EV range beyond five stops...

In a situation where the difference between the lightest portion of a scene and the darkest where you want detail is more than five stops apart (say eight), would you consider that scene to be too contrasty to make a good image? Should a graduation filter be used to darken the sky portion; to bring the range down closer to five stops apart?

Or do I expose at 2sec to get detail in the dark portion and then have the lab develop the neg at N-3 because the range is 8 stops between highlight and shadow?

I have an interior scene with a light over a table. The light (chandelier) meters 1/250 and an object on the table meters 2sec at F4.

Any recommendation/insight is appreciated.

Thanks.

What film?

It is not to contrasty to be recorded on modern B&W film. Will it make a good image? That is up to you to determine.

I'm using Fuji Quickloads Velvia 100F. Daylight 100 ISO. It's all I have. I try to correct the yellowness I get in Photoshop.

I've read that if the EV range differed by more than 5 stops between the shadowed area where detail is desired, and the highlighted area, I can expect the highlights to be blown out. What B&W film has more range? Is there a color film that also has more range?

Thanks...

Velvia is narrow compared to almost anything else.

Provia is closer to six, Astia is close to seven.

Color Negative films are considerably wider yet.

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Originally Posted by Mark Barendt

Velvia is narrow compared to almost anything else.

Provia is closer to six, Astia is close to seven.

Color Negative films are considerably wider yet.

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The only Quickloads I can find are the Velvia. I think I'm just going to jump in feet first and buy 4x5 sheet and load my mint condition holders that are collecting dust.

What color film is most forgiving? The one with the widest range?

C41 films from Kodak and Fuji are both very forgiving high latitude films.

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Originally Posted by Carterofmars

The only Quickloads I can find are the Velvia. I think I'm just going to jump in feet first and buy 4x5 sheet and load my mint condition holders that are collecting dust.

What color film is most forgiving? The one with the widest range?

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You should get about 19 stops of response out of Portra 400 if you include the toe and shoulder.. It handles about 12 stops quite gracefully.

As for Velvia 100, it's the most contrasty of the colour films I know and you will be hard pushed to get 7 stops even with a drum scanner and I normally meter for 5 as my limits (knowing that textures that average at the ends of the scale will have specular brightess of about +/- 1 a stop or so). With Velvia 50 I meter for 6 stops although I've done testing where I can see a dynamic range of about 10 stops when really pushing things with a drum scanner (bracketed exposures) I can't say this for sure but I was shocked at how much is still left in the highlights when it looks almost transparency on the film.

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Originally Posted by Carterofmars

The only Quickloads I can find are the Velvia.

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Send an email to Glazer's Camera darkroom section, and ask about the expired Fuji tungsten film. It's ISO 64, but they have six boxes or so. It has great reciprocity for long exposures.

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Originally Posted by Carterofmars

What color film is most forgiving? The one with the widest range?

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Try Kodak Portra 160 or 400, I find that they both are pretty forgiving. Plus they both scan with excellent results. With the transparency film I would use a grad filter in your situation. Or maybe you can get away with a double exposure.

-DP

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Originally Posted by timparkin

You should get about 19 stops of response out of Portra 400 if you include the toe and shoulder.. It handles about 12 stops quite gracefully.

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That said, print and display media don't do much more than some three to eight stops, and unless you show transparencies, more often the former than the latter. It is not really wise to exploit negative film to the hilt, or you'll have to squash the contrast for printing, and the print will resemble HDR of the ugly kind. In extreme contrast conditions, judicious use of reflectors or flash for exposure may deliver the better end result...

Nineteen stops with Porta? That's simply nuts. Guess you mean, if including "unusable" toe
and shoulder. Likewise, Velvia shows some sublte shadow gradation way down if you have
a stong enough light behind it, but it's nearly impossible to retrieve.

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Originally Posted by Sevo

It is not really wise to exploit negative film to the hilt, or you'll have to squash the contrast for printing, and the print will resemble HDR of the ugly kind. In extreme contrast conditions, judicious use of reflectors or flash for exposure may deliver the better end result...

