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A Leica Film question


kivis

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Akiva:

 

Living in NM, I am keenly aware of the bright sun. My best solution is an ND filter, and several strengths are useful as well. It doesn't affect the colors like a polarizer can..

 

Regards,

Michael.

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None of the above would be my answer. If you have a situation with lots of bright sky etc, make sure you meter the part of your subject you want properly exposed. It's OK to use the camera as a meter, and then use it as a camera: walk up to the subject and pretend the camera is a spot meter, then step back, compose and take it. The lazy person's version of this is to meter the ground in front of your subject, then compose. If the situation is so bright that even then you are going to over-expose, you might then use a ND filter, swap to a slower film and so on.

 

Chris

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All good stuff. Went on an air boat ride in the Everglades (very sunny) and used an ND2 filter and still got highlights blown. Was very difficult to meter on a darker area as everything was just so bright. Thinking of going with an ND 4 or even higher filter.:cool:

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The meter is calibrated on the assumption that you'll point it at an area that is (on average) of average brightness. If you meter on a darker-than-average area you therefore make things worse by guaranteeing overexposure (unless you are making compensating adjustments elsewhere).

 

An ND filter is only necessary if you want to use wide apertures in bright light. Because the exposure meter is behind the lens and therefore behind the filter, adding an ND filter simply causes the meter to increase the exposure it gives by exactly enough to compensate for the density of the filter - in other words it has zero effect on over/underexposure.

 

Beyond this it's not easy to be specific without knowing whether you're using reversal (slide) film, colour negative or b&w negative.

 

Simplifying, reversal film cannot cover the entire range from bright sand or snow to dark shadows. On a sunny day you have to choose which is most important - usually it's the highlights - and sacrifice the rest (or use fill-in flash to lighten the shadows, which is very difficult because of the slow synch speed of a film Leica).

 

With negative films - colour or b&w - you can't really whether the highlights are blown out from a machine-made print: you need to examine the negative. If the whole negative is quite dark and the dark areas are solid black, yes, it was badly overexposed.

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It is very very sunny here in South Florida. How to keep highlights from being blown out? Under expose? ND2 or 4 filter? Lower speed film?:confused:

 

Just expose your film properly.

 

Try Ansel Adams "The Negative" book as a good start. ND filters just allow you to use wider apertures or slower shutter speeds (or both) than you would without them. You still need to understand how to expose correctly.

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It is very very sunny here in South Florida. How to keep highlights from being blown out? Under expose? ND2 or 4 filter? Lower speed film?:confused:

 

If your problem is too high a dynamic range, try under-developing the film by say 30% to bring the highlights down a couple of stops. Development +/- is the way to control the range and in bright sunlight that means minus development.

 

This will also adversely compress your shadow detail and to compensate for that you'll need to raise your exposure by half a stop, say. The top end is more sensitive than the bottom end, so you'll be pushing it up a bit with added exposure and bringing it right down with reduced development leaving the mid-tones and shadows where they should be.

 

Although a scientific approach and testing is appropriate, trial and error will get you there quite quickly, say a couple of films and you'll have it sussed.

 

A graduated ND filter can also help bring the sky down, but is not much good for the highlights on the ground.

Edited by Rolo
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Hello Everybody,

 

First a quick fix sometimes:

 

The closer you get to the equator and the nearer it is to Mid-Summer the lower the ISO you need for the film you are using. An ISO of 25 is often quite useable. One of the reasons Kodachrome 25 lasted as long as it did.

 

Conversely the further North or South you go and the closer it is to Mid-Winter the higher the ISO you need. Think Tri-X.

 

Now, to add to the previous Posts:

 

With negatives, color or back and white, chromogenic or silver, if you print this text on a piece of white paper you should be able to read it thru the darkest part of a properly exposed negative. This is the brightest part of the print. If you can't you have burned out highlights.

 

To take a reflected light reading please remember the majority of meters are calibrated to suggest an exposure reading based on a scene with a normal contrast range and an average scene reflectivity of 18%. Often called Zone V (That is "5" written in Roman Numerals) on a scale that traditionally goes from 0 (Invented in Holland long after the fall of Rome) to IX.

 

Luckily a substantial part of the world we look at is Zone V. Easy. Meter, set, photograph.

 

Now two different worlds:

 

Let us say the primary subject we want to feature is a rock in the shade under a tree but we want to photograph the whole scene while featuring this rock. For the sake of this discussion we will assume this is an average reflectance rock.

 

We meter the rock. The meter assumes Zone V. We know what we metered in the scene is Zone III. Adjust the exposure in the camera by either closing the lens two stops or increasing the shutter speed two stops or some combination of the two.To put it another way set the exposure @ EV +2. This will produce a photograph of the scene with the rock properly exposed and the rest falling where it may in relation to the rock. The important item.

 

Now it's tomorrow. It snowed. The snowfall was moderately heavy. We want a picture of the entire scene. We meter. Meter the entire scene which yesterday was Zone V and is Zone VII today. Give two stops more exposure. The reverse of what we did yesterday for the rock photograph. Today EV -2.

