Half stop? One full stop??

I have a Minox GT.

It seems like it's got constant underexposure problem.

Does anyone know where I can find examples of underexposure photos

or negs? I need to compare them with my photos and find out how

much my GT is out from correct exposure.

Get a grey card and go outside on a clear sunny day, meter off the card. You should be close to "Sunny f/16", if not, you can see how far you're off.

yep, meter off a grey card like the first poster mentioned. if your cameras built in reflected light meter continues to give you problems consider getting a seperate handheld spot one although you really shouldnt have to. and at least the good news is when working with your photos in post processing its much better to be slightly underexposed than overexposed

Thank you but what's "Sunny f/16" ???

and GT automatically selects the shutter speed according to the aperture choosen.

Go outside on a sunny day without clouds. Set the aperture to F16 (hence sunny-16). Point the camera at something middle grey. Look at the shutter speed indicated by the needle. This should approximately be 1 divided by the ISO value that you set on the bottom of the camera.

 

For instance, with the ISO dial set to 125 ISO, the needle should go to 1/125 when the aperture is at f16. With the ISO set to 400, the needle should be just under 1/500 under the same conditions (F16 aperture, sunny weather, middle grey subject).

Ginon,

 

I just clicked a bit around and from your posting history, I've seen that you've had earlier underexposure problems with the GT. You've shown some indoor pictures to illustrate that. What I've noticed, is that they have fairly extended depth of field, i.e., that they've been taken at small apertures like f16 or so. You didn't forget to open the aperture up to the f5.6-f2.8 range when you were inside, did you?

 

There's a slider in front of the meter cell that lets more or less light through, depending on the aperture. The amount of light that falls on the meter is independent of the ISO set. When indoors and at f16, not enough light registers in the meter cell, the meter hits the slow speed limit and you get underexposed pictures. Faster film doesn't help to make the meter more sensitive to too little light hitting the meter.

 

When indoors, open the aperture so that the shutter speed needle goes to 1/30 instead of staying in the low shutter speed range. It helps to have 400ISO film to get to 1/30 indoors of course, but you really need to have the aperture opened up to f5.6-f2.8 ..

Thank you very much Peter.

It's really an interesting thing that you pointed out about my photo examples. I had got the camera serviced and it's just got a little better than the what it was when I first bought it.

When I was shooting indoor, I sometimes thought about opening the aperture to its max so the camerea(Minox) would receive the maximum amount of light possible, but I haven't been really caring about it.

I guess that I wanted to believe that minox had a "real automatic"

light calculating ability.

But Yes! You could be right. Because I used to own a SLR camera and I used to open the lens wide open with slow shutter speeds for indoor photos!

 

I'll try what you sad about the aperture and the gray card test with my Minox. I remember that sometimes I get good indoor results.

 

But just a curiosity,...How do Lomo LC-A manage to take good pictures indoor?

The 35GL I use seems to have the meter cell pointed upward. Outside in the the bright sunlight, when checking against a Gossen Luna-Pro the readings are off. I can compensate for this difference by using the lens cover as a sunshade (turning the camera upside down). Inside metering seems to be ok. I was going to try some slide film but sticking with negative film till I get more familiar with the metering.

 

When I first used the camera the metering was 6 stops off. I attributed that to old age or a problem with the ASA switch. I read somewhere that the old switches needed to be "wiped"/cleaned for good contact. I rotated the ASA dial many times back and forth and soon the settings matched/compared with the Luna-Pro. Great little camera now. Regards.