Creating Proper Exposure with a Pentax PZ10

Question

Not long ago, my Pentax K1000 was damaged and I upgraded to the Pentax PZ10 (both film cameras). I feel lost with trying to get the right exposure on the PZ10; with the K1000 I used a third-party light meter.

I'm sure that my inexperience with the PZ10 has a lot to do with this; what do you recommend? I read the manual, but I'm still a little foggy - the manual I've seen (PDF) is scanned badly and doesn't describe details well.

Since the camera is a film camera, I'm not too keen on too much of the traditional bracketing - especially since there's no feedback as to what is right until I get the pictures back from the developer.

Answer 1

Hmmm. I'm not sure the PZ10 is really an upgrade. I've only seen the same scanned manual, but it looks like the camera is rather limited in control. It has:

• Program AE mode, which seems to use a 6-segment matrix (in contrast, modern Pentax dSLRs use a 77-segment matrix). You can press the "hyper" button followed by the +/- buttons to adjust EV, but it's going to take some practice (and exposed film) to get a feel for what the camera "wants" to do in any given situation. And there appears to be no indication of metering at all in this mode (the indicators in the viewfinder are used to show whether EV compensation is active).

• "Metered Manual", which is limited by

  1. the metering only showing + or -, not any indication of how much
  2. only using spot metering, which isn't right for most situations (and without any range in the +/- indicators, it's hard to use to measure a whole scene).

and

• "HyperManual", which is a horrible name for a miserable approximation of Aperture Priority mode -- you set the aperture on the lens, and then press the Hyper button to set the shutter speed to match the (presumably, 6-segment) meter reading.

So, I guess the best thing to do is hold on to that third-party meter and use the manual mode. Or watch Craig's List for another K1000 to come by. :)