Exposure advice for shooting with M6

[stevegaskin]

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So, I’m just about to take possession of a non TTL M6 and I’m looking forward to taking it out for my first shoot.  My first roll of film will be Fujifilm Provia 100F as I always enjoyed using slide film ‘back in the day’ and I still have a working projector.  I also plan to have the film scanned to disc when processed so I will be able to do some pp with the digital files. My question is, with digital I realise it’s best to err in the side of under exposure as you can always recover the detail in pp, however, I believe the opposite is the case when using film; is this correct; how much latitude is there in slide film? Also, is it best to use the built-in meter or a separate one (I only have an iPhone app exposure meter). 

Obviously with the cost of film and post processing, I want to eliminate as many ‘failures’ as possible out of my 36 shots.  Any advise would be appreciated.

Thanks

Edited January 23, 2020 by stevegaskin

[a.noctilux]

Hello Steve,

Your choice of Provia 100F is very good choice.

I've used hundreds of rolls on my M5/M6/MP for decades.

As other slides the exposure must be spot on.

With my different film M, there are some differences in exposure mostly when I use 1/500 or 1/1000 (rarely), those speeds are "slow" so must be taken into account.

I think you may experiment some rolls on many situations to know the behavior of your combo M + lens + Provia 100F.

On M6, the lightmeter can be set accurately only to 1/2 EV, <  > with the "large area at center" somewhat so don't trust the indications when the lighting is contrasty,

bracketting is way to go.

Rule of thumb is to meter the "representative part" of your subject to avoid high light  (like sky in landscape) or shadow .

Slide don't like to be overexposed so for safe side, I tend to underexpose a bit if in doubt.

 

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Provia 100F color is lovely (for me)

here is with M5 + Summicron some years ago

...

Anyway have fun and take time to learn to know better your new gear.

 

Arnaud

Edited January 23, 2020 by a.noctilux

[UliWer]

With slide film one should generally expose for the lights to avoid "burned out" highlights. The "rules" are not differing from using a digital camera. When you scan and do some postpocessing you can revover a lot of too dark parts, though of course this isn't possible if you look at your slides in projection. So with slide film one has tp learn to expose exactly - neither too bright nor too dark. One should not rely only on the cameras light measurement which is very limited to the center, but also look for the bright spots and the dark corners and see what will fit best. A serial of different exposures will be no waste.

 

 

Edited January 23, 2020 by UliWer

[stevegaskin]

2 minutes ago, a.noctilux said:

Hello Steve,

Your choice of Provia 100F is very good choice.

I've used hundreds of rolls on my M5/M6/MP for decades.

As other slides the exposure must be spot on.

With my different film M, there are some differences in exposure mostly when I use 1/500 or 1/1000 (rarely), those speeds are "slow" so must be taken into account.

I think you may experiment some rolls on many situations to know the behavior of your combo M + lens + Provia 100F.

On M6, the lightmeter can be set accurately only to 1/2 EV, <  > with the "large area at center" somewhat so don't trust the indications when the lighting is contrasty,

bracketting is way to go.

Rule of thumb is to meter the "representative part" of your subject to avoid high light  (like sky in landscape) or shadow .

Slide don't like to be overexposed so for safe side, I tend to underexpose a bit if in doubt.

 

Anyway have fun and take time to learn to know better your new gear.

 

Arnaud

Hi Arnaud thanks for your information. Could you please clarify what you mean - “when I use 1/500 or 1/1000 (rarely), those speeds are "slow" so must be taken into account“, as 1/500 or 1/1000 are the ‘fast’ speeds not ‘slow’!  It’s interesting that you suggest under exposing as I would have probably gone the other way.  I’m trying to avoid bracketing if I can given that there is a limited number of exposures on the film.  Metering close to the subject where possible makes sense; thanks

[stevegaskin]

1 minute ago, UliWer said:

With slide film one should generally expose for the lights to avoid "burned out" highlights. The "rules" are not differing from using a digital camera. When you scan and do some postpocessing you can revover a lot of too dark parts, though of course this isn't possible if you look at your slides in projection. So with slide film one has learn to expose exactly - neither too bright nor too dark. One should not rely only on the cameras light measurement which is very limited to the center, but also look for the bright spots and the dark corners and see what will fit best. A serial of different exposures will be no waste.

 

Thank you UliWer, does the M6 generally ‘spot meter’ then or is it centre-weighted?

 

[Topsy]

I use the built in meter on my MP it's just like the one in my M9s but slide film is far less forgiving than Neg film or digital. as @a.noctilux says choose which area you feel is most important to be correctly exposed but accept that you could lose some highlight and shadow detail in contrasty situations. I would advocate using the first roll as a test roll in less contrasty scenes to get your eye in with the meter/lens/film combo and bracket your shots taking notes as you go. I'd then not bother scanning that roll as they're unlikely to be keepers but assess your shots on a lightbox to find out how your setup works.

You may need to repeat this exercise a couple of times until you're confident then go shoot stuff you want to keep and have scans done so you can PP the scans to your taste.

Good luck and good shooting, look forward to seeing your shots.

[UliWer]

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With older cameras the fast speeds may not be as fast as indicated: 1/500 may just be a real 1/400 and 1/1000 a real 1/750. Though "may" doesd not mean "must". Trying will teach you.

Edited January 23, 2020 by UliWer

[a.noctilux]

Mechanical shutter of Leica M (from M3 to M-A ) must be finetuned mostly on those two (500, 1000) fast shutter speeds.

They tend to be about "real" 1/400 (for 500) or 1/700  (for 1000) or something like that after using a while (accurate only when newly finetuned).

That is my experiences, and sometimes even worse with changing temperatures !

So each Leica M must be "learned" to be used with slides.

