like to render it in the print.
In the hands of a patient, careful worker the system is capable of delivering superb, nuanced black and white images.
It also gives you plenty of ways to mess up!

When shooting 35mm you can have 36 frames shot under a huge range of conditions and simply cannot vary the develoment for diffferent frames on that single roll. On any given roll there will be frames for which your standard development time is perfct. Others perhaps would benefit from a little more, or less, but all will be adequate. I mostly use my Minoltas on automatic exposure, and they're very good.

What I finally realised was that when I used my Mamiyas with an incident meter Igot more consistently pleasing results than I was managing from spotmetered 5x4. With the spot meter I just wasn't good enough at selecting the ideal part of the scene to read from. The incident meter evaluates the strength of the light falling on the subject, eliminatin the need to select a 'key' tone and make a decision on which tone it needs to be in the print.

I would still carry the spot meter if I went out shooting tomorrow, but for me it is a tool with very specific uses. If I could only keep one meter, it would be the incident one.
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