exposure blues

[fralexis]

I have been away from shooting for several months and just now have had the opportunity to get started again. I am having serious problems and am not sure of the answer. I shot several portraits in the forest with bright sun, but dappled sunlight in the late afternoon....just what I wanted.

I used a Pentax Spotmeter V and took a reading of the young man's cheek and found a value of 12. I placed that on Zone VI. I checked my spotmeter against my Nikon 800 and they seem pretty close. I took the shot at f8 for 1/60 second.

I am shooting a TOYO Field camera 4X5. I have Arista 200 iso edu. I used Rodinal 1:50. I developed normally at 10 minutes.

The result was an extremely overexposed negative. To get an 8X10 print that is even remotely acceptable (and really not usable) I had to expose at f22 for six seconds at a contrast level of 5. There is no detail in the negative shadows. The entire negative and resulting print is very grey and flat.

The film was about 2 years old and the paper about the same. The chemicals were freshly mixed.

The resulting face is not terrible, but the shadows are murky and grey rather then the desired rich black. There is a fair amount of grain visible. I am printing on pearl RC.

Any ideas? Thanks

Alexis

[Jac@stafford.net]

The result was an extremely overexposed negative.

It seems more likely to be underexposed.

[fralexis]

Yes, you are probably right. I keep getting underexposed and overexposed confused due to the difference between a negative and a print. My mind just doesn't make the leap....very bad at math also.

[Pere Casals]

The D800 with a prime lens should match well the LF exposure.

First check shutter is working properly, periodically all shutter speeds should be fired, it can operate slow if dirt or rust there.

If you have not a shutter tester you can use the D800 for it, place the D800 in the back of the LF camera with a graflock to nikon adapter https://www.google.es/search?q=grafl...Cf4Q_AUIBygCor

or by using the DSLR tripod place the D800 where it should be the ground glass, with a cloth to make it a bit light tight.

The compare these 2 shots in D800 manual mode:

> D800 in B and firing 1/60 with the LF shutter.

> D800 at 1/60 with the LF shutter staying open.


Manual mode is important because if not auto-iso can mislead.

Now I use a custom shutter tester with an oscilloscoppe, but until now I'had been using what I described.


PD: If it is underexposed then shutter malfunction is not as likely.


Regards

[Jim Jones]

Dappled forest light can be difficult. Comparing reflected and incident readings might avoid future problems.

[Doremus Scudder]

You've got a spotmeter, so use it more wisely. Avoid underexposure by metering an important shadow, not a high mid-tone like Zone VI. Meter a shadow value that you still want to see some detail in, place that in Zone III and then check and see where your skin tones, etc. fall. Adjust your development time (or paper grade) to get the skin tone down to Zone VI if it falls too high or low.

Spotmetering 101.

Best,

Doremus

[fralexis]

Doremus, thank for your answer. Makes sense. That is what I do with landscapes and I suppose portraits are no different. However, that brings up a question for me. Just how do most people determine exactly which shadows need zone III? Sometimes a particular shadow might be interesting, but exactly where to spot meter? I suppose that is a part of the learning curve. It doesn't seem to be intuitive. I am thinking of a low key protatit in particular.

Alexis

You've got a spotmeter, so use it more wisely. Avoid underexposure by metering an important shadow, not a high mid-tone like Zone VI. Meter a shadow value that you still want to see some detail in, place that in Zone III and then check and see where your skin tones, etc. fall. Adjust your development time (or paper grade) to get the skin tone down to Zone VI if it falls too high or low.

Spotmetering 101.

Best,

Doremus

[N Dhananjay]

Doremus, thank for your answer. Makes sense. That is what I do with landscapes and I suppose portraits are no different. However, that brings up a question for me. Just how do most people determine exactly which shadows need zone III? Sometimes a particular shadow might be interesting, but exactly where to spot meter? I suppose that is a part of the learning curve. It doesn't seem to be intuitive. I am thinking of a low key protatit in particular.

Alexis

You may find the following procedure useful. I think most exposure/development failures happen because of 'mindlessness'. We reflexively think a 'subject' has a 'correct' exposure and development. It doesn't - there is only an exposure and development that makes it easy or difficult for you to make your final print.

Keep in mind that photo paper can probably show about 7-8 stops equivalent worth of difference in density - a typical Dmax is around 2.0. Most of the real world can have quite a bit larger range. This means you really want to start by thinking about how you want your final print to look. In other words, think of your process as being a tonal window into a very wide tonal world. You are deciding which bit of the tonal range to pay attention to. You have some limited ability to contract and expand that window but not a whole lot. It is analogous to using your camera frame lines to determine which part of the physical world you want in, and out, of your final print.

In other words, do not think of a 'correct' exposure for the subject. Rather a 'correct' exposure makes it easier to get the print you want. In a typical forest scene, you may have shafts of sunlight which are quite bright and shadows in the underbrush which are quite dark and you may be comfortable with letting those shadows in the underbrush go to black in the print. However, if you were doing a macro picture of the underbrush, you would not want those same areas to go to black. So, which is the 'correct' exposure for the underbrush? Hopefully the example illustrates that here is no 'correct' exposure - just one that makes it easy for you to express your print.

I find it useful to make a quick pencil sketch of the subject - this is very, very rough and is really only meant to block in shapes. The reason I find this exercise useful is because it makes me very mindful of which are the big shapes in the composition and what level of density (darkness or lightness) each shape needs to be to make the print work. If you have difficulty focusing on the shapes because of the detail, try squinting your eyes to make them a little unfocused and suppress detail. Now you should be a in a good position to decide which of these shapes need detail - the darkest part that needs detail is usually placed around Zone 3. You can then measure the lightest part and see what Zone those would fall on if you gave an exposure determined by the shadow reading. If it is around Zone 7, most typical photo papers would comfortably produce that range. If not, you will try to develop to a slightly higher or lower contrast, so that the density of the negative matches what the paper would like to see. If higher, you can do an N-, if lower, you do an N+ development. Once this becomes second nature, you can fine tune further according to how you like your prints to look - some people like somewhat more 'contrasty' prints - they will use words like snap and clarity, others like a softer print - they will use words like subtlety and long scale.

In the situation you describe, if you want the person whose portrait you are making to be printed with good contrast, much of the surrounding forest, which is presumably quite a bit darker will be very dark in the print and you may not care. Or you may want to show the person in relation to the forest, in which case, you would want all that detail in the forest but the person may become quite high key. You may have other controls (e.g., dodge/burn, making etc.) if you want to push and prod at the picture. But I think clarity at the time of making the negative is more helpful. Is the print about the person or about the person relative to the forest? They would dictate different kinds of exposures. A sketch can help to clarify those kinds of issues.

Hope that helps, at least a bit. Cheers, DJ

[interneg]

Several key things - Foma 200/ Arista edu 200 is probably more realistically an EI of 125-160 in anything that is not a speed increasing developer. Secondly, the 10 mins is for a gamma of 0.65, which is probably too much most of the time.

Your Pentax spotmeter does offer you a very useful answer however. Use the IRE scale - the one nearest the body with the 1-10 scale - to key to the shadows. Meter the darkest shadow in which you wish to retain detail & set the resultant EV to 1 on the scale, then read off the exposure as normal. Using this method, I'd try 1 sheet at EI 160 and one at EI 80 & a development time in the 8.5 min range & see how that goes.

[ic-racer]

There is no detail in the negative shadows

Try again with the film rated at 100 then at 50.