He claimed he just guesses exposure by feel and gets perfect negatives every time, but I've been relying on my spot meter for years and now im wondering if I'm overcomplicating things for street shooting - anyone else trust their gut over a meter?
Bought a Mamiya 645 off Craigslist for $250, thought I got a steal until every roll had light leaks. Took me like 2 hours and $8 in foam from Amazon to fix them myself, anyone else ever roll the dice on a cheap body and regret it?
I've been shooting with the same old Pentax K1000 for about 6 years now. Last week I finally hit the 500 roll mark based on my log book. It's not a crazy number but for one camera it felt like a milestone. That's 18,000 frames of film through that metal box. I realized I've shot everything from my dog's first walk to a friend's wedding on that same body. The shutter count must be insane but it just keeps going. It made me think about how we don't really track use on analog gear like people do with digital shutters. Has anyone else kept a running count on a specific camera body?
I grabbed a beat up Yashica Mat 124G from a church rummage sale last spring for $12, thought it was a paperweight because the shutter was stuck. After three months of gentle cleaning and some YouTube tutorials, I got it working and shot my first roll of Portra 400 last weekend - the results were honestly better than my digital stuff. Any of you guys ever resurrected a camera everyone else wrote off?
For like 4 years I was dead set against using the sunny 16 rule for my meterless cameras. I had this buddy Mike from the local camera club who kept telling me to just trust it, especially on bright days. I figured why bother when I could just guess and bracket my shots. But last month I took my old Pentax spotmatic to a street fair in Austin and forgot my handheld meter at home. I just said fine, I'll try it, and shot a whole roll of Portra 400 using f/16 at 1/500 on that sunny afternoon. Every single frame came back perfectly exposed, not even close to being under or over. Now I feel like an idiot for wasting all that film and money on bracketing for years. Has anyone else had a similar experience where you avoided some basic technique and then kicked yourself after finally trying it?