how to get right exposure/depth of field/shutter speed and other parameters

[Derrel]

The Canon A-1 was the first five mode single-lens reflex camera.

 

[TCampbell]

hi guys, i'm not sure if this is the right place for this thread, if it's not please forgive me ahah.
so, i've recently found a canon A1 that belonged to my grandad, i've never used an analog camera in my life and i'm getting into it.

Yeah... so thanks for making several of us forum members feel really old. Your "grandad's" camera is a bit newer than what many of us had when starting out.

i'm not really a beginner about the parameters i'm asking about but i really can't fidure out how to set them properly. for example, with my digital cameras i set iso, diafram and so on, then i shot a few photos to test them, but in this case i can't shot many photos in order to save film. my big question is: how do i undersnand what are the right settings without seeing the photos? (oh, there's also the problem that i can't see the pictures right after taking them, so...)

The answer is: you don't get to see the photos ... so you're more disciplined about exposure rules and metering.

"back in the day" it was necessary to have a good grasp of correct exposures specifically *because* there was no immediate feedback. We had to wait until we shot the entire roll of film, then processed it to find out how we did. This forced a level of discipline ... whereby we had to to be a bit more thoughtful about how to get to a correct exposure (because a mistake wouldn't show up for days ... and we'd get a roll of bad photos back from the lab.)

But the good news is... all the basics are the same. Once nuance is that film came in a variety of sensitivity levels (typically called "ASA" or "DIN" ... but not "ISO" as we call it today). These days we think of change the ISO as part of the "exposure" but that's not really accurate. You cannot change the "sensitivity" level of a digital sensor.

This meant that "exposure" was more about the shutter speed and f-stop ... and we learned those rules well. We also learned to "bracket" exposures if we had doubts (meaning... we'd shoot a few shots... at least one at what we believed was the "correct" exposure, plus a shot or two below the correct exposure and a shot or two above the correct exposure.) But this meant wasting film... so you did this for "important" shots, but usually not for candid shots. Bracketing is nothing more than a way to hedge your bets ... trying to ensure that at least some of the images on the roll are usable.



Something else to think about...

Back "in the day" of roll film, a "roll" was 12 exposures ... but there were also 24 and 36 exposure rolls (at the studio we considered those double or triple rolls). If you are a non-professional photographer, it might take you all day to shoot that roll of film (or a few days). A pro would probably shoot through quite a few more (when I did a wedding... that was typically on the order of 20 to 25 "rolls" of film for the day).


If there's a key message here... it's that we had to slow down and think things through to avoid wasting film (and being disappointed with a lot of bad exposures.)

 

[Sharpshooterr]

Yeah... so thanks for making several of us forum members feel really old. Your "grandad's" camera is a bit newer than what many of us had when starting out.

Yeah, ain't that the truth. Many of us started our ADVANCED photographic journeys on actual real full manual cameras!
My first 35mm in the mid 60's was the "brick", that way cool Argus C-3 with those little gears in front!!! Got mine at a pawn shop for $16!
Now THAT was manual!!! LoL

SS