Ah, the old dedicated flash problem! It's great when you want it to set the shutter speed for you, but not so great when you don't. It's simple doing fill-flash with a non-dedicated flashgun (as outlined above), but it sounds like it's only letting you set 1/125th when in aperture priority mode? I can see why you've been having problems now...

As Matt's mentioned, hopefully using the camera in manual mode will let you meter for the ambient light at one or two stops down from the flash setting, & let you use a shutter speed below 1/125th.

Hope you get it working satisfactorily.

Jonathan

Not 100% right. It's actually easier than it seems - you just need to make sure that the shutter speed is 1/125th or below. If you're shooting outside in good light then you'll be best off using 100 rated film, then set the camera to aperture priority. Start off with the flash and the lens set to the same aperture (say f/5.6, if the flash allows), then just keep an eye on the shutter speed to ensure it's not above 1/125th. This will give you a correct exposure, though the flash will be more prominent than strictly 'fill' light.

If you leave the flash at f/5.6 but close down the lens to f/8 then you'll again get a correct exposure but with the flash light 'filling in' at one stop below the ambient light.

Close the lens down to f/11 and the flash is now two stops below the ambient light. The amount of fill in light you want or need will depend on the harshness of the daylight and on personal taste.

Hope that helps.

Jonathan

Thanks for that, Ken.

Strange how they're not altogether dissimilar, ergonomically speaking. And I like the view from above showing the comparison in respective distances between front elements & eyepieces - suffice to say that there's not quite room in my camera bag for the 645...

Jonathan

Nice collection! The Copipod looks useful, if a little scary. I'd love to see a side by side picture of the 645 and the diminutive DS with pancake lens. And good to see the trusty 280T - still good for digital!

Jonathan

Just been doing some more digging on Bojidar Dimitrov's K-mount page, and the Special Edition of the ME (rather than the ME Super) came in silver & brown - maybe this is where the confusion lies?

Jonathan

Hi Clarky,

According to Bojidar Dimitrov's site, which is the best place to go for info on any K-mount equipment:

The "SE" in the ME Super SE body stands for "special edition." However, the only known difference is that the focusing screen of the SE body is diagonally split, and that of the non-SE body horizontally-split.

http://www.bdimitrov.de/kmp/

Jonathan

Thanks Amoringello,

I'll steel myself & dive into that section of the manual tonight!

Jonathan

I'm currently trying to get to grips with Silkypix's noise reduction settings, and would be interested to know of any other users' default settings for various ISOs. Obviously these are also dependent on light conditions & sharpening settings etc. so I realise there are no catch-all settings for each ISO, but I'm currently working on some K100D 1600 images & I'm struggling to get the NR as good as it is when using in-camera JPEGs.

I'm presently using the 'Natural' sharpening default & pushing the NR slider up to about 25, though I'm not exactly sure of how I should be using the Noise Cancel & Noise Level controls.

Any help much appreciated,

Jonathan

Hi Clarky,

I was given one of these meters the other day - aren't they fantastic to hold? I haven't really used mine in anger yet, but the build quality is fantastic! I haven't tested to see how the Weston exposure ratings equate to digital ISOs, but once I've got that straight presumably it'll be perfectly useable. Sadly mine's missing the invercone, so it won't do incident light readings, but, blimey, what a beautiful object!!

Jonathan

Just to sort of reply to my own post...

Batch processing files from the two bodies in Silkypix worked fine. Both camera bodies were set to the correct time, and when processing I batch renamed the files to give a year/month/day/hour/minute/second filename, so in a browser they display in chronological order.

And, as a p.s., a very big thanks to Matt for his excellent & ongoing Silkypix guide - it's very useful & very much appreciated!

Jonathan