Dunn and Wakefield, Exposure Manual
Dunn and Wakefield, Exposure Manual
You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus. ~ Mark Twain
A direct reading of the gray card is not Intended to be the camera setting, it's just a reference point.
Don't have it handy but the Kodak instructions have an offset for the gray card so that you can figure out the camera setting.
Most any surface can be used as long as the offset is known and the target is used consistently.
You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus. ~ Mark Twain
Instead of worrying too much about "resolving" the issue mentally, how about just metering, take notes, bracket, and then see which negative prints the best. Issue will then be resolved for all your personal factors (meter, how you use it, developer type, development method et al)!
I know, I know -- too simple...
Vaughn
Part of the confusion may be that, as I understand it, the ISO standard isn't an absolute. The standard is actually a range.
Adams complained about the K factor along these lines too.
In many systems there are "black boxes" that we sometimes need to accept on faith. I work on industrial engines and Caterpillar uses electronic boxes that they won't tell you how they work. All you can get from them is what to expect out of it with a certain input. Similarly I don't know how my Sekonic meter does its thing.
Vaughn's suggestion is, at it's essence, the same suggestion Steve is making. Do the testing.
The suggested methods are very different but the result is the same. The testing calibrates you and the system you use. If you change the system you need to retest.
Part of this is that you do certain things intuitively, you don't even know your doing them but they affect the result.
Agitation methods are an example, yours and mine are different without question, that effects the results/density we each get at different points on our curves.
Temperature differences are another. How we round our readings.
Our lenses are different so flare affects your shots differently than mine.
What we take pictures of is different and what we want them to look like is different.
The list is long and these factors all weigh on how we decide on exposure settings.
You need to burn film and build experience with any system to be able to "get it".
You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus. ~ Mark Twain
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