One shutterspeed, one aperture?

[itf]

I was wandering around the streets today and started wondering why I constantly keep my hand on the shutter dial, switching it back and forth whenever the lighting changes. I've used a fixed shutter and aperture p&s and sometimes the photos are interesting because they weren't exposed 'correctly'. Sometimes my SLR and 28/16 hasn't managed with the previous night's 3200.

It can highlight the lighting of the scene; being on the water in Australia in summer, or a dark interior with a lone beam of light. Often I change my exposure deliberately to emphasize these things, but why not just leave the camera set so that it shows one scene to the next (as on the roll of film) as a direct comparison

So I made my bessa R and 25/4 into a disposable with a nice lens; set my shutter to 250 and aperture to 8 (with ISO 400, B&W negative). This will give me 3 stops over exposure in broad sun, correct exposure in open shade, and 1 or so stops under in heavier shade. I think this is roughly what a disposable uses, but I think maybe one stop faster would be better.

I used that setting the rest of my walk, and will finish the roll like that tomorrow. We'll see what happens.

I imagine everyone has done this before, but maybe not consciously. what have been the results?

[zuikologist]

Sitemistic - agreed. it is somewhat liberating not to change settings though.

[lZr]

I am old 2 stop lier to myself, but using sofware I can change it back to something very acceptable. And, 1 stop is notning bad to err the film because you can freely say: The camera exposure metering is bad, not me. The result can be very nice, indeed.
In case of dark room with beam of light it is very harsh decision to make. You can expect 5 stops up or down the scale, even more

[Todd.Hanz]

I've done something similar...expose for a bright spot (ie. sidewalk) and shoot subjects as the enter into the light for a roll. Most image came out as expected and some were unuseable but it made for quicker exposures.

A few examples using this technique:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/89936228@N00/248970700/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/89936228@N00/295084178/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/89936228@N00/281478941/

Todd

[itf]

But more seriously. My original post was just the thoughts I had today. My intention was not to use it as my general practice, by any means. Further, the idea wasn't about taking photos to be fixed up later, but to see what happened with the 'mistakes'.

I was just wondering if anyone has tried doing the same throughout different lighting situations (which, intended or not, people have) and was curious to know about their random successes.

[ClaremontPhoto]

...whenever the lighting changes. I've used a fixed shutter and aperture p&s and sometimes the photos are interesting because they weren't exposed 'correctly'.


If I'm taking photos over an hour or two the light is very unlikely to change. So I often set up the exposure and don't touch it again.

Although the light doesn't change I'll see some bright scenes and some dark scenes. In my photos the bright scenes come out bright, and the dark scenes come out dark. And that's correct.

As an aside I set up the exposure as I start by metering off the sidewalk outside my door. It's standard gray card reflectance which is handy.

[lZr]

I do something close to the original idea here - shooting hyperfocal and think only about composition.

[semrich]

I recently started shooting my M8 with the ISO at 360 as though I had a roll of 400 film in it and not changing it until I had a least 36 shots taken, and not shooting in aperture priority and the camera choosing the shutter speed. Now it is much more like my MP.

[semrich]

I do shoot with the MP, I got it after the M8 and love shooting it. I'm experimenting with just paying more attention to taking the shot, keeping it simple and not bothering about "chimping" to see what I got. I'm just doing this as a hobby so I just play games with my shooting experience and in this way I have got some of my best shots.

[peter_n]

There's no reason to not try something like this. I'd be real interested to see the results. You can use film with tremendous latitude like Ilford XP2 and get away with a lot. I mean when you see HCBs negs/contacts they are really quite bad in exposure terms, and you wonder if he just went out and looked up at the sky and figured on a shutter speed and then just left it there and changed f8 to f5.6 if he needed to. 'Course he had a brilliant printer... ;)