Between The Sprockets A photography blog

Try again

I finally finished off my first roll of Kodak Tmax 100.  Kodak black and white films have a huge following, but I've only ever used Ilford film and chemistry.  I grabbed this roll of Tmax 100 a while back and stuck it in my Konica Autoreflex T.  After 1 or 2 frames, I realised the light meter wasn't working properly, so I shelved it.  Many weeks later, I thought I'd try and find out why.  Turns out it was merely flat batteries.

This normally isn't a problem, except this camera is old enough that it requires mercury batteries that provide 1.33v each.  No common batteries provide this voltage.  The modern equivalent batteries provide 1.5v, which doesn't sound too bad, but with two of them you're looking at 3v instead of 2.66v.  For a light meter, that's a fairly big deal.

The closest you can get these days are hearing aid batteries that are 1.4v each.  That's a total of 2.8v instead of the 2.66 the camera expects.  There's ways to get around this, but I won't go into that here.  The easiest way is to just ignore it, film latitude will accept the small difference it will make.

The problem I started to notice after replacing the batteries this time, is that the light meter is basically super sensitive now.  It's constantly reading 2 to 4 (or even beyond) stops underexposure.  That's what has happened on this picture.  I trusted the camera on this picture, and it underexposed it severely.  Turns out it still looks good.  Instead of a shot of a pot plant on a table, I ended up with an abstract with some great lines.

Some site news: I've added another techniques page.  I've started a series on the very basics of cameras and camera use.  I hope some people find it useful, as there's a lot of information out there that assumes a basic knowledge of some of these technical terms and concepts.  I hope to provide that basic knowledge.  Drop me a line if you find it helpful or confusing.