Creative control over exposure

Wow, 200 years of photography and the experts have not even discovered how to expose properly and they fight and they fit over it. Again!

Wow.

Now let's start a similar post about where and how to focus, then one on which aperture is the best. Which gear, .. the list of trivia technical questions is endless.

And we conveniently forget all about composition, art, creativity, i.e., the subject and light and vision and instead fight and argue along about trivialities such as exposure and gear etc. Have you guys not figured out yet how to not expose yourself so shallowly?

Art, pictures, images, the creation thereof ... no time for fights over spilled shutters, please.
 
uhligfd said:
Wow, 200 years of photography and the experts have not even discovered how to expose properly and they fight and they fit over it. Again!

Wow.

Now let's start a similar post about where and how to focus, then one on which aperture is the best. Which gear, .. the list of trivia technical questions is endless.

And we conveniently forget all about composition, art, creativity, i.e., the subject and light and vision and instead fight and argue along about trivialities such as exposure and gear etc. Have you guys not figured out yet how to not expose yourself so shallowly?

Art, pictures, images, the creation thereof ... no time for fights over spilled shutters, please.
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I tend to agree with you, but I have to say: If you can't stand a sermon, don't walk into the preacher's tent. The post is clearly labeled and you could just choose not to join this particular discussion.
 
degruyl said:
Ok, you have a spot reading either light point not blown or dark point with detail. How many levels do you move that to get to an exposure? Do you vary this by film? Even if you are using the zone system, do you rate this zone 2/8, or 1/9? (In other words, do you move the reading three stops or four?)

Note: these are actually serious questions. I can just about wrap my head around the zone system, but using a single point measurement to determine exposure requires a decision based on how much latitude the film has, right? I (obviously) have little experience with spot meters, at least good experience. I have nothing against them, just not much success.

To me, it seems easier to take a center meter reading, and adjust for what I am trying to do with the scene. It might not be better, but it works pretty well for me.
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You don't move the reading. That's the point. You use the right index.

IF the brightness range of the subject is too great -- and 'too great' depends on the film -- you can decide to compress it by development (for B+W and to a far smaller extent for colour) or in other post-processing (including dodging and burning and even HDR) or you can just decide that you can live without some of the shadow detail. Or you can use fill flash or any other kind of lighting adjustment.

If reading a mid-tone works for you, great. You might as well take an incident reading, but hey, ANY metering system can be made to work more or less well, including guesswork. The latitude of most neg films is enormous: 'blown' highlights can be recovered by burning or dodging, though admittedly, scanners are usually much inferior to wet printing with high negative densities.

But the only 100% sure way to guarantee all the shadow detail you want, where you want it, is by a spot reading of the shadows (see next post). With highlights, spot read the highlights or (much easier) take an incident or 'artificial highlight' reading.

Cheers,

R.
 
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bmattock said:
You are presuming that what I intend is a conventional 'correct' exposure. That is, some shadow detail in all but the darkest part of the scene, and wherever the highlights blow out on the top end is fine. I agree that this is commonly used and if that is what one wants, I have no argument with it.
.
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Dear Bill,

No.

I'm presuming that you are capable of deciding exactly where you want shadow detail, and know enough about spot metering to use the shadow index in this area. This may be in the deep shadow, but equally, if you chose, it could be a dark mid-tone, mid-tone or even light mid-tone.

With negative films, highlights very seldom blow out except in subjects with a VERY long tonal range, or with a cheap and nasty scanner that can't see into even moderately high density.

This is not 'fail safe for amateurs'. See also my post prior to this one.

Cheers,

R.
 
Roger Hicks said:
With negative films, highlights very seldom blow out except in subjects with a VERY long tonal range, or with a cheap and nasty scanner that can't see into even moderately high density.
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I stated that my advice was for users of both film and digital sensors. Slide film and digital sensors have somewhat less latitude than color print film, even if we were to agree that the latitude of the most forgiving film encompasses most scenes one is likely to photograph.

This is not 'fail safe for amateurs'. See also my post prior to this one.
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I presume you mean to reply to the person who said the above; I did not.
 
Dear Bill,

One reason why I was able to write an entire book on exposure is that it is a sufficiently complex subject that it canot be compressed into a few hundred words on the internet, especially when these few hundred words involve a certain amount of axe-grinding. Early in the book I point out that while there is no such thing as correct exposure, there is such a thing as perfect exposure. The latter is the exposure which creates the effect you want.

You are correct in your assumption that I borrowed another's words about amateurs, and was not quoting you.

Cheers,

R.
 
Roger Hicks said:
Dear Bill,

One reason why I was able to write an entire book on exposure is that it is a sufficiently complex subject that it canot be compressed into a few hundred words on the internet, especially when these few hundred words involve a certain amount of axe-grinding. Early in the book I point out that while there is no such thing as correct exposure, there is such a thing as perfect exposure. The latter is the exposure which creates the effect you want.
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I read your book and enjoyed it. I has pride of place on my bookshelf, along with your book on rangefinder cameras. I agree that the topic of exposure can be quite complex. I am also quite fond, however, of "How to be positive about the negative," by R. W. Behan. A admirable chapbook which I found immensely useful, despite its lack of heft.

As to ax-grinding, I hope I'm actually doing the opposite here. I've gone out of my way to insult no one in this thread despite the usual provocations by certain parties with many aliases, and I've made clear that there is more than one way to skin a cat, rather than my usual insistence upon the correctness of my theories. Is that not, at last, enough?

