is my meter screwed up?

[redneckdan]

I went out to take some pics today and compared my meter reading with the sunny 16. It was clear with bright sun, subject was my girlfriend. I was shooting my pentax k1000 with fuji 100 super HD, 50mm f2.8 lense. I set the shutter to 1/125 and theoretically the f-stop should have been f/16 but that metered as way, way too low, I had to set it to f/5.6 before the needle would start to move toward the "gate". Is my meter screwed? Bad battery maybe? I just replaced it in februrary.

 

[selmerdave]

Well, what was your girlfriend wearing, how much of the frame did she fill, which direction was the light falling on her, and what was in the background? All of these would affect the reading you were getting. While the sunny 16 rule is a good place to start, I wouldn't use it to calibrate a meter (or judge the calibration of one). The best thing would be to compare readings with a known accurate meter, or take some test shots of basic things (green grass on a sunny day) that the meter should be true on and see how they come out.

Dave

 

[redneckdan]

She was wearing a light colored sun dress with lightin at 11 o'clock, 12 oclock being head on. The background was a typical spring forest, kinda brownish. It did not make a differnece in the meter reading whether she filled the frame or not. I've gotta check the meter on green grass yet. I'm going to try replacing the battery. The funny thing is that if I switch the film selector to 64 speed shutter to 1/64 and apeture to f/16, the sunny 16 was dead nuts with the meter reading. I had been using ektachrome 64 and was getting great slides. I switched back over to the fuji color negative because my slide film supply is running low and I have a lot of color negative left.

 

[Rob]

With every camera/lens/film there's stuff to figure out. In my opinion, go with what the meter says and have a roll developed. If it all turns out under/over then you need to think about batteries and metering, but most likely it'll be fine. I used to shoot mainly with Reala 100 and this has a similar latitude to the film you shot with - very very wide. You can miss about three stops out each way with most of Fuji's range of neg film, so it's likely everything will be fine (IMO).

Rob

 

[Torus34]

Spring for a cheap grey card. They're about $US3.50 Check your meter against it in full sunlight when the meter's batteries are fresh. You now have a standard reference.