John, actually, but no offense, Tom's another family name
I use a very old Minolta Flash Meter III and I only took the flash
sync reading as I thought the room was so small and confined, the
ambient light would not matter as the room would be completely
light up by the studio flash even at the lowest setting. I use to
do this with Slide and Mamiya 645 as well as Dynax 9 and it seems
to work fined, but I guess the Agfa RSXII has more tolerance than I
thought. I will try to take readings from the ambient light next
try.
Nothing wrong with a 'meter III, really nice kit. I think even Minolta fail to get the ergonomics right when they integrate too many functions. The VI is great, but it's too modal - luminance ranging is excellent, so is automatic flash/ambient and not having to carrymy Spot F, but one mistake and . .. . I looked at the Sekonic L-588R in the shop recently and think it's a more logical design.
I love RSXII - great film, especially at 50ASA and the '200 does push, but not as nicely as Provia 400F by my aesthetics. Wouldn't use Provia for product shots though.
The thing i think you're up against is the "hard shoulder" of digital sensors. Film looses response more slowly as it is over / under. It's been mooted that KM interpret sensor data for color rather than DR. Last year on a Yahoo! group I postulated that KM would aim for film like response curves, a soft shoulder. MY impression is that they tried, but have not been entirely successful. If yoou think of the market for the D7, you might agree with me that your work is more demanding than that for whichthe D7 is positioned. But I don't expect any definitive answer from Langenhagen. A neighbor of mine has been pestering Bernard Petticue of Minolta Silver Halide UK for more and more info (yes, the Halide department is the correct one for the D7 iin the UK at least) and notwithstanding their very real gentlemanly openness, nothing forthcoming
With film, you can always look at the data sheet for the curves. Why can't we have the same data for CCDs? My potted answer is that too much "hard data" is in the transforms the camera performs, and there would be a risk, where CCDs / CMOS are commodity items, of a competitor reverse engineering a "D7" mode, just like the Fuji cameras emulate approximations of film curves as a user settable feature (which is where i hope the industry will lean from now on).
But my point is - without knowing those curves, how can one reliable control one's exposure - there's no adequate reference point. One trades this against flexibility in RAW processing, but that means that few short of DSP experts can see sufficiently through the arcana to develop techniques divergent from what I see as a "dedicated purpose" positioning of current DSLRs in the imaging chain. All of which is very good for sales, but leaves us analog guys struggling to parlay our old practises to the new paradigm.
I'll give an example of the paradigm problem - often, and even for portraiture, i like to push Portra 400NC +1, and in my processing chain I get a really different cyan shift without loosing skin tones. That's a function of the response curves of Portra. Now, how can i do the same with a digital camera? My current answer is I can't else I risk clipping even using 16bpp in Eclipse or PS CS (Eclipse blows CS away for 16bpp work, as it has always been fully 16bpp).
I do get the feeling that the new "science" is being explored by users now rather than the technicians in Kodak / Fuji / Agfa labs - we don't get useful data from which to refine our intent, we get a tool instead where we can "afford" to experiment. Unless on a big demanding shoot, that is.
Now, I am not complaining. But sometimes I suspect my argument is not very far from the reasons KM were so "late" to market. I even speculate that by "hanging us out to dry" they ensured that they'd get substantial detailed feedback in quantity, and by delaying, most KM professional owners would have experienced other systems and have detailed comparisons to offer. If so, very clever, if frustrating
Anyway, point to remember is that I think you are way better off using your Flash Meter III than inbuilt meters, not just because it is the correct technique in your shoot environment, but because DSLR meters are still the same (unless you can correct this) as those from their halide eating brethren. (I wonder how Leica will deal with this in their sometime coming back for the R8/9 . . it would be one reason i might think to delay that product, though i've no real intelligent comment further)
Good suggestions, I will give it a try. Thanks
Cheers, and good shooting!
I think a Japanese company has just released a Nikon-F mount to
Sigma mount where only Manual focus is available. I think AIS
mount and F mount should be the same when in Manual focus and
Wow! That was really useful, thank you! Thanks also for not embarassing me that the Sigma takes Sigma mount. I was half thinking of the Kodak 14, which I used recently.
This really suggests the Sigma is a very useful tool. Pity that I bought recently an Angenieux zoom in Minolta A mount, as AIS / F mounts much easier to come by. Amazing lens the Angenieux incidentally.
Final thought - do you think you could post a link to a RAW of one of your icecrea shots, so I could have a look at it in P'shop with the plugin converter? I'd really like to look at the base histograms to see what you're dealing with, and see if i can get creative with tone masking to bring back some extra highlights. My workflow is very calibrated. Currently using an Eizo CG21 which blows away my ageing Barco for fidelity.
Until the next time! Hope things are going well. And thanks so much again again for the adapter link.
bye for now,
-- JK
