How long did it take to guess exposures?

[skinnfell]

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For example, if its sunny, Ill use 1/500 at f8 on iso160. That is bang on almost every time *with my lightroom settings*.

Indoors, 1/60, f2 and Iso 400 will usually do it. I tend to prefer underexposure in sunlight and a slight overexposure in yellow indoorlight.

 

Oh and one more thing, when its sunny and I go from bright sunlight to the shadows, I will set the aperture to F2,8 and keep the shutter at 500.

Then its easy to go back and forth between sun and shadow on a bright day, summer and winter.

 

Also, when overcast i will typically use F4 and otherwise the same settings.

 

The general rule says to use a shutter speed similar to your film speed and f/16, but this doesnt work up north where I live.

 

Film and digital does not make much of a difference I find in this regard, at least not with leica.

[cheewai_m6]

i'm not sure when i started know the exposure. probably around 5 years of shooting. i had a light meter in the camera but i always took notice of it and i started to predict the exposure and then check it with the light meter. started learning it from then. i find it harder to set the exposure in dark conditions.

 

i'm pretty accurate these days. film's dynamic range does give some leniency though. you never really lose the knack of it either.

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[sblitz]

i found a good way to learn was to keep the speed constant and adjust only the f-stop. this way you can look at light and say this is f2.8 or f.8 or f16 or whatever. speed then only becomes a variable to adjust the dof you want in the shot or because you are taking pictures of racing racehorses :-)

 

but mostly, have fun!

[sblitz]

of course you set the base speed to the inverse of the iso of the film ......

[dtoh]

I've been shooting film for almost 3 years now. I removed the battery from my MP about half year ago, lots of wasted films.. i kinda work v hard on registering certain lighting conditions.

May i suggest you make a mental note of a particular lighting condition, use that as your reference, and take it from there. Hope this work for you.

 

Regards,

Daryl

http://www.dtohphoto.com

[colonel]

It depends whether the process is more rewarding then the composition

Or, to put another way, whether the final photo is the goal or the way to get there

 

Even the best people miss exposure 50% of the time. That's too high considering the cost of film but mainly the potential to ruin the shot. At the end of the day how important is the picture you are taking ?

 

BTW I have a free light meter app on the iPhone which is excellent

Unoriginally it's called "pocket light meter"

[bill]

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...Even the best people miss exposure 50% of the time.

...

 

That's an interesting statistic. Please share where it comes from.

 

Regards,

 

Bill

[colonel]

That's an interesting statistic. Please share where it comes from.

 

Regards,

 

Bill

 

If you look at Andy's post above (#3), he says he has 10 years of experience and is right half the time. Sounds reasonable to me.

[bill]

Actually what Andy really said was:

 

for me about 10 years....

 

I still screw up about half of my exposures indoors...outdoors I am reasonably ok

 

...which is some light years from "Even the best people miss exposure 50% of the time."

 

So we'll disregard that made-up "statistic" then...

 

Regards,

 

Bill

Edited November 6, 2012 by bill

[colonel]

...which is some light years from "Even the best people miss exposure 50% of the time."

 

So we'll disregard that made-up "statistic" then...

 

Regards,

 

Bill

 

why so picky ?

I have heard this, or worse, many times, this was just an example

 

for an experienced person to say that, it means a less experienced person would be worse, no ?

what stats do you have here ?

I am an experienced amateur. I try to guess exposure and its very difficult. I know I'm not the cleverest person, but it seems to me to be a quite significant obstacle between the photographer and the picture

[bill]

why so picky ?

...

 

Because "statistics" like yours are misleading at best and mendacious at worst.

 

what stats do you have here ?

 

Statistics do not tell the story.

 

I try to guess exposure and its very difficult.

 

That's where you are going wrong. Guessing is not estimation. Estimation is based upon trial, error, feedback and lessons learned and applied. If you are guessing you are doing none of those things.

 

Meterless shooting is a liberation for those with the right attitude. On a given roll I generally have 30+ "correct exposures" - that is exposures that are even, and appropriate to the subject matter. I don't guess. Andy is perfectly right; it is harder to expose effectively indoors due to the generally lower light conditions and more particularly mixed lighting, but one compensates for that.

 

Don't make it sound harder than it is; it may not be for you but that doesn't mean that it shouldn't be done.

 

Regards,

 

Bill

[Stealth3kpl]

I have the same experience as Bill. I rarely have a duff exposure. Usually if the lab scan looks off it's the automatic exposure of the scanner that has tried to bring up the shadows that I didn't want bringing up, the subject being in the highlights.

 

It's easy to succeed with sunny 16 on B+W and Colour negative. Firstly keep in mind that if there's nothing on the negative it is going to be more difficult to get an image! So we always err on overexposure "exposing for shadows letting the highlights take care of themselves".

Colonel, I'm going to teach you to suck eggs but bear with me and give this a try. If you're using Portra 160 set the shutter at 125, if you're using Portra 400 set the shutter at 250. Now, when you're outdoors and it's

1) sunny and your subject is in the sun set the aperture at 16.

2) shady or your subject is in the shade set the aperture at 5.6.

3)The sunlight is behind the subject i.e. the subject is in its own shade, well that's f5.6 isn't it. We saw that in 2).

 

These are our starting points. In most situations these are the two settings you will use. You might keep pulling out your incident meter and checking it but it will keep confirming f16 or f5.6.

Sometimes you might think, well it's kind of shady but all these pale flagstones or white walls seem to make it seem a bit brighter. So, not f5.6, set it at f8.

