Ektachrome in Nizo 156 Macro

[Nick Collingwood]

Alright I'm having a conundrum this morning as I pack for a weekend in the woods. I really would love to shoot one of my carts of Ektachrome (64T or 100D) I have left.

Also... I want to use my newly acquired Nizo 156 Macro as it's a lovely little travel camera and I have the UWL wide angle lens for it as well. Also it has a 220º XL lens (1/28th). I have shot 200T in this camera and it came back great so the camera definitely works.

Thing is... it has dumb metering. I've attached an image of what the manual says about how it reads carts. In THEORY... I feel like it should read a 100D cart correctly as 100D as it SAYS it can meter 100D. But when I tested the aperture looking at a building outside my door, it was reading around 2.8ish-4 on the Nizo 156 Macro THEN when I tested that same cart on my Canon 514XL (I've shot Ekta and Provia 100D in the 514XL with great results) and my trusty Canon 814XL-S (only shot 64T in there but it meters everything really), they both read around F8. I even tried Tungsten notching the 100D and got roughly the same results in both (when on tungsten as I don't want any filter engaged). And to make things even more interesting, I realized the 156 Macro's filter switch is just connected to a little rod that tests whether the cart has a notch or not. As in... if you move the switch back and forth, the little rod goes back and forth. So it's not really detecting anything on its own.

Thoughts? It must be reading the 100D as 25 or 40ASA (either as Tungsten or B&W... what's the difference in cart??) since it was Why does it say it'll read 100D when clearly it doesn't. How does it detect daylight film? I have seen only a couple examples online with this combo that seem good but no idea how they metered. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WrGfBdKfZs

Super 8 metering is crazy.... Wish Kodak would've just made all cameras able to set ASA...

Edited October 13, 2017 by Nick Collingwood

[Samuel Berger]

Someone please post that conversion equation again.

 

Nick, the clip by Red Cat looks very underexposed and the colours are off. I'm not sure I'd point at it as a measure of success.

 

Anyway, right before I came on to this topic I was looking into buying an external light meter to avoid frustration. I have the Spectra Cine P-251 but lost all the slides and they want to charge $20 per slide.

I might as well buy a Sekonic L-308DC-U DigiCineMate for the price of those slides.

 

What are your feelings regarding external meters for S8? I know it's less convenient but those built in meters are hard to trust after 40 years...

[Nick Collingwood]

Agh. It didn't attach my image I don't think so I link it here.



And Sam, I think I go against the grain in some ways in that I like autoexposure. Generally speaking, I've had great results with autoexposure (except for using a 64T cart in a Leicina Super and it coming out way underexposed... much worse than the youtube link above. As in... a grey film. (The clip I linked to looks fairly good to me. I guess slightly underexposed. Although my camera is reading more open f-stop than my other cameras, not stopped down. So if it's incorrect then it would overexpose)

 

Here's another clip with a Nizo 148

But otherwise, Really good autoexposure results and given the nature of Super 8, I like it to be more carefree when shooting vs metering every shot.

Also the hard thing I've found with external metering S8 is that the light prism for the viewfinder in each camera is slightly different and causes 1/3-1/2 or more stops light loss. So you have to guess to account for that.