Grey card help

[butch]

I've been shooting for several years but have never used a grey card for exposure. I want to do so this week end. I've read a few threads after a google but I'm seeking your patient advice. I have a small grey card that's in an old, Exakta hand book. May be 8"x10". Looks like blow-up of a finger print. Will that suffice? I'm shooting something 10 feet away. Were do I place the card? Do I meter at arm's length or beside the subject or where? I might be using my SLR with spot metering. I might be using my P with my Sekonic that allows incident or reflective. How would this come into play? And what about shooting in various lighting situations and using the grass or pavement at you feet? Meter for sun lit on the grass in light and for shaded on the grass in shade?

 

[kaiyen]

Butch,
I'm not sure I completely understand your question. The gray card is of a fingerprint? That doesn't make sense to me...

Anyway. In general, you need to put the grey card in the same light as your subject, and fill the metering area with it. So if you're spot metering, then you gotta fill the spot section of your VF. If you're using center-weighted, you have to fill the whole VF entirely. Arm's length is fine, as long as it's in the same light.

Metering reflective with a grey card is the same as metering incident by itself. In the former you are establishing a neutral subject. In the latter the meter already assumes a neutral subject. So it's one or the other.

Grass is a little more shadowy than neutral, so you can meter the shade of grass and close down by about a stop. If you're shooting negative film, there really isn't ever a need to meter the highlights of anyting unless you're doing contrast control by altering development on a per-roll basis.

Pavement should be about...1/2 a stop darker than middle, I think. Something like that. Wet pavement is a full stop.

allan

 

[Finder]

The gray card is placed next to the subject. You meter off the gray card from the camera angle. The distance is not important. An incident reading should give you the same result as a gray card reading. But in that case you hold the meter next to the subject and point back toward the camera.

Yes, other objects such as concrete, asphalt, grass, or your hand can be used, but you may need to compensate depending on the tonal and color difference - meter ARE color sensitive and do not have the same response across the spectrum. Metering requires you to evaluate the scene and target to determine the exposure.

 

[butch]

The Exakta grey card starts off as a white sheet but there are thousands of squiggly lines making it resemble a finger's print but I guess getting the 18% grey effect. Thanks for ya'lls input.

 

[Sparrow]

If you include the card in the first pic you can use it as a reference through the rest of the processing.

 

[FrankS]

Hi Butch. The incident meter (pointed towards the camera position from the subject position) will give you what you want. Grey cards are used due to the fact that reflected light meters are fooled by subjects that are overly light or overly dark. With a reflected light meter, I usually point it at the ground (lit by the same type of light as the subject) to get a reading. The ground, typically grass or medium grey concrete or aphfalt, is like a giant grey card.