shooting a black car with Provia 100, how to meter?

[Mike Boden]

I suggest that you first do some testing to find out the exposure range of the film. Your results should tell you how many stops you have to work with.

After this, spot meter the gray card in the same light as the car and make this your base exposure. Then take a spot reading of the black car and compare this to your first reading. If this falls within your exposure range that you discovered in your earlier testing(remember that the gray card reading is in the middle of the range), expose as is. If not, then you'll have to adjust your exposure or provide more light. Of course, if you increase your exposure, you might blow out your highlights. That means you'll have to provide more light or switch to a different film with more latitude.

Is there any particular reason you don't want to use color neg?

[Daniel_Buck]

If you are accustomed to using a spot meter, then it should be fairly straight-forward with averaging.

Provia handles high contrast situations better than Velvia, but really only has about 4-1/2 stops of latitude. If your scene brightness range (darkest shadow with detail and brightest highlight with detail) falls within those 4-1/2 stops, you're set, otherwise you'll need to make sacrifices somewhere, or use other means to either eliminate the highlights (such as a graduated neutral density filter to knock down the higher values of sky), or provide additional light to open up the shadows (with reflectors or strobes).

But, with transparency film, you'll be most concerned about not blowing out your highlights. The shadows might hold some detail that can be brought out with a good scan and printing technique, but once the highlights are gone, they are gone.

So metering the highlights accurately and letting the shadows fall where they will is the strategy to use when there is too much contrast.

I typically bracket high and low by 1/3 of a stop when using my Pentax 67. For the 4x5, I shoot Quikloads and run three through the camera at the same shutter and aperture, but then send them in for processing one at a time (twin checked) to evaluate my results. If the first frame is spot on, the other two get the same processing. If it is off, I adjust my processing instructions for the second frame. If it looks good, the third gets the same processing.

I routinely push my Provia two stops to gain a little speed with my slow lenses, and there is no obvious change to the look of the film. When I have pulled it (I blew the exposure and had to pull it

Thanks, that is info I was looking to find!

I suggest that you first do some testing to find out the exposure range of the film. Your results should tell you how many stops you have to work with.

After this, spot meter the gray card in the same light as the car and make this your base exposure. Then take a spot reading of the black car and compare this to your first reading. If this falls within your exposure range that you discovered in your earlier testing(remember that the gray card reading is in the middle of the range), expose as is. If not, then you'll have to adjust your exposure or provide more light. Of course, if you increase your exposure, you might blow out your highlights. That means you'll have to provide more light or switch to a different film with more latitude.

Is there any particular reason you don't want to use color neg?

thank you as well! As for shooting the provia instead of something negative, well, I want a slide that can be looked at I tried to get ahold of Astia, but at the time I couldn't (this was a while ago), so I got Provia instead (I was told that Astia had more range than Provia). I may pick up a box of color negative just incase the contrast range is to great to use the Provia. So that I at least have a good shot of the cars, even if they aren't a slide that can be viewed.

[Kuzano]

The price of the Grey Card (8X10) is probably the price of two sheets of your film. Get one and use it. Everybody is right about that. All meters are designed to read or convert an overall scene to 18% neutral grey (don't know if that's the right way to say it). But for color you want to expose to the overall scene and if you fill the light meter reflected opening with light bounced of the Grey Card, you have the right exposure. Substitutes for a grey card are the palm of your hand or a large area of green grass. But the Grey Card is recommended.

I bought my first grey card in the 60's and have never been without one when shooting.

[Kirk Gittings]

Having helped a friend of a friend who was a professional car shooter in Detroit, if he was using natural light (and always with 8x10 chrome, I don't remember which film) he always shot just before dawn and just after sunset. Instead of super hot spots reflected on the paint, you get the sky as a "softbox" effect which is very pleasing lowering the overall contrast. These were like half day setups with a crew of 20 per location and then shooting 20 8x10's in 5 minutes just after sunset or before sunrise.

[Daniel_Buck]

The price of the Grey Card (8X10) is probably the price of two sheets of your film. Get one and use it. Everybody is right about that. All meters are designed to read or convert an overall scene to 18% neutral grey (don't know if that's the right way to say it). But for color you want to expose to the overall scene and if you fill the light meter reflected opening with light bounced of the Grey Card, you have the right exposure. Substitutes for a grey card are the palm of your hand or a large area of green grass. But the Grey Card is recommended.

I bought my first grey card in the 60's and have never been without one when shooting.

I'll pick one up, thanks

Having helped a friend of a friend who was a professional car shooter in Detroit, if he was using natural light (and always with 8x10 chrome, I don't remember which film) he always shot just before dawn and just after sunset. Instead of super hot spots reflected on the paint, you get the sky as a "softbox" effect which is very pleasing lowering the overall contrast. These were like half day setups with a crew of 20 per location and then shooting 20 8x10's in 5 minutes just after sunset or before sunrise.

Thanks for the note Kirk I've shot my fare share of vehicles though (that's my main subject, at work and at play), and sunsets are my preference as well However, when I'm out in the desert next week, I'm going to do two sets, one when the sun is up, and one at sunset My question was more about the latitude of the film for the sun-up shots.

[Keith S. Walklet]

Glad to help Daniel. I noted that the last couple of lines of my post didn't make the cut, so I'll add that info now.

I forgot my light meter on one instance and had my 35mm, with different film, different lenses and filters on it. In short, I screwed up the translation of the meter reading from the 35mm to my 4x5 and ended up with severly overexposed Provia.

But, since I had three sheets, I had the opportunity to try and get something out it when the film was processed.

The first frame processed was blown out.

With instructions to pull the development two stops, I was rewarded a washed out version of the image.

I asked for a pull of three stops, which I understand is really beyond what should ever be done, as the response to the altered processing starts to fall off pretty quickly on the pull side. But the lab was kind enough to try it anyway, and I got the darkest of the three exposures, though the color was flat, there was very little contrast and on its own, it looked pretty lame.

But I scanned that transparency and was able to restore the contrast and color saturation so that the image looks completely normal. It was a lot of gymnastics to get the image, but it was a real pain the rear to get to the spot I made the image with all my gear, so I was relieved to have it work out in the end.