Edited January 23, 2020 by a.noctilux

[stevegaskin]

2 minutes ago, Topsy said:

I use the built in meter on my MP it's just like the one in my M9s but slide film is far less forgiving than Neg film or digital. as @a.noctilux says choose which area you feel is most important to be correctly exposed but accept that you could lose some highlight and shadow detail in contrasty situations. I would advocate using the first roll as a test roll in less contrasty scenes to get your eye in with the meter/lens/film combo and bracket your shots taking notes as you go. I'd then not bother scanning that roll as they're unlikely to be keepers but assess your shots on a lightbox to find out how your setup works.

You may need to repeat this exercise a couple of times until you're confident then go shoot stuff you want to keep and have scans done so you can PP the scans to your taste.

Good luck and good shooting, look forward to seeing your shots.

Thank you, good advice

[stevegaskin]

1 minute ago, a.noctilux said:

Mechanical shutter of Leica M (from M3 to M-A ) must be finetuned mostly on those two (500, 1000) fast shutter speeds.

They tend to be about "real" 1/400 (for 500) or 1/700  (for 1000) or something like that after using a while (accurate only when newly finetuned).

Ah, now I understand; thank you

[a.noctilux]

Slides are the most unforgiving materials.

Something of 2 or 3 stops for "acceptable result".

 

When in doubt, I bracket as low as 1/3 EV ( on the aperture ring difficult with modern 1/2 stop setting ring ) to have kind of "choices" and in situ dups ( in 1/3 EV  ! )

Edited January 23, 2020 by a.noctilux

[UliWer]

vor 7 Minuten schrieb a.noctilux:

So each Leica M must be "learned" to be used with slides.

My M3 from 1961 seems as if it never saw any "finetuning" after it was built - I think the shutter times are rather exact. So may be it's a good teacher.

[a.noctilux]

6 minutes ago, UliWer said:

My M3 from 1961 seems as if it never saw any "finetuning" after it was built - I think the shutter times are rather exact. So may be it's a good teacher.

Wonderful 👍.

In most of my Leica M, for slides I  tend to use 1/60 to 1/250 which I know that they are the most "exact" in most of them.

 

[stevegaskin]

24 minutes ago, a.noctilux said:

Slides are the most unforgiving materials.

Something of 2 or 3 stops for "acceptable result".

 

When in doubt, I bracket as low as 1/3 EV ( on the aperture ring difficult with modern 1/2 stop setting ring ) to have kind of "choices" and in situ dups ( in 1/3 EV  ! )

I’ll see how it goes with the slide film, I thought the quality might be better when eventually scanning compared with negative film. I’ve used Kodak Portra in the past and quite liked it but the scans weren’t brilliant (hi-res).  

[UliWer]

vor einer Stunde schrieb stevegaskin:

... I thought the quality might be better when eventually scanning compared with negative film.

I think you can get better quality in an easier way by scanning positive slide film than with negative film. Though as always the results mainly depend on the original. And neither with film nor with a digital cam you get worse results if you expose exactly.

[tommonego@gmail.com]

As an old slide shooter, bracketing is part of the game, you have to find out how the film and camera work together. So + and - 1/2 stop on either side of the meter reading is a good start. When you know how the camera and film respond them you can be more accurate, I would just carry extra film. You never get 36 of 36 keepers, anyone who says they do isn't being very honest. 

[ChicagoMatthew]

My understanding is that Fuji has updated Provia 100f since the old days of slide film only having a narrow +-1/2 stop latitude. Now it has 1 stop under and 2 stops over. 

Still pretty narrow considering negative film can push 6 stops over... 

My advice would be to be very picky when firing the shutter and choose scenes that fall in a 3 stop latitude. 

Nick Carver has a great YouTube channel about shooting film. He has a whole video on how to meter for slide film. I recommend it. 
 

 

[stevegaskin]

10 minutes ago, ChicagoMatthew said:

My understanding is that Fuji has updated Provia 100f since the old days of slide film only having a narrow +-1/2 stop latitude. Now it has 1 stop under and 2 stops over. 

Still pretty narrow considering negative film can push 6 stops over... 

My advice would be to be very picky when firing the shutter and choose scenes that fall in a 3 stop latitude. 

Nick Carver has a great YouTube channel about shooting film. He has a whole video on how to meter for slide film. I recommend it. 
 

 

Thanks Mathew, that’s very helpful

[a.noctilux]

My slide learning curve was with Kodachrome II /25/64 some decades ago.

So some weeks or maybe more to "see" the results.

Hard but pleasing process ...

I used at that time Leica R with their "spot meter" along with Leica M, sometimes without using my "big" Minolta Spotmeter F,

I metered with the R 's spot meter then transfered to M if need be, long process so better with same film not to fiddling with ASA/DIN.

Maybe some thousands of binned slides over years ...

 

So don't be shy on "try to learn your gear", you'll have to do it only once.

 

To have and idea what slide can show (when scanned), here from Kodachrome ( modest link to the thread)

 

Edited January 24, 2020 by a.noctilux

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Hallo,

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[stevegaskin]

1 hour ago, a.noctilux said:

My slide learning curve was with Kodachrome II /25/64 some decades ago.

So some weeks or maybe more to "see" the results.

Hard but pleasing process ...

I used at that time Leica R with their "spot meter" along with Leica M, sometimes without using my "big" Minolta Spotmeter F,

I metered with the R 's spot meter then transfered to M if need be, long process so better with same film not to fiddling with ASA/DIN.

Maybe some thousands of binned slides over years ...

 

So don't be shy on "try to learn your gear", you'll have to do it only once.

 

To have and idea what slide can show (when scanned), here from Kodachrome ( modest link to the thread)

 

Thanks again for the info' and encouragement