daemon@decwrl.UUCP (The devil himself) (04/09/85)
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Recently I volunteered to take a group shot of my group at work. We got
twenty-five people together outside and I set up my tripod and took the
shots with my Nikon FA using the self-timer so I could be in the picture
as well. I didn't use any features of the camera I hadn't used before.
When I picked up the roll, however, I was dismayed to find picture after
picture drastically underexposed. Fortunately, one shot in the middle
was just fine. I puzzled over this for some time and finally decided
what had happened. Apparently, when you use the self timer the exposure
is taken when the shutter button is pressed, the mirror is locked up, and
then, after the timer runs out, the picture is taken. In all but one of
the shots I had focused first, moved from the camera and pressed the
shutter button. At this point, because my eye was not over the eyepiece,
light had leaked in through the eyepiece and given an erroneous exposure
reading before the mirror was locked up. Fortunately, for the one good
shot, I had kept my eye over the eyepiece while I depressed the shutter
button. The annoying thing is that the FA has a nifty little eyepiece
cover screen that is operated by a small lever. It didn't occur to me to
use it. The only other time I had used the self timer was indoors with a
strobe or using a copy stand, where there wasn't enough spurious light to
significantly alter the exposure reading.
Vick Bennison
...decvax!decwrl!rhea!tools!bennison
(603) 881-2156