Film photography · Medium Format · Photography

It’s seen its share of passers by

fishyfisharcade

Keeping to the theme of gates that I’ve loosely adhered to over the past few days, here’s another one that I made (the photo, not the gate!) during a walk I took on Spring Bank Holiday. It was the first photo I took during the walk and marked the place where the footpath left a field and rose up the embankment of a disused railway line. I’d have made the photo even had the gate been pristine, but I was especially taken by its somewhat tired and well-used appearance.

Normally, when metering for photos with meter-less cameras (the Yashica Mat does have a meter, but I’ve never used it) I take an incident reading. As long as I’m stood in similar light to my subject then it tends to work out well. Today’s photograph is one of the relatively few I’ve made using spot metering. The main reason for this is that I don’t have a proper spot meter. The Sekonic L-208 that I use is fairly basic but accurate in most regards, but the spot meter has an somewhat wide angle of 40° IIRC and no means to aim it precisely unless the subject is right in front of you.

This photo was an occasion where I thought spot metering would give a better overall exposure. The gate and foreground was in full daylight, but the footpath up the embankment was in much deeper shade, so I decided to take a spot meter reading for both and then average it to get an exposure that would give me some details in the shadows without blowing out the brighter parts of the scene. Maybe not Ansel Adams levels of technique, but I think it worked well enough in this case.

Held together with twine

Yashica Mat 124G & Ilford Pan-F Plus. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 8 mins @ 20°.

Taken on 25 May 2020

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Published by fishyfisharcade

17 thoughts on “It’s seen its share of passers by”

  3. It worked out really well. I have a Yashica Mat D, no meter but the Yashinon 80 lens. Nice camera and so pleasantly easy to use. I think you got the perfect blend of sharp and blurred along with good contrast and detail.

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    1. Thanks N. Mine has a meter but I’ve never used it – I heard it’s not the most accurate, although perhaps I ought to give it the benefit of the doubt sometime. It has some slight corrosion of the battery contacts too, which is another reason I’ve not utilsed it.

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      1. There are times when the automatic exposure is worth it, but truthfully, I really like using my guestimates as well as a light meter to verify if I am guestimating well. I’m usually fairly good!

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  5. Very nice image. Out of curiosity, what was your exposure for this shot? Based on your description of the scene, the way it’s rendered here, and averaging two spot readings at the extremes as you did, I’m going to take a guess and say it was probably somewhere around EV 13? So, maybe f/5.6 at 1/125th? Was this shot handheld?

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    1. Thanks P. I don’t tend to record my settings when taking film shots (I really should, I know!). At a guess it would have been f/4 or f/5.6, but I’m not sure of the shutter speed – that could well have been longer as I was using a tripod and cable release, so camera shake wasn’t a concern.

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      1. I understand. I’m actually rather bad about consistently recording exposure settings myself. But I thought you might happen to remember, and if so I was curious. I always find it interesting how different “full daylight” can be in various parts of the world.

        Shooting Pan F, longer exposures can quickly become a necessity, even during sunny days if subjects are in shade. I figured you might have been using a tripod. Shutter speeds much slower than 1/125th on TLR’s can become a bit of a challenge handheld.

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      3. It’s the same for me. I’ve considered buying a little personal voice recorder, thinking it would be easier for me to bring along with me. But if I’m too lazy to bring a pencil and small notebook, something tells me I’d always end up leaving the voice recorder behind also. Ha! 🙂

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