Balancing exposures - Medium Format Photography Forum

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Q. Balancing exposures

Asked by Pete Coyne (K=0) on 7/22/2005

I need some advice about balancing exposures with a rangefinder camera (I've been an exclusively SLR user for years). I'm now thinking of buying a Mamiya 7II with 80mm lens.

I assume it would be sensible to use a lightmeter for measuring exposures, but I understand that using, for example, graduated filters is difficult on a rangefinder. As my love is landscape photography sometimes the contrasts are so high that you really need a balancing filter.

Any tips on how I can use graduated filters on this camera?

Thanks so much

Pete

Stefan Engström (K=24473) - Comment Date 7/24/2005

Barry Wakelin (http://www.usefilm.com/photographer/33018.html) uses that camera for landscape photography with excellent results. He is also very helpful if you have questions...

-Stefan

Helen Bach (K=2331) - Comment Date 7/28/2005

Pete,

I don't think that there is any practical way to use a grad accurately with the Mamiya 7. There is a polarising filter for it, of course. That swings out on a parallel mechanism so that you can set the orientation, then swing it in front of the lens in the same orientation.

What sort of film do you intend to use, and how will you print it? If you are using colour neg like Kodak Ultra, and then scanning you shouldn't need a grad - the 13-stop latitude of the film will cope with just about any contrast range if you remember that it is all overexposure latitude. Set the meter to two stops under the box speed of the film (ie set the meter to 100 for 400UC film) as a starting point.

The Mamiya 7 has a very good built-in lightmeter, but I tend to use a separate meter with it.

Best,
Helen

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