Help! Suspected meter problems

[technicolour]

Hello there all,

I recently bought a new camera and today I went out to get a roll of film to run through it at the weekend. I took the camera outside today because I thought I'd check that the meter was behaving correctly by comparing it with my SLR internal meter.

Its a really really bright sunny day and I tok it into my garden,set the lens to its widest angle and half depressed the shutter to get a reading, boom! straight up to F22 and teetering close to the red mark! I moved the camera all around but whatever I point it at seems to be uncomfortably close to overexposure.

Now, I thought about this carefully. The camera has a 200 degree shutter which roughly equates to a 1/30 second shutter speed, I dialled this into my SLR and took a reading and that said about F16 - F22 respectively in the shadows and in the lightest parts of my garden. Therefore a small aperture is not unusual, but its still worriyng me how the overexposure warning light is coming on when I actually run the camera. What ASA setting does the camera set itself too without film in the camera? As this will effect the reading from the meter and I could use my SLR to accuratley mimick my Super8 cam meter if I knew.

I suppose my point is really, should 25 ASA film be using an aperture of F22 even in really bright conditions? Is this normal?

[Matt Pacini]

I think there are too many variables for us to be able to give an accurate opinion.

1. I'm not sure what ASA your camera defaults to when no film is in it, so first off, I'd put in a roll or whatever you're going to be shooting on, just to eliminate this as a potential problem.

2. I don't think the 200 degree does equate to a 30 shutter speed. I could be wrong, but I don't think it does.

3. Almost all Super 8 cameras use a beam splitter for the viewfinder, so that's always a tough one for comparing to an external meter, which of course, isn't accounting for the 1/2 stop or so of light being stolen for the beam splitter.

4. If the 85 filter is in place, that's another 3/4-1 stop difference.

5. Are you pointing it at an 18% gray card?
If you want to know if f8 is really f8, you might try this.

6. Is your still camera set to the same ASA as your Super 8 camera?

So, you really need to nail all these things down before you can tell if it's behaving properly.

I have a Canon Scoopic M, and I was sad that my auto-meter doesn't work properly. It's WAYYYYYY off from my external, after accounting for all the stuff I just referred to.
Anybody know where I can get a new Scoopic meter?


Matt Pacini

[technicolour]

Sorry to be so vauge, it seems a really dumb question now I read my post again.

I tried my still camera out on 25, 40, 100 and 160 ASA while taking readings and at 1/30th of second it registered close to F22 and above in the brightest parts of the garden, for the 25 and 40 ASA settings is sort of hung around the F16 + area. So maybe this is normal?

As you say 1/30th may very well not be the shutter speed of the camera. I read that you divide the shutter angle by 360 and then divide it by the film speed. [ (200/360) / 18 ]

<font color="#a62a2a" size="1">[ April 16, 2003 01:59 PM: Message edited by: technicolour ]</font>

<font color="#a62a2a" size="1">[ April 16, 2003 02:00 PM: Message edited by: technicolour ]</font>