Metering and Exposing Ektar 100

[Drew Wiley]

Keep us posted on that, Stephen. Long exposures (more than a few sec) are not something I have had much chance to experiment with Ektar. And I still have all the
homework to do with Portra 400. I'd be interested in seeing how the latter compares to 160VC.

[alexn]

I find with ektar I expose in much the same way I do with black and white neg films, looking to preserve shadow detail, however I do also watch my highlights a lot, where as with B/W neg I tend to record where the highlights fall, but not actively try to retain them...

Ektar I find to be somewhere between shooting slide film, and shooting something like portra 160, in that its highlights do tend to over-expose quickly like a slide film, but it definitely has a lot more latitude than velvia for a given situation.

If you shoot a lot of velvia, you know that highlights go to about +2, maybe +2.3 if its yellow/green or bright white water in a waterfall scene, and your shadows go to -1.6 if you want detail, -2 if you want texture and -2.3 if you want BLACK.
Ektar I find has quite a bit more latitude, I routinely place highlights at +2.6 and even +3 and retain shadow detail at -3, texture at -3.3 and blacks fall at nearly -4..

I gauge perhaps 6.5 to 7 stops of useful range (when scanning) in Ektar100, as opposed to between 4 and 5 depending on the scene with Velvia.



The posted example has 11 stops between the brightest and darkest areas, this is reduced to 8 stops with a 3 stop hard edge grad filter. I put the sky just off the solar disc at +6.6, the darkest spot at -4.3 and got this result.

Reciprocity calculation was done using a very rough guide I'd been given by a photographer who had done a little testing with this film, he basically said no reciprocity out to about 3 seconds, half a stop out to 5 seconds, and add a stop for exposures longer than 5 seconds...

I now use the Reciprocity Timer 2.0 app for reciprocity calculation with Ektar and find it to give me much better results, although if anything I meter my highlights a little more timidly using the timer app, placing highlights at a strict +2.6

[johnmsanderson]

IF you underexpose this film it will become a grainy muddy mess. I usually meter shadows at zone III.