Share your experience

[bmattock]

Firmly rooted in Zone system huh?

How do you formally measure the latitude of a new film negative or posititve?

Thanks

Nick

Not exactly rooted in the zone system. I read a great book called "How to be Positive about the Negative" by RW Behan and it made a lot of things clear to me.

I measure the latitude of a new film by testing it! You've seen my lens tests, I do the same with a new film. Most of the time. Sometimes I just guess at it. You just set up a stock shot, and bracket the same shot for the whole roll, from -10 stops to +10. That should give you the range.

Best Regards,

Bill Mattocks

 

[simonankor]

Sunny 16

Sunny 16

I only own two metered cameras, both of which have been lent out to people! So, with my Canon P or FED 2... Sunny 16 would have been my preferred method.

It's what I usually use anyway. The only time I've used my Nikon FE lately was to meter for my Rolleiflex with Provia in it. 😀

 

[ch1]

I would have metered to the bright "shingle" in the near background and then underexposed a stop.

 

[Sonnar Brian]

Retina IIIc, reflected reading, measured off of my hand oriented in same direction as subject:
http://www.rangefinderforum.com/photopost/showphoto.php?photo=2053&cat=3204
The IIIc has an Incident Attachment, but I did not use it for this.

Konica S2, set to manual mode, again meter off of my hand oriented in same direction.
http://www.rangefinderforum.com/photopost/showphoto.php?photo=1619&cat=3204

Contax IIIa, Direct reading with built in meter:
http://www.rangefinderforum.com/photopost/showphoto.php?photo=2337&cat=3204

Vitessa T Built in Selenium Meter:
http://www.rangefinderforum.com/photopost/showphoto.php?photo=2420&cat=3204
The original Color Skopar.

Canon IIf with Canon 50mm F1.5:
http://www.rangefinderforum.com/photopost/showphoto.php?photo=8312&cat=3204
http://www.rangefinderforum.com/photopost/showphoto.php?photo=8309&cat=3204
Just guessed it.

 

[Sonnar Brian]

And the Canon 7 Built in Meter, kept it away from the direct sunlit parts:

 

[Kin Lau]

With an M6, from your position, I would tilt the camera down slightly, pointing it at her knees perhaps, to get a meter reading, then recompose and shoot.

I'd use colour neg film, and do what Frank suggested. With my Oly XA, there's a "backlit" function that opens up by 1.5 stops, so I'd use that if that's what I had.

If I didn't have a meter, then like the others mentioned, Sunny 16 and open up 1 stop.

With colour neg film, you can almost always open up 1 stop and over expose.

If I _had_ to shot this on slidefilm, I'd take my 350D along, take a shot, check the histogram, and then adjust appropriately 🙂

 

[djon]

Nick, you're using a camera with a ttl meter. That means it's barely a Leica...it'd be a Voigtlander if it had a worse rangefinder.

TTL means one cannot do an adequate job of quickly and accurately exposing. See Mr. Mattock's demonstration of the reason. Or more simply, what in the scene would you call middle grey? I'd say nothing was middle grey. Meaning the meter is no good unless one is is willing to miss photo ops in order to think one's way through lighting situations.

If one expects to shoot in highly contrasty light, one shoots lower contrast fillum. This ain't rocket science. In chromes it suggests Astia. Not Velvia or Kodachrome. Color neg's more forgiving in these situations.

 

[FrankS]

"TTL means one cannot do an adequate job of quickly and accurately exposing. See Mr. Mattock's demonstration of the reason. Or more simply, what in the scene would you call middle grey? I'd say nothing was middle grey. Meaning the meter is no good unless one is is willing to miss photo ops in order to think one's way through lighting situations."

I'll have to respectfully disagree with this. It's almost always easy to find an area to point a ttl meter that's a middle grey, even if it means splitting a sunny/shadow area. This is what I suggested doing by pointing the camera at her knees.

 

[bmattock]

I'll have to respectfully disagree with this. It's almost always easy to find an area to point a ttl meter that's a middle grey, even if it means splitting a sunny/shadow area. This is what I suggested doing by pointing the camera at her knees.

Frank, with respect, I disagree. Eyes lie about middle grey - they can't even tell when white light is not white. Film isn't fooled, but eyes are. You've seen the optical illusions that are posted here from time to time - two blocks of what appear to be darker and lighter grey. But they are the same. It is their context that makes our eyes see them as darker or lighter. This is not an oddity, it is the normal situation, we just never get told the trick when we're in real life.

What eyes are NOT easily fooled about are the brightest and darkest spots in a scene. If you know the borders, you can determine the middle. If you know what you think is the middle, you run the chance of guessing wrong and running your exposure off the top or the bottom of your film's latitude (right or left if we're visualizing a histogram).

Imagine being given a piece of cloth, and told to cut it in half. Would you guess where the middle might be, or would you measure from the ends (by the expedient method of folding the cloth in half)? If you know the ends, you know the middle and cannot be wrong about it.

