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Re: [OM] Incident/reflected meter readings

Subject: Re: [OM] Incident/reflected meter readings
From: "John A. Lind" <jlind@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 01 Feb 2002 02:31:25 +0000
At 18:04 1/31/02, Tom Trottier wrote:
Incident is good for slides, if all the light is the same, or you move to
each variety of lighting in the scene (brightest, every shadow variation -
different things reflect into the shadows).

After assessing overall contrast I usually consider the highlights in which some detail is desired and whether that will fall within film latitude of an "average" reading. These areas will be "thinnest" on transparency, the opposite of negative film for which the standard advice is: expose for shadow details and print for highlight details. In general, the thinnest emulsion areas on film are the most problematic in printing. With negatives, especially films such as Tri-X, detail will usually be everywhere except possibly in specular highlights and this works.

But that takes some time, especially in the mountains....

Technically (for negative films), you really just have to decide what you
want to register on the film given your film's top and bottom limits. So
spotmetering,if the spot is small enough, is ideal.

After all is said and done, it's a matter of placing exposure to embrace desired highlight and shadow details within the film's latitude limits. Given the narrower latitude of transparency films such as Kodachrome, doing so is more often a problem than with very wide latitude films such as Kodak's Portra or Tri-X. With color films, compound this with differences in brightness levels of various colors within the scene. The end result may very easily be a different exposure placement because of tradeoffs required with latitude limitations. The general consideration process may still be very similar, e.g. where to place exposure to capture essential detail in regions where the emulsion will be thinnest: in low key regions for negative and high key regions for transparency. I use "exemplia gratia" versus "id est" because there are no absolute rules . . .

For slides, you want to previsualise what it will look like.

This is a Good Thing regardless of film used (and why there are no absolute rules)! The fundamental concept is selecting bodies, lenses, filters (if necessary), film(s), and setting exposure to create an image on film that achieves the visualization.

Knowing how to translate what one "sees" into a visualization that fits within hardware and film limitations can be very difficult, even for the most experienced. Visualization also extends into compositional considerations: how a visual slice of reality, cut out from everything else around the photographer and suddenly devoid of all the other visual and sensual cues, will appear to an observer in a "sterile" gallery environment. I try to visualize how it will look when transported as a "rectangle" into a completely white or totally black "mental gallery."

-- John


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