BebuLamar

It's not! You do have to enter the lens information and also have to enter it as AI or Non AI. I sometimes don't enter the information and the meter is off by a lot. But I simply know the exposure and don't care about the meter.

Bipod

The SRT-101 was Minolta's first camera that sensed the mounted lenses maximum aperture--
12 years before Nikon introduced a similar feature (auto-indexing or AI).

This is important because the light meter in an SLR or DSLR looks though the camera's lens
and meter at maximum aperture. Fast lenses make the world brighter.

The light meter in the SRT-101 uses two CdS photocells in the pentaprism measuring two
points in the image to try to handle backlighting. MInolta called this Contrast Light
Compensation (CLC)--it was very innovative at the time and is the ancestor of Matrix
Mode metering.

If you only one camera and you only use contrasty prime lenses, then using the camera's
light meter makes sense. But lenses with lots of glass and surfaces (e.g.,modern zooms)
absorb a lot of light, and so cause a camera's light meter to read low. Manufactures can
try to compensate for this by detecting the lens model and compensating -- but that means
the camera has to know about each and every lens use.

And how many people periodically have thier camera's light meter calibrated? Photocell
output changes over time.

A much simpler solution is to use a hand-held light meter. Then you can use the same meter
with every camera. If you use mutliple cameas, you still only have one meter to calibrate.
And the meter is not affected by the camer lens f-stop or t-stop (a measure of the amount of
light that actually makes it through the lens).

A hand-held spotmeters actually measure the EV of a 2-degree angular circle, whereas
spot meters built into cameras measure the circle plus lens flare.

The Sunny 16 Rule only works perfectly for EV 14.7. It's purpose is as a benchmark for thinking
about exposure, or as a last resort.

On a "sunny" day, EV can vary by several stops depending on time of day, season of the year, latitude,
clarity of the air, and whether you are standing on paved lot or a snow field.

Tables that give exposure for various situations (as used to be included on film boxes) are useful
as a rough guide or indication of what to expect, but not when exposure is critical.

In an average scene (6 or 7 stops of contrast) with an average sensor, there are several stop of
exposure latitude. In those situations, an exposure table may be good enough.

But in a contrasty scene, there may be zero exposure latitude. Use the wrong exposure and you
lose detail from highlights and/or shadows. Image sensors tend to have more dynamic range than
color film or slide film, but less than B&W negative film (as measured by a densiometer).

(Digital sensors do have enormous dynamic range if you turn the ISO way up--producing a low
quality, noisy image.)

Finally, its possible to make images globally lighter or darker in post-processing. But of course,
this doesn't put the detail back into blown highlights or pure black shadows.

Exposure is a choice: it is how you, the photographer, wants the image to appear. That needs to
be decided before you take the photo -- because only when you are standing in front of the subject
do you have all the information about how it actually looks. Once you go back to your computer,
you can't take additional light meter readings, or walk up to the subject and take an incident light
meter reading, or decide to shoot from a different angle.

Photography is as much about seeing and visualization as it is about image capture. By the time you
post-process, it's too late to do anything except try to fix minor problems. The scene is just a memory
and so is your visualization of it. Post-processing should be limited to fixing minor problems, not
trying to re-invent how a scene looked based on memory and a rather poor understanding of the rules
of painting.

As photographers, we are at our best doing photography, not drawing and painting on images.

AndyGarcia

I use John White Ai'd lenses on my D300 and my Fujis with an adapter. No problems experienced - I just use the camera's meter an "A". Just set the aperture and adjust. No issues.

RWR Loc: La Mesa, CA

Didn’t you say in another thread some time back that your meter was malfunctioning? Mine works fine.

brontodon

May I humbly suggest this article to those who are interested in using manual focus lenses on their Nikon DSLR cameras:

https://photographylife.com/using-manual-focus-lenses-on-nikon-dslr-cameras

BebuLamar

It's in the shop right now but when it doesn't work it doesn't work. When it's off because not entering lens data is different. It's off by a couple stops or sol

RWR Loc: La Mesa, CA

The Df is a fine camera, hope you have no more problems with it.