Mostly Underpasses and Construction

I swear this wasn't intentional, at least on a conscious level, but when I developed today's shots almost half of them were either underpasses or construction sites. I do find both pretty endlessly interesting, but I was a little surprised that I shot so much of them today. The underpass shots especially tended to be pretty high contrast, while the shots of houses (not presented here today) tended to have a wider tonal range.

I was using a new meter. I've mentioned this before, but after the tragic demise of my tiny Reveni Labs shoe mount meter (the result of too many suicidal jumps out of the shoe mount) I was left without a meter that inspired confidence in all lighting situations. Even today I was doubting the accuracy of my new little Doomo meter, but my doubts weren't well founded.

The Reveni was a great little meter, but the whole thing including the shoe mount was made of crappyish 3D printed plastic, so it never really fit well in any shoe mount, not even the Reveni wrist band shoe mount that I often wore it on (most of my cameras don't have shoes of any kind, hot or cold). I made exactly one zillion shims for the Reveni, of materials from brass to card stock, but they couldn't defeat it's propensity to hurl itself to the ground. In it's favor, the Reveni, being quite light took many such trips to the concrete before it finally gave out. Let that be a lesson to myself. While 3D printed things may be cute and innovative, they're often not sturdy enough for real world use.

The little brass Doomo S OTOH, is the picture of sturdiness. And while a tad bigger than the Reveni, is still quite small. It's pretty hefty for it's small size and feels solid. This is not a meter that will take flight easily. Best of all, it's shoe mount is nicely crafted of metal! Yes, that dense shiny stuff that can be precisely machined! The Doomo with it's little spring loaded gizmo thingy in the shoe mount snugs up reassuringly in the shoe. The wrist band too is about 100 times nicer than the Reveni wrist band. It's made of soft and stretchy silicone with an easy to fasten metal buckle, and a metal shoe! I don't think any of my now useless shims will be required.

Regarding my suspicions of inaccuracy, I was shooting CMS 20 at box speed today and mostly had the Voigtlander 21mm on f/8. Often the Doomo, an ergomic design with one button and one dial that's surprisingly unfiddley to use, was often giving me shutter speeds of 1/30, when I could have sworn the exposure should be 1/60. As a test in those situations, I took both exposures. As it turns out the meter was more towards correct than I was (who woulda thunk?) The 1/60 exposures where a tad more underexposed than the 1/30 shots were overexposed. I don't know yet if this meter does half stops, but probably not in aperture priority. Maybe next roll I'll give the meter more of a fighting chance and use shutter priority.

When I read about the Doomo's constant reading setting, I thought to myself "what a dumb idea". I was just sure it would drain the built in battery in about 30 seconds. I was used to the Reveni's ravenous diet of button batteries. After my ride, I walked around the neighborhood to shoot the few shots remaining in the camera using the constant metering setting and it didn't even make a dent in the batterie's charge according to battery meter. Did I mention it has a battery meter?

Unfortunately modern technology has taught me to be an extreme cynic about any piece of technology that seems good and seems to work well. I'm absolutely sure this little meter will burst into flames one day while I'm wearing it on my wrist. My just punishment for actually expecting something to work.

I haven't made it very clear, but this roll of Adox CMS 20II was shot with my 1949 Leica Ic and Voigtlander 21mm lens. It was developed in Adotech IV.

Footnote 1: This brassier works out of an old family business that was apparently frequented by Albert Camus and even HCB.

My custom Doomo S with a $600 brassing job done by a highly respected French brassier₁