Originally Posted by
Will Frostmill
Hi Spencer!
I know I'm late to the party, and it sounds like you've got things worked out. (Plus Doremus and others have given you some excellent advice.) I just wanted to point out three things:
1. Given the meter readings in your example here, you've got a really usable dynamic range, six stops from deep shade to cloud tops. That's really quite workable.
2. You are entirely correct, a red filter will make the clouds pop. Remember to increase exposure by at least a stop. If you want blue skies to read as blue (really gray), you need at least a k-2 yellow filter.
3. You are used to working with digital, right? Me too. I spent a lot of time trying not to blow out the highlights with no detail, but I can usually pull something useful out of the shadows. Think about film as totally opposite: you must not blow out the shadows by underexposing them. Meter for the shadows, expose for the shadows. After a while you can "see" where the shadows will fall on a gray scale. That's Zone System thinking.
To pull detail out of the highlights, to pull them down where you can see them, you reduce development time. Or dilute. Or reduce contrast in the paper. Or carefully shade the paper in the enlarger so the white parts aren't so white. But to make things easy, just develop less.
If all that sounds like use a k-2 filter, and treat your film as half the box speed (iso 50 instead of 100), and develop N-1 most of the time, that's about right. You can do tests to make sure you are developing for the "right" N-1, including plotting highlight densities, and so on, but for me that's more about getting the darkroom stuff to be easily repeatable.
This part is strictly my mostly uninformed opinion:
I think the fastest way to get everything dialed in is to use a 35mm camera and shoot at least two rolls of film, with the exact filter and meter you usually would use. Meter whatever way you like, so long as it's consistent, and shoot 5 or 7 frames of the same thing, under the same light. Bracket those shots: one, two, three stops underexposed, one right on, one, two, three shots overexposed. Do whatever you want with the rest of the roll, and then shoot the exact same thing the exact same way with the second roll. When you develop the film, develop one at n-1, and the other the normal way. Make some prints, and out of all the frames, pick the ones that have the "right" exposure and "right" development. Go back and see what metering you used to get it right, and always use that metering in that light. That's your truth.
Good luck, and good light,
Will
Bookmarks