Bracketing exposures

[John McCallum]

Hi Bruce, bracketing is conducive with processing your own film and printing. I know that labs often use automatic print density settings for the roll of film.

Not so sure if this is also performed for each individual frame printed. However if it were, this could certainly reduce the differences apparant with bracketing (the tone separation and colour shifts may be less apparant without changes in density also).
It might be worth asking the lab to print 'straight' without any exposure compensation adjustments between individual frames, to see if that makes any difference. They should be able to do this imo.

Best, John.

 

[Loose Gravel]

I shoot mostly BW LF. I don't bracket for this except rarely. Bracketing is a huge waste of time. Chances are the picture is a dud anyway, right? Really. In ten pictures, how many are keepers? Next, there is all that processing, loading holders, cleaning holders, proofing, indexing, and the rest. Then, if I do bracket a frame and then at the end of the day, I'm short a piece of film, I'm really pissed.

Don't bracket, get it right the first time and save that sheet of film for your 'moonrise'.

 

[John McCallum]

Betcha Ansel wished he'd bracketed Moonrise, with the effort it required to print over the years following.

 

[Loose Gravel]

Betcha Ansel wished he'd bracketed Moonrise, with the effort it required to print over the years following.

Bracketing would not have cut it. He was so far off. He exposed for the moon (the highlights) in a very contrasty situation and developed for a what? What was the dude thinking? Was the zone system out to lunch on the guy? The way he writes it after the fact, that it was a source of genius that he remembered how bright the moon was, footcandles this and that. Holy cow.

Nice pic though.

 

[smieglitz]

When I shot 35mm I eventually got around to bracketing by taking three frames at the exposure I thought would be correct, then one over and one under by a full stop. That way, no matter how I cut the film, one frame that was the exposure I planned on being correct would never end up being the last frame on a negative strip and I could always get it flatter in the enlarger negative carrier as a result. It would also leave me two other backups in case the first was somehow damaged and I'd have the other two in case my exposure calculation was off.

Since I stopped shooting 35mm I've also stopped bracketing although I will still expose a backup sheet.