Digital and film

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koomber

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After having a rough time with the exposure compensation on my old Zenit and having recently upgraded to Digital, I have recently come into possesion of a Chinon DSLR film camera from a guy at work.

Having played with it, I can assure you guys it takes a pretty minty picture and is built like a tank. With a 28mm 2.8 vivitar (Serial 28234363) and it's ownbrand Chinon 50mm 1.7, I was thinking of giving film a try.

Basically, I was wondering if I could use my D70 to roughly get the exposure right on the film camera and then take the picutre using the D70 settings? Or am I being foolish?
 
No it should work OK. If you can match the FOV in both viewfinders, and use matrix metering, then there's no reason why you shouildn't get accurate exposure. Failing that, meter from a mid tone in the scene. Don't forget to set the same ISO on both cameras.

Chinon were pretty good budget cameras, solely made for and sold by Dixons IIRC.
 
I don't recall a Chinon SLR without metering. Unless it's incredibly old. What model is it? Take a closer look! If it has a battery compartment on the bottom (size of a 5p piece) then it also has a meter. They were truly horrible cameras though :eek:
 
I didn't have any problems with the one I got lol. They ony problem I hav is that I'm not 100% faithful in the old meters. Maybe I am wrong in this, please let me know. At the moment, my Chinon (and Zenit, which is a God Awful Camera)are being used as cold shoes for my slave flashes when I want them low down lol
 
The meters in those older cameras are probably still quite accurate. The problem is we've all been spoiled by matrix/ evaluative metering systems in modern cameras which mostly make things all too easy for us.

Those old meters tended to be of one of two types:


Full Frame Averaging.

This just mixes all the tones in the scene in the viewfinder down to an average tone which it considers to be 18% grey, regardless of what tone it actually is. This is fine for most average scenes but will need some adjustment from you for any scenes with parts lighter or darker than you'd normally expect in an average scene.

Centre Weighted.

The camera makes it's exposure assessment based largely on an area around the center of the screen, taking progressivley less notice of any tones the further they are away from the centre. Again it will mix the tones in that area down to 18% grey.
 
koomber said:
I didn't have any problems with the one I got lol. They ony problem I hav is that I'm not 100% faithful in the old meters. Maybe I am wrong in this, please let me know. At the moment, my Chinon (and Zenit, which is a God Awful Camera)are being used as cold shoes for my slave flashes when I want them low down lol
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Sorry, didn't mean to be rude about the Chinon. But even the Zenith had a meter - at least the Zenith E did, of sorts - and that was 40 years ago! I liked my old Zenith. There was a kind of honestly about its simplicity. And its crudeness. Maybe the best portrait I ever took was on that :)
 
HoppyUK said:
. There was a kind of honestly about its simplicity. And its crudeness.
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LOL. Gotta agree. Anything Russian is seldom the most elegant engineering but it tends to be very functional.
 
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