Metering Techniques: Introduction to Handheld Exposure Meters

Chris, I'm running some Neopan 400 through the Leica at the moment. I live in the hills. Snow has fallen. Today I was on a snow covered summit in the shade. Much of the view was in the shade but much of it, and some summits across the valley, was in sunlight. My incident meter (in the shade) said 1/250 f8. I shot at that thinking I'll let the highlights take care of themselves. Was I right to do this?
I then decided to under expose the shadows by a stop hoping to protect the highlights.
N.B. running it through at 320iso as is my first time with this film which expired in 2011.
Pete
 
Pete B said:
Chris, I'm running some Neopan 400 through the Leica at the moment. I live in the hills. Snow has fallen. Today I was on a snow covered summit in the shade. Much of the view was in the shade but much of it, and some summits across the valley, was in sunlight. My incident meter (in the shade) said 1/250 f8. I shot at that thinking I'll let the highlights take care of themselves. Was I right to do this?
I then decided to under expose the shadows by a stop hoping to protect the highlights.
N.B. running it through at 320iso as is my first time with this film which expired in 2011.
Pete
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I need to do a separate tutorial on using an incident meter for negative film (the same technique applies to either color or black & white neg films).

I think what you did will work ok. In such high contrast light, for negative films, there are two ways to incident meter:

1) Do as you did, meter in the shade and give one stop less exposure. The highlights will probably still be over exposed, but not so much that you cannot save them using lower contrast paper (if you print in the darkroom) or in Photoshop if you scan your film.

2) Meter in the shade, give the exposure the meter indicates, and reduce film developing time by 25%. The shorter developing time lowers contrast, ensuring detail in the bright snow in the sunlit areas. Reducing developing time causes about a one stop loss of effective film speed, which is why you don't give less exposure as suggested in #1. This will give the same effective shadow detail but lower highlight density on the film, making the negs easier to print.
 
Looks as though I need to bookmark this, and have a really good read through!

I use a Weston Euro-Master with whatever dodgy old relic I have to hand (currently a Certo Dolly with ReraPan 127 in it... I did say dodgy!) so anything that gives me more idea of what is going on with my light measurements must be a good thing.

I also have a Nikon D200 that must be of similar vintage to your Canon 5D, and I find a similar problem to you with the histogram - even when converted to JPEG, sometimes there are some very odd results. I shoot a lot of cricket, where the players are mostly wearing white, and a day where the light changes rapidly plays havoc with my control of exposure if I don't have my wits about me. More than once I've wound the exposure compensation the wrong way...

Right, must go and have a read... thank you for posting this!

Adrian
 
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