Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1999/09/25
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]>If films are not a panchromatic as they are made out to be ... Few B&W films have an absolutely even spectral sensitivity. Most have some dips and bulges in the curve. Similarly, silicon photodiode, CdS and Selenium cell meters (built-in and hand-held) have their own dips and humps in spectral sensitivity. That's one reason why I do a lot of "testing" with films, developers, etc. What a meter reads requires interpretation to arrive at proper exposure values. I once did a portrait series using a very odd light source like the LPS lamps. The vertical spikes in the lamp output combined with Technical Pan and some weird, home-brew developer that I was playing with (jeez, I've even forgotten which home-brew it was now) produced some very interesting tonalities with Caucasian skin tones. It was a lot of fun to experiment with it and led to a small show which got very nice reviews. Godfrey