OK, this thread started with me saying I was going to put a roll (Acros 100) through my QL17 in manual mode with no light meter at all. I did that, and recorded the conditons as best I could. It's taken an age to get results, as this was the "process-only" roll that got those dark splodges and had to go back to be re-washed. It's now free of dark splodges but has acquired some extra scratches, since each strip has come out of its plastic sleeve 3 or 4 times now.
In terms of the challenge, how did it go? TBH it went pretty well, I suspect largely due to the flexibility of the BW film. Artistically, that's another thing :thumbsdown:.
What I'd forgotten, and this process reinforces, is how flat things get once you move away from the "sunny" settings. Even scenes where I could see a great deal of variation, presumably I was seeing colour rather than tonal variation. I do remember that after I started with colour, I tried using colour in one camera nd BW in another for a while, but gave up as I seemed to have lost my tonal "eye", and as a result got far too many flat BW images.
Anyway, enough blathering and a few pics...
1 Robsart cottage, light rain at the time, 1/125 at f/5.6 (I guess this one's not flat because of the BW cottage!)
2 Chimney corner, castle kitchens, 1/125 at f/16. Sunny as you can see, works OK despite the relatively dark subject
3 Bridge in Leamington, f/8 1/125 Cloudy no shadows.
Under-exposed; did not take account of the darkness of the subject; pulled back a bit with recovery sliders
4 Giant plants in Jephson Gardens, f/8 1/125 Quite cloudy, virtually no shadows, quite dark scene. Maybe a stop under?
5 Coventry canal basin f/16 1/125 Sunny
6 Canal bridge at entry to Coventry canal basin; note absence of towpath as a control feature to support gathering tolls! f/16 1/125 Sunny
I'll have some comments from other experiments as well later... But I would welcome any views on the exposures above, particularly. As usual, they look a bit different when previewing this post than they did in Aperture!