It might seem not so sunny somehow, give it a little extra - not f16 but f11

We're in a shady alley. It seems a bit darker than the shade of f5.6 so lets give it f4 or to make sure give it f2.8 (letting the lighter tones take care of themselves).

It's as simple as that. There's no pulling a figure out of a top hat. You estimation is based on "1" and "2" above.

Even if you don't want to carry your camera with you somewhere, carry your light meter and just play the game for a day. You'll be surprised at how it seems so obvious after a while. You might notice how misleading your M6 reflective meter is too. It will bring doubt into your mind about your estimation but use the Force Harold. You are correct and your reflective meter is wrong (unless it agrees with your incident meter).

There will always be the odd situation where you will be confused as to the correct settings to utilise but blow a couple of frames bracketing. You might well find that when the scans come back you can't tell any difference between the two, or the difference will be less pronounced than you expected giving you extra confidence in your inner powers.

Pete

Edited November 6, 2012 by Stealth3kpl

[bill]

Eloquently - and usefully - put. Bravo.

 

Regards,

 

Bill

 

Sent from another Galaxy

[colonel]

Because "statistics" like yours are misleading at best and mendacious at worst.

 

I object to the implication of "mendacious".

I do not regret saying what I said at all,

In no way was I providing a proven scientific report of researched findings (!!!). I was using a number to relay the feeling I had of feedback from many people posting here, and other places where I have seen this talked about. I think >90% of people reading would have got it.

Edited November 7, 2012 by colonel

[colonel]

 

Even if you don't want to carry your camera with you somewhere, carry your light meter and just play the game for a day. You'll be surprised at how it seems so obvious after a while.

 

A great suggestion, and nicely explained.

[wentbackward]

...I could get better at guessing the exposure....So I was just curious how long did it take for you all who shoot without meters to get consistently good results?

 

There's no need to guess. I have two anchors, typical indoor light is ISO50, f2, 1/15s and Sunny 16. Once you translate those to EV's you become familar very quickly with the EV of common situations, you just need the right tools. Look here: Ultimate Exposure Computer or download my simplified and somewhat modified PDF version that's ready to print: http://www.wentbackward.com/exposure-meter.pdf

 

With a few weeks of practice you will very quickly know what exposure you want from a scene.

 

[Messsucherkamera]

I visit a number of forums on the internet and I have to say that there is far and away more sniping and backbiting going on here than at all the others I visit combined.

 

Since that observation is anecdotal in nature rather than sourced from footnoted empirical data, so I'm quite certain it will be scorned as invalid by the backbiter brigade.

[Ruhayat]

If you're using Portra 160 set the shutter at 125, if you're using Portra 400 set the shutter at 250. Now, when you're outdoors and it's

1) sunny and your subject is in the sun set the aperture at 16.

2) shady or your subject is in the shade set the aperture at 5.6.

3)The sunlight is behind the subject i.e. the subject is in its own shade, well that's f5.6 isn't it. We saw that in 2).

 

Hi Pete,

this is useful stuff! Thanks. I'm going through the ropes with my M4-P and it's still hit and miss for me. May I ask though:

 

1. Why do you recommend Portra 400 at 250? Usually they say to use the same value as the film speed, so shouldn't it be 500?

 

2. I'm wondering, wouldn't it be better (because of diffraction) to keep the aperture to max f8.0 or f11, and compensating with a higher shutter speed instead? I ask this because I tried using f16 under a sunny day in Cambodia, and the sharpness of the 28mm Elmarit I was using became muddy. It seems, based on other photos in the roll, the Elmarit sweetspot is around f4.0 to f8.0. So: with ISO400 film, for sunny days and subject in sun, f8.0 and 1/1000 instead of f16 at 1/500? What do you think?

[sblitz]

you generally want to shoot portra one iso stop, in effect, below the box rate. so yes, shoot 160 as if it were 100 iso film which, sunny 16, is 1/125 base speed. from there you can certainly go to f8 and then shoot at 1/500 16 at 125 is just the base level from which to adjust.

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[Stealth3kpl]

Hi, thanks!

1) As I mentioned, it's better to err on the side of overexposure with colour negative film. If it's underexposed the shadows and colours look a bit muddy and brown. To guard against this I go to the next slowest shutter speed with regard to the ISO of the film.

Incidently, some people half the iso so would run 400 at EI 200. There isn't a 1/200 shutter speed so I run it at 1/250 for convenience.

 

2) You're absolutely right. I wrote using f16 in sunlight for simplicity. In reality I'd set 1/1000 in sunlight and f5.6 for film of 160 (equivalent to EI 125 @ f16). I didn't want to over-complicate the post.

Sometimes I may want to use a summicron wide open most of the time so I would use a 3 stop ND filter. So, with Portra 160, I'd set the shutter speed at 1/1000 with f2 for bright sunlight. If suddenly the subject is in shade I would leave the lens at f2 and slow the shutter speed 3 stops i.e. 1/125.

 

You see how it all starts to sound a bit complicated? Be bold and blow a couple of films off. It doesn't take long to gain useful experience in the technique.

A couple of days ago I was out using an incident meter but I couldn't help thinking that the light was dimmer than the meter thought. Sure enough, when I checked the iso setting of the meter I'd set it at 250 instead of 125. So, with some experience you start to over-rule and be suspicious of what your eqipment is telling you. Never believe the reflective meter of your camera if it differs from what you're expecting, and sometimes question your incident meter.

Pete