new to SLRs.. need a little help with my praktica

[bushboy]

hi,

Ive just bought a Praktica MTL5B and need a little help when setting the aparature. basicly, chaging the aparature doesnt alter the meter reading so I dont know what to set the aparture to!

say im outside, its a nice sunny day with good light. its a little windy and so i want to use a 500th/s shutter speed to make sure what im taking a photo of isnt blured. then i need to adjust the aparature so that it will give a correctly exposed shot with the selected shutter speed. so i take a meter reading (using the built in one on the camera) and so its over exposed or underexposed etc. but when i adjust the aparature to get the needle to the centre, it doesnt actually make the needle move so I dont know what the correct aparature setting will be!

is there something im missing on the camera? or is this just how it is?

I have another lense which actually darkens the view finder and alters the meter reading when you adjust the aparature. only problem is that its a zoom lense that starts at 80mm and goes to 200mm and so its already zoomed in at the smallest setting so its not ideal to use.

so basicly, how can i work out the aparature when it doesnt affect the meter reading?

[jim_panzee]

I don't know anything about the East German cameras, and you also don't say which lens this is, but if it works with one lens and not the other I would suggest it is the contacts on the lens (dirty), clean them but not with any abrasive, use a pencil rubber or just a cloth.

JimP.

[jim_panzee]

Better still before you do that, Set your film speed (ISO) on the camera, to the correct setting if you have not already done this. Then set your aperture to f/5.6, and try at all speed settings and see if the metre moves, do this in good light. if you have for instance a ISO 100 film in the camera, on a nice sunny day your setting should be Speed 100/125sec. and an aperture setting of f/16, this should be the correct exposure, or speed 500sec at f/8.

JimP.

[vid64]

OK, this might be a month old question, but if you're still having problems...

The MTL5 is a screw mount camera which uses stop-down metering, ie the lens aperture is 'stopped down' to the taking aperture during metering. Your lens seems not to be stopping down when you switch the meter on, hence, the meter needle doesn't move when changing the aperture ring, and the image staying bright.

If you remove the lens, it should have a small pin on the back which stops the lens down when depressed. Set it to f16 for best effect! If pushing the pin in doesn't stop the lens down, or there's no pin, there's a problem with the lens and you'll only be able to work at max aperture. On some lenses there's also an auto/manual switch which controls the behavior of the aperture. This might be faulty or in the wrong position for your camera.

David