Question on metering

[Steven Ruttenberg]

Hadn't thought about it in terms of hue, but that is a good observation. Perhaps I was thinking this for my shot the other day, I shot a white brick church at sunset with zero clouds in sky and only the pastel colors on the horizon opposite from the setting sun (direction I was facing) So, I decided to use Portra 160 with a warming filter (81B) in the hopes of bringing out the pastel colors due to Portra being good for pastel colored scened, especially with few colors overall. It was in the middle of the desert on Route 66 in Amboy, CA. I just metered on the brightest spot on the church, set the shutter and took the picture. I didn't worry about the filter factor for the 81B, looks to be no more than a stop at the most.

What counts with color film is not abstract tonality - shades of gray as in black and white, but what kind of hue reproduction you are after. Traqnsparency film is easier because after it's developed, you can simply slap it on a lightbox and immediately see if you're in the ballpark or not. Color neg film requires
either printing or scanning to get to that point. But either way, it still takes some experience to learn what kind of exposure leads to an articulate print
containing the colors you had in mind. At a certain point, those of us who routinely shot chrome film simply subconsciously gravitated towards friendly moderate-contrast scenes, or else intuitively knew what we could sacrifice, typically deep shadows. There are not many slide films left. Provia is good
from around Z III to VII; but that doesn't mean you'll get good color over that entire range. Pan F is an example of a black and white film with a similarly
limited dynamic range. Most popular black and white films stretch from II to VIII, and a few specialized ones well past that, even from I to XII. I am referring to this in terms of their native scale, and not to "minus" or compensating development tricks which compress the subject illuminance range at the
expense of intermediate tonality. Since hue reproduction is a non-issue in black and white work, you can get away with all kinds of things you can't in color.

[rdenney]

I could always count on highlights not blocking up on black and white until Zone IX, but getting good separation below Zone III was a challenge and took accurate, well-tested development. That was with FP4–my standard black and white film.

I get more with color negative film, but it has the advantage of color contrast to separate tones.

With negative film, you have to have some density to work with, so underexposing is the fatal sin. Overexposing color negative film, however, can cause colors to block up.

With slides, maybe five stops or six, with Velvia maybe four or five. I missed this one by about half a stop, and the shadow on the trunk just lost detail. But I didn’t want to wash out the saturation on the leaves.



Negative film is more forgiving. But you have know to what colors you want.

As for darkening a sky in color relative to everything else, try a polarizer.

Rick “in bright sun, those shadows would have had to go hard black” Denney

[Steven Ruttenberg]

That is a good image. I think the darks on the trunk add to the image.