Hi, > And, to repeat, by the time one bought a ttl metering SLR, they probably > knew what they were doing anyway.
But did they know what the meter was doing? For most of his life my father used an Agfa Silette which he'd bought used in the mid-1950s. All the photos he took of us growing up, and the snaps he took in the 20+ countries he visited in the next 30 years or so, he took with that camera. In general the exposures were fine because he'd learnt by rote the settings for different conditions they print inside the film boxes. Some time in the late 80s or early 90s he let a camera salesman convince him to buy a fully automatic Canon SLR (T80? T90?). From then on he never really got a well exposed photo under anything but the most obvious circumstances. The reason is, I think, that he never understood the 18% business with the light meter. He expected it to understand the situation in the same way that he did, and to compensate accordingly, rather than just make a stupid averaging attempt. I think there's nothing wrong with automation per se, but I think it's oversold. -- Cheers, Bob
