Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1999/01/18
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]This is a multi-part message in MIME format. - --------------AE64E6326EE1A4A2AA0DD1CF Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit George Hartzell wrote: > 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? Primarily because the film looks funny that way. Any blown highlight seems to stand out. Of course, there are exceptions. Interestingly, there is a fashiony style recently to shoot backlit and slightly over-expose for the shadows on low contrast film such as EPP. You can see this also in Conde Nast Traveler sometimes--but they are mostly hiring fashion shooters. Trendy. Everything looks washed out. In corporate work, or news, I'd get fired for such images. The contrast range differs in various films, of course. It is easy to blow highlights on EPP and very difficult on Velvia. This is one reason I use the Velvia. I can shoot a backlit scene with Velvia, expose for the shadow and hold the highlights--even bright white directly lit. In fact, Velvia is best shot backlit because of this. Front lit, the contrast to enormous. But for people, especially women where you can use the overexposure to eliminate some of the facial detail, the EPP works well. E100 also good in this regard. Velvia is the only Fuji trany film I have shoot more than 2-3 rolls of, but I suspect that RDP is similar to EPP. > 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? > The contrast of slide film is the major reason for the advancement of subtle fill flash. Those of us who shoot for publication try to keep the brightest highlight and the darkest shadow within a four stop range. That is the range of a printing press. Anymore than four stops (and that isn't much) and separator has to decide whether to loose highlights or shadows. We must thank Sinar Bron for doing extensive publication of this concept (they used it to push film plane metering, but you can do it with a spot meter just as easily). When I can control transparency film to that extent, the reproduction is much better with detail (barely) in both highlight and shadow. We could probably argue the artistic merits of all this, but clients, frankly, are usually more interested in seeing things clearly than with dramatic photos. If you can do both, you've got a winner. The beauty of the incident meter is that it does calculations for you. You can point the dome at the sun and know the exposure for the highlight. Shade it and you have the shadow. If you are shooting a side lit scene, orient it the way you are shooting and it will split the difference, without regard for the reflectivity of the subject. There are three other methods of controlling where the highlight/shadow details are going to fall. 1. If you are going to shoot a whole roll or more of one scene, take your best guess and run through six, expendable frames, then shot the rest at the same exposure and do a snip test of the lead on the roll. Then push or pull according to taste. 2. Bracket like mad. Ernst Haas did it. Jay Maisel does it with a vengence. All the Nat. Geographic shooters do it. No shame. Sometimes you just don't know what will look best until you see film. 3. Using your best practice with methods 1 & 2 above, you can push a low contrast scene to increase contrast and "clean up" highlights and pull film for very high contrast scenes. The later is delicate, but can work, especially for publication. Hope this wasn't too basic. But having only shot some thousands of rolls, I'm still learning. And still use every CYA tactic I can muster. donal - -- Donal Philby San Diego www.donalphilby.com - --------------AE64E6326EE1A4A2AA0DD1CF Content-Type: text/x-vcard; charset=us-ascii; name="donalphilby.vcf" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Description: Card for Donal Philby Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="donalphilby.vcf" begin:vcard n:Philby;Donal x-mozilla-html:FALSE url:www.donalphilby.com adr:;;;;San Diego;; version:2.1 email;internet:donalphilby@earthlink.net fn:Donal Philby end:vcard - --------------AE64E6326EE1A4A2AA0DD1CF--