Need more DR for interior photo, multiple exposion with slide or neg?

**ShivaShakti** · 6-Sep-2009, 02:34

I would like to take architectural and interior photographs with my 4X5 camera. I would like to take good quality photographs. I tried Kodak E100VS and Velvia100F. I like the sharpness and the colors, but those slide has a very short dynamic range. Make any sense to bracketing with slide, and put it together with photoshop or any HDR software? Make any sense the pull process under -1?
Or just recommended to use negatives?

Thank you for your help!

**cjbroadbent** · 6-Sep-2009, 05:16

Four Ways to do it:
1.Use Ektachrome tungsten film (plus a conversion filter in daylight) f45, and a very very long exposure. Funny reciprocity with T film builds up DR. Same with TMax.
2.Use Photomatix to align and tone-blend three files from three scanned negatives.
3.Use the scanner to extract three ranges from one negative then blend the files in Photoshop.
4.Use a neutral wedge (a degrad filter) over the window side of the interior.

I have always done 1 professionaly. 4 is a super kludge and builds up the dark side of a room but you have to shoot wider than f22.
Whatever, a natural looking interior needs planning and a little bounced fill does wonders.

**Mark Barendt** · 6-Sep-2009, 06:11

I vote for negative film.

**brian mcweeney** · 6-Sep-2009, 08:17

I agree with Christopher ... planning and lighting ... no matter what film you are using. Planning best time of day to shoot depending on the orientation to the sun, and lighting the interior to balance with the ambient coming into the room. I use Provia.

**neil poulsen** · 6-Sep-2009, 15:26

I gave multiple sheets of film to improve dynamic range a cursory attempt. Compared to digital, I ran into a problem of trying to align the images during post-processing.

With digital images from the same camera, they easily align. But each sheet of film is different. Two scanned sheets superimposed in Photoshop may align in one location, but they'll be off in another.

**Gordon Moat** · 6-Sep-2009, 15:56

Alignment is easy enough in PhotoShop, especially in CS4, though the time required increases with the number of shots, and the sizes of the image files.

Typical interior I would try to get it down to two (2) shots only. Expose one for the interior, then do a second shot for the view outside any windows. Then combine the two shots for a very natural looking interior image.

While I like the colours and punch of Kodak E100VS, it is much more limited in range. I would suggest using Fuji Astia 100F instead. Since you are post processing the shots later in PhotoShop, you can simply boost the colours a bit if you need to do that. My preference would be to leave the Astia 100F shots as scanned, and simply combine them, though it would not be as contrasty as if you shot with E100VS.

I am not a fan of HDR at all. I think it is highly overused and looks very unnatural. What I think you should aim for is good shadow detail, while avoiding blown highlights. You could do that in two shots, and end up with a very nice natural dynamic range.

Ciao!

Gordon Moat Photography

**cjbroadbent** · 6-Sep-2009, 16:18

Alignment is easy enough with two 4x5 negatives side by side in the Epson V750 4x5 holder. Frame the first negative, scan, then shift the frame to the second negative.
Film sag prevents accurate alignment of larger negs because things are not in the same relative position.
HDR is useful when it goes unnoticed and it compensates for difficult lighting situations. Once upon time we had to lug around a lot of lighting equipment to do something presentable on location.

**ShivaShakti** · 6-Sep-2009, 23:32

Can everybody explain what does "reciprocity with T film builds up DR" mean?

Is it mean that reciprocity can affect the curve (lattitude?) and DR, not only the time of exposure? It sounds logically.

Have anybody experience?

**Mark Barendt** · 7-Sep-2009, 06:10

ShivaShakti,

I've never heard of reciprocity changing the range of tones a film can capture or it affecting the high, mid, and lower tones differently. It is simply a measure of the exposure needed to get an image when very long exposures are needed.

It would take some serious testing to figure out how and if it would work for you to control exposure.

The easiest options you have in the situation you describe are;

A) Narrowing the true DR of the scene enough to fit on your tranny film's DR range by using artificial lighting to brighten the interior or by skrimming the light outside. Skrimming may not be that tough; if there are shade tress outside picking a better time-of-day for the shot may be the answer.

This also allows you to highlight specific features and low light others.

B) Using a medium that has a larger range like, negative film, that can catch the scene you want in one shot then basically burning and dodging to fit it on the paper.

C) Using multiple shots and HDR.

My opinion is that using negative film is probably the easiest of these three options.

**BetterSense** · 7-Sep-2009, 06:23

negative film

1.Use Ektachrome tungsten film (plus a conversion filter in daylight) f45, and a very very long exposure. Funny reciprocity with T film builds up DR. Same with TMax.

I don't know anything about tugsten films, but I do knows me some tmax, and any black-and-white film I've ever known INCREASES in contrast in regimes where reciprocity failure comes into play. The shadow regions become slower than the the highlight regions making getting wide ranges of light onto the negative difficult; this is especially a problem with night photography.