Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1999/09/19
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]From: Godfrey DiGiorgi <ramarren@bayarea.net> Sent: Sunday, September 19, 1999 22:13 Subject: Re: [Leica] incident metering techniques > It's possible that you might want to bring the statue's > value down a little to accomodate the exposure latitude > of the film you're using, then you would bias the exposure > reading given by the meter to suit. I tried a couple of different things. Shots metered directly off the statue (I was close enough that the entire metering spot was covered) were underexposed somewhat. By pointing the spot partly to one side and/or manually fixing the exposure (+1 or +2 EV), I got something more correct. I was hampered a bit in that ISO 100 was pretty slow for this indoor shot--exposures were around 1/15 to 1/30 sec. One nice thing I noticed is that camera shake was not obvious in the photographs. This was true even for a photo taken at 1/8 sec. in a corridor. > Situations like this are a perfect reason to bracket as > the final outcome of the image will change to some degree > through a 2EV exposure range and it's useful to be able > to pick that which works the best. I did bracket. It was still kind of on the dark side, though. > A spot meter, pointed at the tower itself, could give you > a reading which is probably 1-2 EV too high since the tower > could be less than an 18% reflectance gray target ... I need to keep reminding myself of this 18% gray. In this case, the tower actually is pretty close to an 18% gray (it is the color of milk chocolate). Maybe the current paint job was chosen with photographers in mind! > ... you'll likely overexpose it if you read the tower itself. The tower is a very delicate iron lattice and at a distance there is significant daylight shining through even for a spot meter. It can be hard to gauge exactly how much is influencing the meter, though. I have learned from experience to overexpose by 1-2 EV, except with the F5, which correctly exposes without any compensation. -- Anthony