Methinks you folks have missed the point: with slide films, a
consistent 1/4 stop error is evident as a trend toward uniform
lightness or darkness of your slides, with a consistent 1/3 stop
error showing a near-universal obvious error, and 1/2 stop is enough
to make most slides close to unacceptable, and bracketing essential
(if you want to see the effect of that, peruse a bunch of National Geographics a ways back, where consistent slight underexposures were hurting reproduction quality [they seemed to have cleaned up their act recently with both exposure and sharpness]). Sure, with color negative,
who cares how the film was exposed (within limits! ;-), and B&W will tollerate some error (though for best quality, it won't), but knowing that your equipment is right-on allows you to knowledgeably compensate for off-speed films and for unusual lighting, and it allows you to
save time and money (film) by allowing you to forgo bracketing
(I rarely bracket transparency film exposures, and my exposure
success rate is VERY high (manual, center-weighted exposure modes
with 3 different Nikon bodies) - about one off-exposure every few
rolls of slide film.
Hope This Helps


In article <4lrmoa$g5d@peabody.colorado.edu>, keivom@rintintin.Colorado.EDU says...
>
>Ever since interning for a paper(and shooting all day), i have started to
>laugh at some of the funny questions people ask in lieu of going out and
>taking photos. talk about exposure accuracy of 1/2-10/10th of a stop(and
>being able to tell the differeence) makes me laugh. start worrying about
>whether you are a stop or 2 off, not 1/2 or 1/8 or 1/64th.
>
>In article <4lp3d7$qk8@sdcc13.ucsd.edu>,
>Charles Thorsten wrote:
>>In article ,
>>Jay Plater wrote:
>>>
>>>My gosh, I can't believe that 1/2 or even 1/3 stop increments is not
>>>enough variability. The entire world is *not* 18% density, after all,
>>>which throws it back to the photographer's brain to get a proper
>>>exposure. And my built-in light meter is only acxcurate to about a or
>>>maybe a half at best. You know that while many are deciding whether to
>>>add 3/16 or 4/16 a stop in compensation, that bird's going to fly away!
>>
>>Seems like the full-stop shutter-speed settings on my Nikon F3 are doing
>>just fine at "allowing" me to make proper exposures on pro slide film.
>>The design of the aperture ring does let me adjust between f/stops, which
>>is a great help. However, for any picture there is no such thing as the
>>absolute "perfect exposure". It depends on how the photographer wants
>>to make the image look. Slide film isn't THAT finicky, where being 1/2
>>or 1/3 stop off of some imaginary perfect (18% gray?) exposure setting
>>is going to make the picture either horribly dark or completely washed out
>.
>>Thanks, Jay, for expressing the views of a real photographer. And for
>>everyone else, quit complaining about how inaccurate current cameras'
>>exposure settings are and start concentrating on where that bird is flying
>!!
>>
>>Charles Thorsten
>>cthorste@ucsd.edu