Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1999/01/17
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Eric Welch writes:
> >So Ted (or anyone else), if you're reading, what do you mean by metering for
> >the highlights? If the hottest reading in the scene is the water at EV 10,
> >what exposure value do you shoot?
>
> I'll not propose to answer for Ted (he doesn't think much of the Zone
> system, so zones aren't much help here <G>). To meter for the highlights is
> to place the bright part of the scene where you want it.
>
> I learned to shoot with chrome film, so this is a natural for me. Though
> I'm way out of practice now because I shoot only neg. film at work. In your
> example, you want to keep the brightest part of the scene at about Zone 6,
> 6.5 or even 7. Depends on how bright it is over the mid-gray tone you want
> to represent.
>
> It would help to not think in EV at all. With an incident meter, EV would
> be whatever the meter says. You use Zones if you're taking reflective meter
> readings. So say you're shooting a bride with a white dress. You meter the
> bright part of the dress at about Zone VII and leave it. Don't bother
> metering the shadows. Let them go where they may. Slide film demands you
> keep the highlights from blowing out. Lack of detail in the highlights
> kills slides faster than about anything else.
The mixing of Zones and EV's muddies the waters for me, since my none
of my meters read in either (though I think I understand both).
In real life, I'm stuck on the nuts and bolts of this. Does this
sound like another correct way of stating it:
o Slide film has about 5 stops of dynamic range.
o Find the brightest element in the scene in which one want's detail,
spot meter it. With this exposure, the brightest element would
be exposed to be 18% grey.
o Choose an exposure that is 2 or 2 1/3 stops faster than that
brightest element, which underexposes it and moves it up towards
the high end of the dynamic range.
Does that sound like a reasonable game plan?
g.