I'm not a soccer mum so I won't be going to any high school games, I don't think we even that many here, just external u-18 leagues not associated with schools.
Though in all fairness, it's a legitimate question what 'meter reading' means in this context. Highlight reading, i.e. incident? At which point, any concept of ISO negative speed goes out of the window.
To return to the OP´s question, you can certainly underexpose Portra 400 more than any other colour neg film I've ever tried, and still get usable pics IF you do your own scanning and post-production, but the relationship of that to speed and metering must always remain disputable.
Cheers,
R.
In that case, Portra 800 takes it better, it has a longer range before the toe hits, and a better toe.
If you are shooting box speed, and spot meter your darkest reflective detail you want to record and expose at that reading minus x stops at place it at the bottom of the curve, depending on other factors that may well be underexposure at box speed and require a push to achieve normal density for mid tones.
"Now, a floodlit football game consists (or can consist) of black sky and more or less brightly lit players, so what do you meter? And even if you use an incident meter, how worried are you about shadow detail? That's what I meant when I queried 'misinterpreting the meter reading' in an earlier post."
Incident metering the light your subject in will give correct density for mid tones. IE; mid tones will be placed at mid tones.
So how would an invercone reading give me any advantage in under exposing and pushing the development over a reflective reading in this scene?
Cheers,
When you scene is composed mostly of highlights or mostly of shadows, reflective metering will fail you, unless you make a guestimate compensation.
Incident metering gives the same reading no matter the subject if the light source is the same. I would stick to incident meter main subject light instead of metering reflectivity most of the time.
And I completely disagree about the nature of a 'correct' exposure with Roger, there is such a thing as a correct exposure. Correct isn't what gives you the most pleasing image, deviation to give you the most pleasing image is creative choice. Portra 400 is the same sensitivity for everyone, just like 5DII and x ISO is the same sensitivity. Deviations are just personal preference.
You will I'm always suspicious of these push tests. They often look like the person doing the metering was misinterpreting their meter readings.
My pushing (my set of 1600) wasn't a test, it was a need for more speed, as I do not like simply underexposing (Even Portra 400) and resulting with thinner than normal negs I was hand held shooting with an RB67 in the city. The 25600 is metered for incident, so it is metering the main light of the scene and placing midtones in that light @ 25600, as I wanted to explore the limits, the 7m 30s developing time (38c) is very heavily underdeveloped, at the time I was only doing +15% consecutively for each stop, and that falls apart after first 2 on C-41 which I did not consider. I haven't re-visited it, as it's not worth revisiting. But given it still records midtones (and a bit under) at 6 stops under, you can see it has a long scale to record under mid tones, given how thin it was at the push time though, simple underexposure would have recorded less, so I think if you have :
1/x shutter, f/y aperture ratio, and 400 ISO as your chosen exposure, we'll call it EV Z, and you spot meter the darkest detail and it's EV Z-6, that area would achieve similar density at the 7m 30s push time as that shot which was very thin, is recordable detail, you'd think that with less than half the amount of processing time it'd not show up since the same exposure level as EV Z-6 at 1/x shutter and f/y aperture came out very thin, but the rate at which density builds drops rapidly.
In any case, the Portra 400 v 500T test on twin lens life, with no pushing, while who knows what the metering was, each comparison shot received the same exposure and Portra 400 breaks down earlier than 500T.
Now what I would like to add to this is that scene contrast does not change your film speed. If you have a lit room with a very short range, placing midtones at midtones density is correct (though you may have a different idea of what looks best), and this is what manufacturer sheets would also agree with at box speed for the speed of their film, if you suddenly put up a cutter/flag on the light and shaded half the room from light, or half the subject/etc and that half now drops below what will be recorded on the film. The sensitivity (speed) of your film has not changed, it is not any different to what it was before. Increasing exposure 2 stops may record that shadow detail, you are then placing midtones in the highlight density region, now that is overexposure, even though you have a massive amount of room on C-41 for highlights to extend.
As contrast contraction and expansion isn't a part of the C-41 workflow, nor generally do you need to contract from overexposure anyway with C-41. You can do it if your lab agrees, or you process yourself. But that's a different story.
