P3D Mechanical shutters

["John Goodman" <jgood@xxxxxxxx>]

When it comes to exposure settings for manual cameras, I 
need all the help I can get, finding that quite a number of 
shots would have been that much nicer if they were 
somewhat lighter or darker. Bracketing is an obvious 
solution, but with living subjects each shot is unique and I'd 
prefer to home in on a single "best" setting whenever 
possible.

To get a better idea of one variable, shutter speeds, I 
recently used a Delta shutter tester with a few cameras, 
and was surprised by the results. The Canadian-made 
Delta SH-T1 (available from Micro-Tools) is a nice unit, 
imho. It has its sensor on a cord, which nicely fits 35 mm 
camera film rails but can also be used with MF or larger 
formats, has a bias adjustment for light intensity, and 
high/low millisecond scales.

While many measured shutter speeds were well within a 
half stop of indicated and were reliable, what was 
disquieting was the "scatter", the range of possible 
variation at a given set speed with some cameras. For my 
Realists (recently CLA'ed), some actual speeds were a full 
stop off (slower than indicated), and the scatter was also 
very high in some cases (about a stop). The faster shutter 
speeds, the most common settings for me, sometimes 
showed 50% variation. For slide films, good exposure 
accuracy is a plus, if not a necessity, right? Hence my 
dilemma.

I'm eager to learn how other list members, with far more 
experience, deal with this problem. Do you

1)  not worry about indicated vs. actual shutter speeds?
2)  use a shutter tester and set accordingly?
3)  learn the idiosyncracies of a camera by trial and error?
4)  bracket and pick the best?
5)  have some other method of ensuring best results?

For cameras with shutters that have significant scatter, 
repairs would seem to be required, or else accurate 
exposures are just a crapshoot.

JG