light metering

[Hektor]

Joe, a good guide is that if you ignore the shadows it's usually 1/30 @ F2 @ 400asa in ordinary artificial light. Your eyes can tell the difference between ordinary light, strong light, and dim light, so add or remove a stop. Only assess the highlights (opposite to usual neg film method) because the shadows are so far down they will fool your meter and go black anyway. Flourescent and spot lights are a bit more difficult but experience teaches, and you won't be that far away anyhow.

Be brave and have a go !

Regards John C.

 

[FrankS]

John, that's it exactly. That is a setting I've memorized, just like the sunny 16 rule.

 

[Hektor]

Hi Frank, It's all on the kodak website, - they sorted it all out about 75 yeards ago when there weren't any fancy lightmeters. -- light ain't changed much !

 

[Doug]

how many can meter well indoors in varying light?

Meters, or RFF members? 😉 Same as outdoors, if the subject is in the same light I am, I take an incident reading up and back over my shoulder. If not, then I'll use a reflected metering and/or guess compensation. As I move about inside, I may take incident readings from time to time to get a sense of the variations. What's really tough is dramatically different light, as on a stage you cannot approach closely... spot meter country.

 

[VinceC]

Letting shadows go black can also make for moody photos.

For the most part, it's a lot easier (and more dangerous) to under-expose than to over-expose, so you just want to get as much light onto the negative as you can get away with. I With 400 film, for ordinary interiors I tend to just shoot at or near the limits of the camera/lens combo.
At night ... 15th or 30th @f/2 for a 35mm lens; 30th or 60th @1.4 or f/1.5 for the 50mm.

Interiors with some daylight give you a little more flexibility. My 28mm is a favorite lens and it almost always shot wide open, f/3.5 at 30th or 15th of a second. And the 85mm become an indoor super telephoto usually 30th or 60th wide open at f/2.

That's the point of the putting up with all that weight and cost for those high-aperature high-quality lenses of whatever make -- you might as well use 'em wide open when you need to. I found myself at a cousin's bat mitzvah last month and decided to quietly take a couple pictures to send to the family. It was dark and backlit, and my longest lens was a 105mm f/2.5 Nikkor. The "correct" exposure was probably about 15th of a second at 2.8. I didn't think I could handhold the 105 at 15th of a second, so I shot three frames at 30th of a second at f/2.5. Two were sharp, and one of them caught everyone in a very natural moment. Exposure lattitude on the negative film made up for the under-exposure. I've found over the years that it's better to get the moment, then fix exposure problems later in the darkroom (wet or digital).


Stage lighting or spot-lighting is really tough with any kind of meter. Given that bright office light with daylight windows is in the realm of 60@f/4, I'd probably use 60 at 5.6 as a starting point, then evaluate the shadows and hightlights and adjust accordingly.

 

[aizan]

Point the incident meter down...I gotta try that.

 

[Hektor]

Hi Doug, Hmmm, I know what you mean about incident reading to get a feel of it, - but, - often, stage lighting is about two stops brighter than ordinary ambient artificial - and you can see it ! - It's the shadows that fool you and the meters !

Sometimes it's better to put the meter aside and read the instructions for exposure printed on the inside of the film packaging, - or the data sheet.

A common mistake is to think that "pushing" alters the speed of the film, - it doesn't, - it just puts the highlights where you can see 'em and print the image accordingly. It's always more reliable to start with the published film speed and then assess the effect of special development technique separately when deciding on exposure settings. Whew !, - I'll shutup now !

Regards John C.

 

[sbug]

FWIW, this is probably the most interesting thread I have read at any photo related website in months.
Anyway, on a recent business trip to Seattle I brought my Canonet QL17 G-III with because I knew I’d have some time to wander the city and take photos. The meter had stopped working a week earlier but I figured the Wein cell had died. Well, that wasn’t it so I was stuck in Seattle with no meter, having left my handheld meter at home. The pictures came out surprisingly well (color neg which helped). I used the Sunny 16 rule and made educated guesses. Frankly, I have much more confidence now since that trial by fire and feel a lot better about my understanding of light. It’s not perfect for sure but I’m making progress. Plus, as someone said a few posts ago, I’m now much more comfortable with getting a great picture than getting a great exposure.
Scott

 

[Toby]

A lot of you are talking about meters but surely what film you use has great bearing on your method of metering. If I'm shooting b&w I'm happy to meter off of a appropraite surface maybe adding half a stop (i've always been a bit optimistic) and shooting away. If I'm using transparency I would always use an incident meter -there's no real room for error.

Also the type of film changes my whole metering philosophy with b&w it's metering for the shadows and up with trannie highlights and down By which I mean trying to "hold" the highlights within the limited range of the film -surely you have to take the nature of your film stock into account?

