Beautiful tones in this one Austin. Thanks for posting.
Printable View
Thank you Martin, David.
Still raining, 5" at dawn
https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...552e9f12_c.jpgDawn 5 inches rain by TIN CAN COLLEGE, on Flickr
Amazing Photo Austin. Can I ask a very newbie question? How do you meter for a shot like this? I usually do portraits, and I meter with a L358.
I point the dome towards the camera, and take a reading. That shows the light that hits the face of the subject.
For a landscape like this, what/how would I use this meter? Point towards the sky?
Point towards the camera? I see these photos, and ones that are, say, in a forest with trees as the subject, and wonder how I would
meter with my incident meter.
Thanks....
Thank you for the kind words. As far as your question, for large format stuff, I use an old Pentax spot meter, and employ a sort of sloppy Zone System. Generally, that means I'll meter the shadow area, or the darkest area where I want to retain some detail (here it was the landform at left, where it meets the water), and then I'll place that on Zone three, so basically dark but retaining some detail, and then I'll let the rest fall where it may. Alternatively, for a scene with bright highlights, say sunlit snow, I might meter the brightest area and place that on zone eight (so I'd add three stops to the meter's recommendation which wants everything to be zone five middle gray) and then let the rest fall wherever it does. Does that make sense? As I said, this a very sloppy way to use the zone system, but I'm simple-minded when it comes to technical stuff, and need all my mental facilities to try and recognize pictures in the first place.
I can't speak specifically to the L358, but I often use a medium format camera with center-weighted metering (a Fuji GF670), and in this case, I would take its general recommendation and then have given an extra stop or so, figuring that the brightish sky might have fooled it to underexpose, and also to retain the general feeling of lightness that I wanted.
I realize that this all sounds somewhat vague, but I'm afraid it's the best I can offer. Honestly, when I'm out photographing, I'm not super precise, technically speaking; it's more like I have a feeling that something needs more or less exposure. In general, I tend toward fuller exposures, as I can reign those in somewhat, whereas if I under-expose, it's a bigger problem.
If you don't have it already, I would highly recommend the Ansel Adams book "The Negative" which covers metering way better than I ever could. It was very helpful to me when I was starting out.
Best, Austin
Thank you for that. I'll check out that book.
Boats cast upon the shore of New York's Croton Reservoir.
Ilford FP4+ using a Zone VI 4x5 View Camera
https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...d336ba24_o.jpg
Boats on Shore by Michael Stewart, on Flickr
This generally how I meter (with a Zone VI modified Pentax Digital Spot), but I tend to focus more on the finding the brightest spot rather than the shadow areas as most of my exposures are done with transparency film. When I start to shoot more B&W film I may need to adopt the shadow approach more. I have the L358, the Pentax spot, and I now use an app on my phone lately and sometimes I bring a small digital camera to check, and it seems they all give me slightly different to quite different meter readings, so now I find myself second guessing a lot (this is with my newly acquired Hasselblad 500 C/M). I have not processed any film yet, but shorty I'll send off the transparencies to see the results of my phone metering.