Hi, the meter thinks that the scene it is looking at is 18% grey and bases the exposure time on that assumption. If you're photographing a starlit field then the scene is unlikely to be 18% grey. It is the 'black cat in a coal hole' situation. In an extreme situation such as the one you describe you can't hope for Automatic to work properly but will need to use the exposure tables, guesswork, experience or an incident meter.
When the scene contains street lamps, car lights and so on the extreme contrast is likely to average out close to 18%. In addition, the LX meter is constantly evaluating the exposure and can cope with sudden changes, such as a car light moving through the scene. --- Bob Monday, January 13, 2003, 8:54:23 PM, you wrote: > Hello, > I wanted to experiment with the low light capabilities of my recently > acquired LX, so last week I went out on a clear night and tried to > take photographs. The results were a little disappointing, and I'm > hoping that somebody will be able to explain why. > I used the LX in 'automatic' mode with MLU, an SMC-M 28/2.8, tripod and > cable release, and XP2 Super rated at 200 ISO. > When the scenes contained some artificial light, such as car headlamps, > streetlights, etc., the LX got the exposures just about right. e.g. > 10 sec at f/8. I bracketed +/- 1 and 2 stops, and normally found that > the +1 or +2 images gave negatives that scanned fairly well. > When I tried some much darker scenes, the results were less good. I > tried pointing the camera into a starlit field, fairly dark, but > trees, fences, etc., were quite easily visible to the eye. The LX chose > exposures of roughly 30 sec at f/5.6. Rather short, I think, compared > to some of the suggested exposure tables that I've seen, and sure enough, > the negatives are so badly underexposed as to be useless. > I realise that it might be better to shoot at dusk rather than in near > complete darkness. One of my problems was that it was almost impossible > to compose shots in the dark, so even the photos that were properly > exposed weren't very good. :-) > At the moment though, I'm curious about why the exposure seemed to be so > wrong with the starlit landscapes. The exposures that the LX was choosing > seemed to suggest that it was within the metering range described in the > user manual, yet the negatives are almost completely transparent. Is it > unrealistic to expect these sorts of shots to work in 'automatic'? I was > hoping that the LX's super-meter would take some of guesswork out of shots > like this. > Thanks for any suggestions and advice, > Steve.
