[Leica] RE: exposure rules

[Jim Brick <jim@brick.org>]

This discussion is about transparency film. If you "blow out" the
highlights by too much exposure, they are unrecoverable. It's clear film.
On the other hand, if the highlights show detail, and the shadows are dark,
that's acceptable. And sometimes, with masks or photoshop, you can find
some detail in the shadows. It's not clear film and there could be some
image there. You never want to lose the highlights. Nothing worse than an
overexposed slide. Underexposed slides are acceptable and many times
recoverable.

Jim


At 11:16 PM 1/17/99 -0800, you wrote:
>
>Khoffberg writes:
> > [...]  What I got
> > out of this discussion is pay attention to the top of the range and don't
> > let the highlights get blown out.
>
>This topic got its start with the rule "Expose for the highlights",
>which seems to actually be "expose for the brightest highlight that
>you want to record with detail".
>
>Assuming that the scene you're working with has a greater dynamic
>range than the film can handle, this says you'll lose detail in the
>shadow areas *and* that you're not going to explicitly decide about
>how/where that happens.
>
>Is there a reason that one doesn't expose for the darkest shadow that
>one want's to hold detail, and let the highlights fall where they may?
>
>Is there something different about the shadow end of the range, is it
>that the highlights are usually what's defining the focus of the image
>so one needs to get them right, or is it just that you have to pick
>one end or the other end to think about/nail down and tradition
>dictates working with the highlights?
>
>g.
>