How to meter this scenery

[PatrickMarq]

It will be fun to see the results with the polarizing filter. It should be able to take a lot of blue (cyan?) out of the reflected light coming from the sky. The play of the sunlight on the underwater plants is great.

Yes, I can’t wait to go to this place again. But it will be probably in about two weeks. The weather doesn’t seems good.

[PatrickMarq]

It's actually an easy scene to meter with silicon spot meter like the Pentax. I've done it thousands of times. Darker green grass is a good substitute for a gray card, and lighter green grass like in the foreground is about a stop above. E100 needs to be exposed more accurately then Porta, and the results will be quite different. A spot meter will allow you to meter the stream highlights too. A polarizing filter just complicates things. If you meter through that it has to be at the exact angle to the sun and rotation position as on the camera itself. Smarter just to meter without it, and apply its official filter factor afterwards. But a polarizer could also kill a sparkly subject like that if overdone. I never use them.

When metering for color it's best to forget the Zone System and just think about deviance from box speed midpoint. With chrome film, you're only going to get decent color reproduction about a stop and a half above midpoint down to a stop and a half below. Porta will provide a lot more latitude at lower contrast, but with the penalty of less color saturation. Ektar color neg film will give you the saturation, with about half a stop more latitude either direction than Ektachrome.

Drew, I have the Pentax V. Normally the kind of scenery I photograph have a lot of different places to meter. This is just something dark with greens. Until now 95% of my images come out as expected. The other 5% are mostly the one on vacation where I don’t have the time to proper measure the scenery.
I know you like Ektar a lot, but after all my years of photography (43) I still find this a difficult film, even more then E6.

I’m feeling insecure because this could be finally an image to put on my wall.

[Alan Klein]

Drew, I have the Pentax V. Normally the kind of scenery I photograph have a lot of different places to meter. This is just something dark with greens. Until now 95% of my images come out as expected. The other 5% are mostly the one on vacation where I don’t have the time to proper measure the scenery.
I know you like Ektar a lot, but after all my years of photography (43) I still find this a difficult film, even more then E6.

I’m feeling insecure because this could be finally an image to put on my wall.

Are you having problems with printing from the Ektar negative or scanning the film and post editing to get the colors right in the digital file?

[BrianShaw]

Perhaps it would be worth simplifying metering to see if it is either just as good, easier, or better than fussing with a spot meter.

Ektar 100 can be challenging and I found it to be quite amenable to simple general-coverage reflective or incident light metering in most situations. I don’t like the look but that’s what worked for me when I tried it.

With your vast experience I’m sure that you’ve compared spot metering techniques to the simpler alternatives and concluded that more often than not there is little reason to fuss with spot metering. The important thing to know is when spot metering adds value to the task at hand.

I completely appreciate your concern… with a long journey to a pretty scene you really want to succeed!

[PatrickMarq]

Are you having problems with printing from the Ektar negative or scanning the film and post editing to get the colors right in the digital file?

Alan, No, I have my system for scanning and converting negatives. I think it’s more like Brian Shaw says ‘It’s the look’.

[Alan Klein]

Alan, No, I have my system for scanning and converting negatives. I think it’s more like Brian Shaw says ‘It’s the look’.

I've seen a lot of Ektar scans posted here and the colors are often "off". Drew has claimed that exposure has to be right on or the colors will shift. Or it could be their scan and adjustment processes. This is why I like chromes.

[Drew Wiley]

Hi Patrick. Ektar has a little more latitude than chrome film, but is fussier in terms of often needing to correction to the lighting color temperature using filters. I've discussed the issue more on the Photrio forum than here. But basically, it's a hundred times easier to do with the correct filter at the time of exposure itself than struggling to digitally post-correct it afterwards. It's probably the best neutral-balanced color neg film ever, but isn't artificially warmed like traditional portrait films, and does suffer from blue/cyan crossover issues if not carefully exposed. Every shot of it I'll be printing from tomorrow all through summer involved some kind of filter over the lens, like a Hoya 1B Skylight, or Sing-Ray KN one, or an 81A or KR1.5, depending. Post-scan adjustments won't easily salvage curve crossover issues once they're hard-baked into the film after exposure. That distinction makes all the difference between so-so color and really clean hues which can compete with chrome films. So, I strongly advise having along at least a KR1.5 or similar skylight filter whether you intend to print digitally via scanning or direct optical enlargement. Same issue either way.

[PatrickMarq]

Every shot of it I'll be printing from tomorrow all through summer involved some kind of filter over the lens, like a Hoya 1B Skylight, or Sing-Ray KN one, or an 81A or KR1.5, depending. Post-scan adjustments won't easily salvage curve crossover issues once they're hard-baked into the film after exposure. That distinction makes all the difference between so-so color and really clean hues which can compete with chrome films. So, I strongly advise having along at least a KR1.5 or similar skylight filter whether you intend to print digitally via scanning or direct optical enlargement. Same issue either way.

Drew, thank you.
I had no idea that Ektar could benefit with filters. If I go through all of my negatieves it’s almost all Ilford Delta or Kodak Porta.
For E6 I use some filters. As my work always ends up digital I want the baked-in film characteristics to stay this way, and always get it wright in film.

[SergeyT]

The major disappointment may come not from an incorrect metering (I would not worry about that at all if I used Portra or Ektar), but from the use of polarizer and relatively long exposure times. Longer exposure times may "blur" the underwater weeds (turn them into an unpleasant mess). I would experiment with digital to replicate and assess the look at exact same shutter speed as film demands before exposing film. For that reason Portra 400 may be a better choice over E100.

[PatrickMarq]

The major disappointment may come not from an incorrect metering (I would not worry about that at all if I used Portra or Ektar), but from the use of polarizer and relatively long exposure times. Longer exposure times may "blur" the underwater weeds (turn them into an unpleasant mess). I would experiment with digital to replicate and assess the look at exact same shutter speed as film demands before exposing film. For that reason Portra 400 may be a better choice over E100.

Sergey, Oh yes. I have not taken that in account.
So never to old to learn