Sparrow
Veteran
There is absolutely no need to resort to filters or any of these complex solutions colour print film has bags of tolerance to overexposure. All that's happening with the OP's photos is a simple over-reliance on ttl metreing.
To blow a sky on Fuji superia one would have to go perhaps 4 stops overexposed. That would be more than f4 at 1/500 in full sunlight, that should really make the photographer consider weather he knows better than the camera what the settings should be
PS no offence Nick
To blow a sky on Fuji superia one would have to go perhaps 4 stops overexposed. That would be more than f4 at 1/500 in full sunlight, that should really make the photographer consider weather he knows better than the camera what the settings should be
PS no offence Nick
giellaleafapmu
Well-known
Yep, sorry, my eyes skipped that part of the post.
I agree with you, I also think that AA made a short and well-known story long. Still his system is indeed well-known and it was easier for me to mention the whole thing under this name rather than speaking of sensitometry and then explain what part of it and how I wanted to mention...
Just to add to the conversation and going back to the original question. I think the original post was asking things in a somewhat strange way. "How to handle overexposed skies with a rangefinder?". Answer: Exactly how one would do with any other type of camera, by exposing them properly, and this can be achieved by an appropriate use of the film/sensor latitute, by substracting light to the overexposed part of the picture (filters) or by adding light to the underexposed one (fill-in), just rangefinder cameras are not the best horse for this course as they do all these things in a slightly cumbersome way, filters' effect cannot be checked easily in the viewfinder, slow sincro and little on no electronic help means a lot of pain for fill-in and the fact they use basic film cassette and not interchangeable backs or film holders means one cannot expose each negative differently.
GLF
Roger Hicks
Veteran
Ezzie
E. D. Russell Roberts
Sometimes I wish there were like buttons on this forum
Ezzie
E. D. Russell Roberts
I concur. Only recently read books by AA and not of him. Must say the latter is much more interesting. He really can make a meal of things. Though some of his pictures are jaw dropping, even some of his Polaroid stuff (type 55 and 808).
He obviously knew a thing or two about metering, though I'm not sure I'm any the wiser after reading his advice.
giellaleafapmu
Well-known
I think that more than anything he knew something about printing. But he was of course not bad as a photographer. His books are not bad either if you look at them in perspective. I am not from that time but if I understand things correctly when they were written there was not much material about the subject readily available. Now we are a click away from information about almost anything, we can send a message to world class photographer and, if they are kind, they reply to us with information about whatever we ask them if they don't have the information already in their blog. Even remotely located persons can buy educational DVDs about anything, from party pictures to very technical stuff like high-speed photography, but when Mr AA was traveling with his 8x10 on the top of his car nothing like that existed. I think that by explaining what he was doing (even if in a less than optimal way) he was a precursor of today's trend of sharing knowledge "for free" a-la-open-source...
GLF
Nick
Established
Just wanted to chip in and say thanks for all the amazing and varied responses.
I've definitely, historically been a "slave to the TTL meter". I very rarely shoot in bright, open conditions so I wasn't experienced in having to factor in the entire scene. I'm familiar with the spot metering off the hand but on that occasion wasn't. I'm also not familiar with is using an external light meter and then comparing against what the in-camera meter is telling me.
To be honest I felt like there must be some blindingly obvious answer I was missing, and was a little hesitant to post. Glad to see it's stirred up some vigorous discussion around exposure techniques. Plenty more for me to learn.
I've definitely, historically been a "slave to the TTL meter". I very rarely shoot in bright, open conditions so I wasn't experienced in having to factor in the entire scene. I'm familiar with the spot metering off the hand but on that occasion wasn't. I'm also not familiar with is using an external light meter and then comparing against what the in-camera meter is telling me.
To be honest I felt like there must be some blindingly obvious answer I was missing, and was a little hesitant to post. Glad to see it's stirred up some vigorous discussion around exposure techniques. Plenty more for me to learn.
Photo_Smith
Well-known
Without looking at your negatives I'll guess that when you metered for the subject you may have made an negative that exceeded the range capable in the print.
In other words the sky is in the negative, just not the print.
You can have a skilled handprinter 'burn it in' or try in future to meter for the emerging shadow and stop down two stops.
Lastly Ektar is higher contrast film, that means it may burn out sky and has more contrast than Portra which would be my choice for longer scale images.