 

When thinking about these examoles logically it seems backwards: Darker scene give less light. Brighter scene give more light. In fact this is correct as stated.

 

You see: Film only has one speed given standardized and not accomodated processing. What we are doing above is adapting the meter reading to the specific non-Zone V subject + adjusting the exposure to accomodate for this.

 

This is actually substantially quicker and easier to do than it is to read about.

 

Also, most of what you will actually meter in real life will be between Zones III and VII

with most of that being IV to VI. As stated above V is the single most evaluated (Not to be confused with evaluative metering.) which is why it was chosen to be the default setting in most all meters (Non-Evaluative).

 

There is another approach:

 

The easiest way to get a good negative/transparency in most situations is to take an incident meter and walk up to the subject, point the peak of the hemisphere at where the camera will be and take a reading.

 

Sometimes with very strong light coming at the subject you might want to point the hemisphere between the light source and the camera. Experiment.

 

If the light is the same where you are standing or is the same somewhere between you and the subject you can take the sensor to where the light is the same and take a reading. Experiment.

 

BTW: If you know the subject to be photographed you might let them hold the meter while you are standing where you want to take the picture from. First ask them to point the peak of the hemisphere at you while looking at the dial/panel if possible. (Many incident meters have rotating hemispheres.)

 

The meter should be previosly pre-set by you.

 

Then ask them to push the button. They can then read the newly-arrived number to you. The rest of your setting. They don't have to know anything about photography to do this. They just have to see and read one new number.

 

Incident light reading is that easy.

 

It is by far the easiest and most accurate method of determining the greatest number of correct exposures.

 

Best Regards,

 

Michael

Edited by Michael Geschlecht
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With negatives, color or back and white, chromogenic or silver, if you print this text on a piece of white paper you should be able to read it thru the darkest part of a properly exposed negative. This is the brightest part of the print. If you can't you have burned out highlights.

 

Not so.

 

What Michael describes is a probably-overexposed negative from which it may be difficult to make a good print - but that doesn't necessarilly mean the highlights are burnt out. That doesn't happen until areas of different brightness in the original scene are rendered as areas of identical density in the negative.

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Very strong light in New Zealand, even in winter. What film are you using? Fuji Astia 100F handles records excellent highlight and shade detail. Even so, sometimes it's just a case of exposing for the highlights and letting the shadow areas go dark.

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South Florida contrast is brutal. All you can do is try to reduce the range from highlights to shadows. In B&W you can adjust your development (not an option in color). You can use flash fill when possible, but with M camera sync @ 1/50 anything beyond ten feet will require mega-watt seconds of power (impractical). You could filter your way to lower contrast. Tiffen developed a special filter for cinematography, designed to uniformly lower contrast over the whole image without reducing sharpness. The call it an Ultra-Contrast filter. It boosts shadow detail and has no filter factor. Available in grades 1-5, I found the #3 most useful. It's not magic, but it helps with those impossible lighting situations.

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Even in very bright sun, 400 speed film is useable, albeit at f/16 and 1/500s or 1/1000s. If you want to shoot at different apertures, I would recommend getting some slower 100 speed film. If you want more than that, go with the slow speed film and an ND filter, and think about downrating your film and possibly pulling in development depending on how much you downrate.

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If your problem is too high a dynamic range, try under-developing the film by say 30% to bring the highlights down a couple of stops. Development +/- is the way to control the range and in bright sunlight that means minus development.

 

This will also adversely compress your shadow detail and to compensate for that you'll need to raise your exposure by half a stop, say. The top end is more sensitive than the bottom end, so you'll be pushing it up a bit with added exposure and bringing it right down with reduced development leaving the mid-tones and shadows where they should be.

 

Although a scientific approach and testing is appropriate, trial and error will get you there quite quickly, say a couple of films and you'll have it sussed.

 

A graduated ND filter can also help bring the sky down, but is not much good for the highlights on the ground.

 

Totally excellent advice. I'd add to the above.... and say if you're using b+w film, then the best way to control excessive contrast difference is with twin bath development. Highlights and shadows get developed separately, neither gets too much or too little development. Net result is correct exposure for all parts of the scene. You can, of course, also do this in camera by using fill flash to bring the shadow exposure into line with the highlights.

 

As an aside....

 

People often confuse ND filters with graduated ND filters. Only the latter will control contrast (the former only reduces global exposure to bring it in range of the max shutter speed for a given aperture). The downside is graduated ND filters are hard to use with rangefinders, and even harder without a tripod.

Edited by ndjambrose
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Good answers here, and I'll add two more regarding in-camera correction.

 

1. Depending upon the subject (highly dependent), a polarizing filter can cut down highlights. You can preview through the filter to see if it will help.

 

2. Tiffen makes a set of eight filters that lower contrast. They are called ULTRA CONTRAST filters. I only use them with MF work, but they are sometimes just fine with 35mm. Tiffen also has another set that tends to put halos around highlights so I avoid them.

 

See here: contrast filters

 

(FWIW, I learned of these when I studied motion picture tech in college, and I use them mostly on the day-job for digital video because my camera, XL-1, has very poor dynamic range. Outdoors I live in stripe-land without them.)

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