As an aside did you know the standards for incident and camera meters are different incidents are based on 22% grey and camera meters on 18% grey I assume something to do with either motion picture stock or tranny with handhelds - that's why they never exactly agree. ( I'm sure I read this somewhere if it's nonsense I apologise in advance)

 

[Hektor]

Toby, It's the same thing really, it's just that the problem areas shift from the shadows to the highlights when you reversal process the film, - logical really !

I agree that most ttl camera meters are optimised for slide film but dialing in a different ASA deals with that entirely.

After that it's just down to how you want to deal with contrast range in the subject.

Regards John C.

 

[back alley]

'FWIW, this is probably the most interesting thread I have read at any photo related website in months.'

scott, a bit off topic, but i'm curious about what makes this thread so interesting for you?

joe

 

[Toby]

Toby, It's the same thing really, it's just that the problem areas shift from the shadows to the highlights when you reversal process the film, - logical really !

The tolerace of transparency is lower though and you can't save it at the printing stage it all has to be done "in camera" -like it always should be really.

 

[Hektor]

Toby, It's true that reversal processing a film gives it a smaller contrast range, but thats no different a problem than having a contrasty scene in the first place.

It's usual to have to make a decision about where to make the interesting bits of the picture appear on the density gradient of the negative, and that is most appropriately done at the taking stage by decideing how much exposure to give.

Usually you want faces to appear as darkish grey on a negative with BW film, and overall not so much density that you can't read the film data sheet through the neg.

The principles are equally valid whether its neg, pos, BW, or colour film, but some films have a smaller contrast range, and some scenes are very contrasty, (stage lighting) !

Regards JC

 

[Hektor]

Sorry Joe, It must be a pain if you have to read this stuff for the public good, take heart that you are the guardian of both our safety and our collective sense of humour. JC 🙂

 

[Toby]

Toby, It's true that reversal processing a film gives it a smaller contrast range, but thats no different a problem than having a contrasty scene in the first place.

It's usual to have to make a decision about where to make the interesting bits of the picture appear on the density gradient of the negative, and that is most appropriately done at the taking stage by decideing how much exposure to give.

Usually you want faces to appear as darkish grey on a negative with BW film, and overall not so much density that you can't read the film data sheet through the neg.

The principles are equally valid whether its neg, pos, BW, or colour film, but some films have a smaller contrast range, and some scenes are very contrasty, (stage lighting) !

Regards JC

What I was trying to get at was that tips like "point your incident meter towards the ground" need some qualification - this sounds OK for neg but bad for transparency. I was trying to talk about general photography. for contrasty scenes I would use my spotmeter ( I know no one else has one but at one point I had 3 light meters and only 2 cameras -we all have our problems) to give me a picture of the overall contrast and I would try visualise what I wanted from there knowing I may have to accept "losing" some of the scene. With tranny I would start seriously thinking about fill in flash -not an rf strongpoint but this is a whole other thread

 

[Hektor]

At the risk of getting boring, pointing the meter up or down is the same as adjusting the asa setting up or down, - it just making a choice about where to place the interesting bits of the scene on the density gradient of the film. - Fundamentally speaking nothing to do with neg or transparency, but a choice made because the contrast range of the scene won't easily fit on the film, - i.e. something will have to suffer. Otherwise you wouldn't need to do it !

 

[RJBender]

At the risk of getting boring, pointing the meter up or down is the same as adjusting the asa setting up or down, - it just making a choice about where to place the interesting bits of the scene on the density gradient of the film. - Fundamentally speaking nothing to do with neg or transparency, but a choice made because the contrast range of the scene won't easily fit on the film, - i.e. something will have to suffer. Otherwise you wouldn't need to do it !

Print film will give you 2 extra stops of contrast over slide film. Your eyes see 12 stops but your film only records 5-7 stops of contrast. There's a good article here:
http://photoinf.com/Image_Balance/Bob_Radcliff/Five_Stops_From_The_Edge.htm

R.J.

 

[Hektor]

.....After sleeping on it,

And with a great deal of cosideration.....

I have decided.......

That the only true purpose of a lightmeter .... is,.....

To check that you estimated the exposure correctly !!

JC

 

[Hektor]

and even then it might lie.

 

[VinceC]

I read an article once that said HCB's guests used to amuse themselves by asking him to estimate exposure, then double-checking his reply with a light meter. He was always correct.

Consistent film emulsions were manufactured before accurate meters were widely availalabe. So once upon a time, photographers had to learn how to correctly expose using their judgement. It's something of a lost craft in modern days -- a curiosity on par with those who, in pre-writing societies, were able to train their memories to accurately recall spoken passages of astonishing length, such as Beowulf or the works of Homer.