I haven’t written about it here, but over the last six months I’ve been teaching myself black and white film photography with a sweet little Pentax K1000. I’m doing all the developing and scanning at home. It’s really fun!
Part of why I’ve taken on this project has been to build up my knowledge and skills to eventually tackle using my dad’s old Sinar P. The Sinar P is a 4×5 camera with so many pieces and variables you have to control for. Among those variables is metering. Luckily, my dad’s old Pentax Spotmeter V still works, and I’ve been teaching myself how to use it. My investigations led me to this very specific vinyl sticker that you can place over the Spotmeter V’s exposure calculator such that the readings correspond to the famous zone system of metering. It makes determining exposure and shutter speed much more intuitive. This is the kind of thing that makes me happy the internet exists!