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I don't really agree with this. It's all about how you do the squashing. Traditional color materials don't give you a lot of easy flexibility, but with black and white or with digital color printing you have enormous control. You can compress parts of the tonal range that don't matter, and leave good separation in the parts that do. It's all about how you map your negative / digital file to the final media.

Black and white photographers have been making vibrant prints from scenes that wildly exceed the brightness range papers, for well over a hundred years. But it's only possible if you capture enough of that dynamic range to begin with.

You can reconfigure the curves in PS, but something else is going to give at the extreme
ends, or buckle in the middle, and color is going to go off somwhere. Scanning and PS can't
turn a film into something it never was in the first place.

One very practical example of the flexibility of film is the lowly disposable camera.

800 iso C41 film, no camera adjustments. Just go shoot, develop normally, and adjust for printing with enlarger or PS. Works great.

C41 films have very long straight line portions to work with. It doesn't worry me a bit to shoot 3-4 stops over meter reading to get a shot at F/4 or F/2. I do try to avoid that much extra exposure when I can but IMO, if your paying attention at least a little, you really have to be trying over cook C41 films past usability.

For the range the OP is considering C41 and RA will hardly break a sweat.

Wide latitude color neg films reproduce colors much different than chromes. And an 800
speed amateur neg film might not look much at all like even a slower speed pro neg film
properly exposed. There's no free ride. Every time someone tells me they can get away
with this or that, and then post-correct it in PS, it still looks like "pink slime" to me. Pick
a film appropriate for the true contrast range and correctly expose it, and if necessary,
correctly filter for color temp. But these new Portra films are pretty amazing.

I agree that there's no free ride but even Kodak's brochures, at least the last ones I saw, advertise a latitude of -2 to +3 with normal color.

I will say that I believe they assume a normal scene that will straight print on RA paper. If you are trying to shoot a landscape and will be burning and dodging a bunch sure the rules change.

Again though, for what the OP is asking for, I think there will be minimal burn and dodge and well within any C41 film's latitude.

Once in awhile I wing it with guesstimated exposure and "latitude" when shooting a street
Nikon with an appropriate black and white film like Delta 3200. But really, latitude is a very
bad concept and even a worse habit. Something inevitably gives. With chromes you just
chop off one of the extremes. With color neg, you run the risk of dropping some part of the
gamut into some arena where it can't be adequately resolved per hue distinctions. Hence
mud (unless you deliberately want that). Might be an OK technique for Aunt Maud's snapshots of the Hairspray Museum in Des Moines, but anyone serious should be exposing
negs with just as much care as chromes if they want optimum results.

What I truly enjoy about the latitude of negative films like Portra or whatever is that I can carefully peg my exposure and know that I will have plenty of info to work the print around the edges.

I am by no means advocating poor camera work, IMO when one has the opportunity to properly set the camera, one should.

That said my shutters and lenses don't always give me the settings I might prefer, some of my lenses don't have shutters or aperture control.

In these cases, lots of latitude is very welcome.

I shoot Portra 400 rated at 100 and get great results.. Thus proving its range.. Even outdoor landscapes at the coast, 2 stops over the meter reading, Crashing waves and clouds in the sky still hold detail while there are absolutely no dark areas in the image. Portra films are awesome.

I can recommend Kodak Ektar 100 too... Very forgiving.. I accidently underexposed my last roll (had my meter set at ISO400). When i got my roll back from the lab it was a little dark but still quite usable.

Velvia 100, 50 & provia are among the hardest films to get perfect. Once you get the hang of it you can squeeze a lot more out of velvia than what people say... Suffice to say, Velvia 50 is likely the single reason drum scanners were invented. On the light table, an area that looks black when you hold the slide up to light will show detail, sometimes, very good detail and colour is in there.. It just LOOKS dark... A drum scanner and a good operator can get those colours and detail out ! :)