EDIT: And as to my unusual shortness of length of prose, it appears I'm damned if I do and damned if I don't - when I go on at length, I am accused of being too wordy and boring as well. But as often happens - some have more of an interest in talking about me and my shortcomings than in talking about the topic at hand. I have never quite understood that. I find myself endlessly fascinating, but I'm surprised that others find me so as well.
 
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Dear Bill,

Thank you for the kind words about Perfect exposure.

We are all grinding our axes; I did not mean to exclude myself.

The thing is, there can be an immense gap between theory and practice. Almost any metering method can be made to work in practice. Admittedly some are more successful than others, but even no metering -- informed guesswork -- can be far more successful than theory might lead one to expect.

Once a discussion of theory is undertaken, however, it is essential to be as precise as possible in one's enunciation of that theory, and to get the theory right. Hence my attempt at clarifying the roles of shadow and highlight indices in spot metering (and not just in spot meters, either -- look at the O and U indices on a Weston Master).

Cheers,

R.
 
bmattock said:
There is nothing wrong with what Roger says if one wants an exposure that is commonly accepted as 'correct'. What I am saying is that this may be acceptable and it may be what you want, but that is not the same as saying it is under your creative control. Perfect conventional exposure is aiming for the center of the target and hitting it. Creatively-controlled exposure is hitting anywhere on the target you choose, because you know where the edges of the target are, not just the bullseye. Both are valid approaches; the question is what you want to achieve.
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Actually how I understand it, I would like to capture on the media maximum details across scene brightness range, so I can creatively post-process it to whatever is my vision. If capturing all the details is not possible due to media latitude, I need to sacrifice either shadows or highlights. Metering as described by Roger allows allows maximum details starting from highlights(shadows) to other end of scene brightness range. I'd say exposure in capturing stage is NOT creative but technical process. What defines how actual image will look like is post-processing (digital or conventional) - there you want maximum details in media, and all your creativity to render it to your vision. What you say makes sense to me if your image-making workflow essentially lacks post-processing. But then, you become dependent on "vision" of your printer 😉
 
Igor.Burshteyn said:
Actually how I understand it, I would like to capture on the media maximum details across scene brightness range, so I can creatively post-process it to whatever is my vision. If capturing all the details is not possible due to media latitude, I need to sacrifice either shadows or highlights. Metering as described by Roger allows allows maximum details starting from highlights(shadows) to other end of scene brightness range. I'd say exposure in capturing stage is NOT creative but technical process. What defines how actual image will look like is post-processing (digital or conventional) - there you want maximum details in media, and all your creativity to render it to your vision. What you say makes sense to me if your image-making workflow essentially lacks post-processing. But then, you become dependent on "vision" of your printer 😉
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Yes, I think the highlighted part is absolutely true unless you are shooting transparency, in which case, of course, you're stuck with what you shoot -- and if you then scan (= post-process) the tranny you can still do quite a lot. Too many of us learned on tranny and apply what we learned on tranny to other media, where the same rules and techniques range from moderately useful (transparency>digital) to completely useless and even potentially harmful (transparency>negative).

ISO standards for exposure are not set in stone. They'll give you a good image, most of the time. A good friend used to be on the ISO standards committee, and there were quite heated arguments at times about what should be the standard and why. There are always trade-offs in choosing one standard instead of another. The great ASA re-rating of about 1960 is a classic example. Film speeds doubled overnight -- except, of course, that they didn't.

Cheers,

R.
 
Igor.Burshteyn said:
What you say makes sense to me if your image-making workflow essentially lacks post-processing. But then, you become dependent on "vision" of your printer 😉
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I understand your point, as well as Roger's. However, one cannot always fit the image's dynamic range to the media you are using to capture it. What cannot be captured cannot be restored in post-processing. It is for those times when information must be lost that I find my method most useful - by more tightly controlling (hopefully) at which end of the range information will be lost, and how much. One method, as Roger pointed out, is to ensure that the darkest parts of the scene retain some detail and let the highlights do what they will. One might, however, wish to retain more highlight detail at the expense of blocking up some shadows. By moving the entire captured range up and down, fitting it to the dynamic range of the media used, one can have some control over what will be available for post-processing.
 
As well as the dynamic range, with film there is of course the question of tonality, according to where the subject matter is on the characteristic curve.

Cheers,

R.
 
I’ve always subscribed to the “good enough” school of thought with roll film photography, so I just try to stick the middle of the scene’s range in the middle of the films’ latitude and hope for the best, 99% of the time it works. Then I sort it out when I’m printing.

The other 1% I do something different.

Sloppy I know
 
I read recently that Nikon's matrix metering system draws on a database of over thirty thousand images when estimating it's correct exposure of a scene.

I have trouble remembering what I photographed last week! 😛
 
I'm waiting for a camera that has an electronic coin flipping exposure function. Favor the shadows or favor the highlights?

Back when film was a big part of the meager budget, often with no meter, we managed to shoot entire rolls of film with a frame or two of this, a frame or two of that, under all kinds of lighting and make a contact sheet ten seconds at f/8 under the enlarger that had pretty damned consistant density on all 36 frames. Matrix metering consisting of neurons?

http://thepriceofsilver.blogspot.com
 
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