From: Paul <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
I recently bought a *ist DS and am using M and K series lenses on
it. How ever it seems to be really under exposing most of the shots
and the meter seems all over the place. Just wondering if some one
can suggest something i may be doing wrong. I'm pretty sure i have
the correct settings in the custom functions and i am using the
button on the back to stop down the lens.
...
Shooting in Manual mode, meter is set to Centre Weighted.
"AE-L with AF locked" is set to 1, but i have tried setting it to
2. Exposure does seem to jump around on the same scene.
The meter just seems to totally inaccurate, always underexposing.
AE-L with AF Locked is irrelevant when using a manual focus lens and
you have the AF/MF switch set on MF.
Do a calibration test. Get a reference gray card on a sunny day (or a
clear blue sky between 10am and 2pm on that sunny day...), set ISO
200, set f/11, fill the frame with it, be sure the meter is enabled,
hit the AE-Lock button, see whether you get a shutter speed in the
1/200-1/250 second range. Take a picture. The histogram should show a
nearly perfect vertical strip just to the left of the center of the
graph.
If that all checks out, take a deep breath and slow down. It means
your meter is working correctly.
The DS meter calibration is set to protect against highlight
saturation for JPEG capture. I've found this often means it's about
-0.3 to -0.7 EV under the best exposure I want for capturing RAW
format. Have you looked at the photos you captured already on the
computer screen or only on the camera's LCD? Are you capturing in RAW
or JPEG format? Have you done any testing with a reference
calibration target, like a gray wedge or color chart?
And, lastly, can you post any pictures so that we can see what you're
getting and discuss causes in the captures that might be the issue?
Godfrey
