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Thread: Grey card wrong?

  1. #121

    Join Date
    Dec 2009
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    Pacifica, CA
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    Re: Grey card wrong?

    Quote Originally Posted by Leigh View Post
    You're not going to capture twelve stops of range on normal b&w film regardless of how you expose it.

    Black is black, as the song says.

    - Leigh
    That's where you can use the Fred Picker trick, double exposure, to solve the problem of sun filtering through trees. He explained how he did that on Millerton, New York, 1970

    When a cloud covered the sun, he shot the scene with leafy areas on Zone IV. Then he exlained... "When the sun dapples reappeared, I made a meter reading of a nearby sunlit leaf and placed that value on Zone VII."

    I could have used those sun dapples today, as it was generally foggy when I was out shooting. Sun did come out later, but that trick wouldn't have been practical. For Fred Picker's trick, you need partly cloudy.

  2. #122
    Drew Wiley
    Join Date
    Sep 2008
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    SF Bay area, CA
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    18,338

    Re: Grey card wrong?

    Double exposure doesn't sound like a very good formula if you don't want a lot of blurred foliage or unpredicatable shadows. And otherwise, yes some films will handle twelve zones. You need a very long straight line film, and then maybe a few tricks in your bag. But compensating of minus development doesn't have to be one of them. There are ways to have your cake and eat it too.

  3. #123

    Join Date
    Oct 2003
    Location
    Westport Island, Maine
    Posts
    1,236

    Re: Grey card wrong?

    Quote Originally Posted by Drew Wiley View Post
    I'd sure like to see how some of you incident junkies would manage the intricately dappled light here in the redwoods when the sun is out, and twelve stops of range
    come into play. It can change by the minute. Guess one just gets accustomed to whatever.
    I pick up the tripod and walk away, and I'm a reflected spotmeter guy. Never seen one worth making anyway. God invented the sun to frustrate photographers, just like all utility engineers are frustrated photographers, so they route poles and lines through all the best potential compositions.
    Bruce Barlow
    author of "Finely Focused" and "Exercises in Photographic Composition"
    www.brucewbarlow.com

  4. #124
    Drew Wiley
    Join Date
    Sep 2008
    Location
    SF Bay area, CA
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    18,338

    Re: Grey card wrong?

    I'm fascinated by the complexity of forest lighting. Sure, sixty percent of the time, by the time I've got the camera set up of in focus, the light has shifted, and I just
    pack things back up. Then the other forty percent of the time, I'll gamble the shot. Maybe a third of those will be what I anticipated. The shadow patterns move around remarkably quickly. Calculating exposure per se if the easy part. Life is a lot easier when the fog is in; but those are different kinds of opportunities.

  5. #125
    45-57-617
    Join Date
    Oct 2006
    Location
    Toowoomba, Queensland
    Posts
    644

    Re: Grey card wrong?

    I must reply back since I started it ...

    I went ahead with my tests and they worked to some extent. I have not seen a 35mm roll of film for so long my idea of putting a ball in each corner really wasn't that necessary as I had imagined. The edges of each frame were fairly clear as it turns out. But the idea itself wasn't a failure. I got a film curve or two for my troubles.

    The other day was a very miserable overcast day. I plopped the Kodak grey card against an outside wall and took an incident meter reading along with a spot reading from the card... They were identical. Furthermore, I tilted the card this way and that and they remained identical!

    So.. I bought out the ball.

    It measured the same too.

    The next day was back to a normal sort of clear and direct light that is usual. The ball readings worked when the light source was basically over my shoulder. When the light source was more across the ball there was some more variation.

    Lesson learned.

    The quality of the light makes a difference and so too the directionality. I think the grey card is shinier than when I bought it because it has been stored in a sealed heavy plastic envelope for many years. It never was more than 2/3rds of a stop different to the incident meter anyway.

    Cheers!

  6. #126

    Join Date
    Mar 2008
    Posts
    372

    Re: Grey card wrong?

    Quote Originally Posted by swmcl View Post
    I must reply back since I started it ...

    I went ahead with my tests and they worked to some extent. I have not seen a 35mm roll of film for so long my idea of putting a ball in each corner really wasn't that necessary as I had imagined. The edges of each frame were fairly clear as it turns out. But the idea itself wasn't a failure. I got a film curve or two for my troubles.

    The other day was a very miserable overcast day. I plopped the Kodak grey card against an outside wall and took an incident meter reading along with a spot reading from the card... They were identical. Furthermore, I tilted the card this way and that and they remained identical!

    So.. I bought out the ball.

    It measured the same too.

    The next day was back to a normal sort of clear and direct light that is usual. The ball readings worked when the light source was basically over my shoulder. When the light source was more across the ball there was some more variation.

    Lesson learned.

    The quality of the light makes a difference and so too the directionality. I think the grey card is shinier than when I bought it because it has been stored in a sealed heavy plastic envelope for many years. It never was more than 2/3rds of a stop different to the incident meter anyway.

    Cheers!
    In case of doubt why not use both flat gray cards and the famous painted balls in corners and the centre together in different lightning situations and learn a lot of lessons from it? Why give up just because of an overcast day?

  7. #127

    Join Date
    Dec 2009
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    Pacifica, CA
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    Re: Grey card wrong?

    good to hear swmcl!

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