P67II meter accuracy

I will be shooting a wedding with my P67II soon. I will need to depend

on 67II's AE prism for exposure. The film I will use is Kodak VC 160.

Do have some 400 VC as spare. Now I am worrying about the accuracy of

my P67II's AE prism.

 

Last week I did a test roll of the 160 VC. The scenes I shot all had

some sky as the background. So I did opened up 1 - 2 stops thinking

it's better to be over but not under expose. The film did come out

over exposed. In fact every frame was pretty much over exposed.

Not badly over exposed though but could have been better if exposed

1 stop lower.

 

I have a Gossen Luna Pro analog meter. I also have a Sekonic analog

light meter. Somehow these two meters are all inconsistent with

my P67II. Both the meters suggested I needed to reduce exposure 2 -3

stops.

 

However, my 67II is consistent with the meter of my Contax 35mm

camera. In fact it is consistent with two of my Contax cameras.

And I just shot a 35mm roll with one of them and the film came out

with right density.

 

Should I trust my 67II's AE prism? Based on the test roll it seems I

should. But it's strange why it is inconsistent with two fairly

good hand held meters? I tend to want to trust my 67II. But I have

memories with under exposed Velvia/Provia on 67II many times so far.

 

Do you recommend using 67II's spot, center weighted or vectored

metering for shooting weddings? I don't think I will use spot

metering. Which one do you recommend? This is the first time I use

a P67 system for wedding. Assuming there is nothing wrong with

my AE prism can I trust it? Or is there any trick I should apply?

Thank you all for comments.

 

Dave

Greetings

I have read about meter inacuracy with 67II,s,but for me the proof has been in the pudding and i have found the meter on mine to be spot on at least in 6segment mode with "tranny" material, even with a linear pol filter on board which amazed me .

Jim

My AE prism meters very accurately. Your own tests seem to confirm that

yours was accurate - you opened up a stop or two and the film came back

overexposed. Seems like you can trust it, especially since you'll be using

negative film.

Of course remember readings will vary whether you're dialed in on Spot, Matrix, and Center weight on the meter prism. good luck

Dave with the exposure lattitude of colour negative film, over exposing the film

isn't really necessary. I took pictures at a friends wedding last year using

Kodak film in my Pentax 67II and everything came out perfectly. I couldn't see

much if any difference between those pictures taken on 160 film as compared

to 400.

 

Overall my own P67II has proved to be fairly reliable at determining accurate

exposures and I virtually only use it with Fuji Velvia plus various filters such as

polarisers, etc. But, it can tend to over-expose in dim light a bit and there are

occasions when it will pay you to take separate meter readings from the

camera to determine how you want the final image to look. However for a

wedding, I think that you are pretty safe to leave things to the meter and try to

think more about composition and coming up with creative ideas for your

images.

Many thanks to the replies with plenty of confidence in 67II AE prism.

I will still bring my Gossen handheld meter just for double checking

in case the prism goes wild for any reason. I will just need to

remind myself that the handheld meter may be 1-2 stops too fast.

I'll use center weight and matrix metering of the prism mostly.

If the background is too bright I will open up 1 stop. If it is

dark I will do no adjustment to avoid under exposing anything. Hawaii

is great for photography. This should be a good filed test for my

67II. I have not used it for anyhting serious so far.

 

I will be on my way tomorrow. Thanks for all the replies.

I recognized something was out with my 67II the first weekend I used it. The meter did not jive with the sunny 16 rule and my two Nikons.

 

I leave exposure compensation on -2/3 to -1 all the time, and transparencies turn out just fine.

Dave

 

I have experienced exactly the same issue when using my P67II to photograph blue bonnets in Texas. The Hand Held Sekonic light meter readings and the P67II did not match. In addition, the P67II also did not match two Nikons set up side by side and viewing the same scene, both landscape and macro.

 

So I decided to trust the P67II meter since Pentax evidently put alot of research and development into that P67II meter. I just set the P67II mode buttons to 'green', and shot away. My Fuji Velvia, Provia, and all print film has always come out just fine, from landscapes to macro. This is where the debate about incident vs. reflected light meters comes from.

Just returned from my trip. On shooting my last roll of ISO 160 film

I noticed that at one scene my P67II was telling me to shoot at 1/1000th

of a second at f5.6. The scene was in a typical hotel garden in the

moring around 10:00am. The background was full of plants although with

some patches of sky. I took the shot at 1/1000th but also took another

at 1/250th. When I have the roll processed I will know

if my P67II metering was funny or not.

 

Dave

Processed 8 rolls of films so far. All, including NPS and Konica VX-100

except VC-160, looked nomal in density. Scanned a few frames of VX-100

results in beautiful images. So the 67II metering was accurate.

But the VC-160 was a little light in density. Scans are still OK but

some frames are a little under exposed. Will process more rolls to

make a conclusion. See one of the scans of VX-100.<div></div>