How many shots per subject? Am I crazy?

[Ron Marshall]

Velvia cannot capture a large of range of light intensity.

There are several options: As Randy mentioned, Use a ND-grad; expose for the highlights and loose shadow detail; use negative film.

[Leonard Evens]

I do only color negative or b/w film, and I normally make only one exposure. With negative film, exposure is seldom a problem since a slight overexposure in tricky situation is innocuous.

[jnantz]

sometimes one sometimes 2
if it is for a job, more than one ..

[John Kasaian]

IMHO it would depend on your purposes. If I were photographing for a client I'd hedge my bets and take as many polaroids as I thought neccesary. For my own purposes with 8x10 I'll take one, rarely two shots---unless the subject was something very rare and fleeting and I realized I goofed up (like by leaving the shutter open) I might take a third try. I figure my photography is like baseball:three strikes and yer out...or wing shooting where you only get two shots...or black powder muzzleloaders where one shot is all you get.

[David_Senesac]

Hi Jack,

I too rarely bracket, just exposing a single sheet per subject. I talk about that in some detail on this current thread here:

http://www.largeformatphotography.in...t=19634&page=3

I would expect that many photographers that have been relying on automatic exposure features typically on smaller format cameras will not do well shooting large format transparencies outdoors where there is often quite a range of light levels on a range of subject elements until they pay some dues to experience. I can't imagine a novice just using some kind of mechanical mathematical formula with a digital light meter to be able to evaluate where they ought to be setting exposure on every shot. Your experience is likely rather common and perhaps a reason many that have dabled with the big view cameras quickly go back to the smaller cameras. Per my above link, after I've taken readings, I always consider what elements of the scene are important, where and how they appear in the scene, and then adjust my aperture more or less open. Being off by 1/3 stop is of course likely to produce a mediocre result with slide films so there is not much room for error. With LF the price of film is rather high so it is an inefficient medium to be experimenting in. I started out long ago during the days of manual everything and spent many years with one of the early spot meter SLRs. Doing so with a roll of 35mm on an SLR that allows manual settings to aperture and shutter speed while using a digital light meter would likely bring you up to speed faster without being so expensive. ...David

[CXC]

I never bracket. I shoot in broad daylight, metering on sky or grass or cement as 50% grey. Sometimes I overexpose.

Do you most often miss in one particular direction, over or under exposing? If so, that might tell you something about your metering technique.

I also compare my meter reading with the exposure suggested by Sunny16. If they are way different,I stop and try to think about why that might be, and if I might be making a mistake.

[Frank Petronio]

20-30 for a portrait ;-)

[matthew blais]

I always take twom usually same exposure. Seems kinda silly to me to travel/hike/set-up and take one shot. Murphy is always around the corner or looking over my shoulder.

[Brian Ellis]

I make one photograph, that's it, unless there's something about the scene that makes me uncertain. For example with moving water I might make two at different shutter speeds since I'm uncertain of exactly how the water will look.

Are you using negative film or slide film? If you're using negative film it shouldn't be difficult to make a decent exposure in one try. Even if you don't want to learn the full blown zone system or some other system that consistently works for you, and even if you refuse to do any testing at all, rate the film at half the manufacturer's speed, meter the darkest shadow area in which you want detail, stop down one stop, make the photograph, develop normally. If you find that you're getting consistently overexposed negatives bump your rated speed up to the manufacturer's speed. If you're getting consistently underexposed negatives (though that's very unlikely with this system) cut the speed in half again.

That very simple system should get you a printable negative almost every time, maybe not the optimum negative, maybe not the negative that's easiest to print, and certainly not a "creative" negative, but the negative will almost always be printable. And even if on rare occasions you find that the negative isn't printable, you've lost only one image. Think how many potential images you're losing when you run out of film after making only a couple photographs of five or six sheets each.

[Leonard Metcalf]

I'm a one shot lad too... unless as Brian pointed out I may experiment with depth of field or length of exposure. Occasionally I shoot a couple of sunsets as the light often gets better and I wonder if I can do better than the last shot. In 100 shots I would only do this once or twice.

I take the Zen approach in that if it doesn't turn out, well it wasn't meant to be... and don't worry about it.... With this in mind if I want an image too much I often find it is the one that doesn't work out right...

Len