I only wish I did this more often myself. I preach it, it works like a champ, but I often use my TTL and bang away like a mad thing, bracketing as I go. I will stipulate that there is a time for doing the math and a time for taking the shot with a best guess.

Best Regards,

Bill Mattocks

 

[nickchew]

I only wish I did this more often myself. I preach it, it works like a champ, but I often use my TTL and bang away like a mad thing, bracketing as I go. I will stipulate that there is a time for doing the math and a time for taking the shot with a best guess.

Bill

YOur explanations about how you think and the process of working out exposure is very well explained. That description should be saved as an instruction piece for all.

That was the kind of responses I wanted to get from starting this post. I'm woefully aware that I miss too many shots with poor exposures and that the way I work is not optimal. for that reason I'm interested to understand how others work and more importantly the way they think.

Thanks... lots

Nick

 

[FrankS]

Theoretically, Bill, you are correct. In practice, my method works for me. Keep in mind that I'm using B+W neg film with some latitude for exposure error, and I do my own printing so I can tweak when necessary. If one is doing studio work, your methodology is perfect, when doing RF photography and trying to capture fleeting moments, I'll stick to how I do it. I think we're both right. How's that for diplomacy? 🙂

 

[raid]

The camera and lens used would not be as important to me as the film used. A slide film would be differently exposed than a negative film. I would still use a spotmeter and meter from her face and then adjust according to her skin tone and the light on it. With a zoom lens on an SLR I would just zoom in and take a reading from her face. With a TLR I would use a spotmeter; with a rangefinder camera I would do the same.

 

[bmattock]

Theoretically, Bill, you are correct. In practice, my method works for me. Keep in mind that I'm using B+W neg film with some latitude for exposure error, and I do my own printing so I can tweak when necessary. If one is doing studio work, your methodology is perfect, when doing RF photography and trying to capture fleeting moments, I'll stick to how I do it. I think we're both right. How's that for diplomacy? 🙂

I'm good with that!

Best Regards,

Bill Mattocks

 

[raid]

Bill: I use a handheld spotmeter to take several readings across each frame, looking for the lightest and darkest spots and then deciding on a suitable exposure. As a statistician, I am used to create these "histograms" in my mind to get a better picture of each situation. As a quality control specialist, I know from experience to consider several aspects of a "process" before finding a solution for the problem.
😉
=========================================

"What eyes are NOT easily fooled about are the brightest and darkest spots in a scene. If you know the borders, you can determine the middle. If you know what you think is the middle, you run the chance of guessing wrong and running your exposure off the top or the bottom of your film's latitude (right or left if we're visualizing a histogram)."

 

[RayPA]

Frank, with respect, I disagree. Eyes lie about middle grey - they can't even tell when white light is not white. Film isn't fooled, but eyes are. You've seen the optical illusions that are posted here from time to time - two blocks of what appear to be darker and lighter grey. But they are the same. It is their context that makes our eyes see them as darker or lighter. This is not an oddity, it is the normal situation, we just never get told the trick when we're in real life.

What eyes are NOT easily fooled about are the brightest and darkest spots in a scene. If you know the borders, you can determine the middle. If you know what you think is the middle, you run the chance of guessing wrong and running your exposure off the top or the bottom of your film's latitude (right or left if we're visualizing a histogram).

...

Best Regards,

Bill Mattocks

Hmmm.
Lot's of respectful disareeing, so I'll add mine. 🙂 The eye is capable of distinguishing tonal separation within a range, maybe not infinitely, but certainly enough to find an approximate middle tone, and the zones around that, as well as the extremes.

Being able to see a scene, such as the one pictured above, and meter it "correctly" is often one of the skills that differntiates photographers. Experienced photographers can very often pre-visualize a scene and see where the shadow, middle and highlight tones will fall. They'll locate one of those three zones instantly, meter it, adjust accordingly, make an exposure without metering the boundaries, and faithfully reproduce the scene (if that's what you're after), or better yet, provide an artistic interpretation (their pre-visualized image) by playing with those values.

I've seen a few photography, and workshop, instructors look at a scene and point to the exact spot where the middle grey would fall, and verify that with meter readings. It's not really necessary to find middle grey exactly, you can find the tone you want to place as middle grey and meter it, that's basically your middle grey and you then work around that value (stopping down, or opening up).

🙂

 

[Poptart]

I generally shoot very quickly and take no time for metering--so I use auto exposure.

 

[Benjamin Marks]

Bill: I wasn't clear enough, I think. What I meant was that with an incident meter, you hold the meter at your subject and point the dome at the camera (diffuser averages all the light falling on the subject and gives you a good general reading). If the light falling on the photographer is of the same quality and direction as on the subject, you can "cheat" by performing the metering function in the photographer's location. Just remember to point the meter in the correct direction ;-).