Metering for landscape photography with Velvia 50 ASA and Hasselblad/Mamiya RZ67?

Hi

I have a question regarding your typical cheesy sunset photo, done with Velvia 50 ASA.

I am a novice in the medium format department, with only 3 rolls of 120 b&w film to show for (you can read my blog about my experience here, haha http://helino-photo.blogspot.com/2011/10/first-hasselblad-and-medium-format.html )

Previously I've used 35mm film in my Canon 1v and spot metered a few points in the scene to get a good exposure for my landscape shots.
This has worked out well.

However, I now want to try my luck with my newly purchased Hasselblad 503CW and I also have a Mamiya RZ67 pro II on the way in the mail.
The Mamiya will be my main landscape camera, and the 'Blad' will mostly be used for model photography.

I've thought about using the Hasselblad for a few landscape tests-shots (I only have the 80mm and a 160mm lens for that, nothing wide).

Now, the 'Blad' doesn't have a built-in light meter and the only meter I do have, is the Seconic L-358, which doesn't have spot metering.
This works fine for model photography, but how can I use this for landscape photography, especially when I have the sun in the frame, for example?
I plan to take shots like this, typically:

I could always use my 1ds mk II's spot meter to get a few readings, but what did/do people really use?

Oh, and I have a Cokin-P filter system with grad filters for my 1ds MK II and lenses, is it any way to get it to fit Hasselblad or Mamiya lenses properly?

Tips/pointers much apperciated. =)

Spot-metering is the right answer here; you use whatever spot-meter you have. For some, that's a (D)SLR, for others it's a dedicated 1-degree spot-meter.

There are a few kinds around: Pentax, Sekonic, Minolta. Having one in the bag is the way to go. (The Pentax was Ansel Adams-approved.)

You can somehow substitute a spot meter with your light meter if you measure at very close distance to spots you are interested and close to. In the shot you showed you'd point it both at the rocks in front of you and into the sky above you. You'd measure the sun lit and the shady area of the rocks to get some idea how bright these are in absolute terms and how they would register on your film.

In the end, all the spot metering won't help you since you can make only one exposure per frame and you can hardly change the contrast of slide film. It only tells you whether a shot can work or not or whether a GND filter helps.

Thank you all.

Rudeofus: Ideed. Normally I use the metering to decide whether to go with 1, 2 og 3 stops of gradfilters (I use gradfilters even on digital some times, even though bracketing and merging is easy-peasy i photoshop). I am unsure if metering (reflected?) objects will be feasible, because in the situation like in the example photo, light levels are very very low (I think that exposure was around 10-15 seconds @ f16, with a 2 stop pola-filter and a 3 stops of grad-filters), my experience is that my Seconic will often put out "Eu" in situations like that. ("Eu" = "what??" )

Ok, looks like I'm going to bring my 1ds or my 1v with me (I'll probably chicken out and bring my 1ds mk II and make a full test-shot before burning film, even though it is.....cheating ).
If I was to buy another light meter, I would probably just dish out for a flashmaster or something (I use my light meter a lot in general), but it is rather expensive, so I'll try and make due and hold out as long as possible

- I will be keeping an eye out and see if I can pick up a good used one that has spot metering, if I can find a really cheap and accurate one, then that will be my hassy-meter

Kind regards.

As far as using your Canon filters on your Hasselblad Zeiss lenses, I'm assuming the diameter of your filters aren't too small for the Zeiss glass. With that assumption, you can get inexpensive bayonette mount adapter rings (the size of your filters). I do this and save a bundle on non-bayonette mount filters.

Thanks!

I'll see if I can find some, would be a shame to buy a whole sepearate cokin-set.
My current cokin (with square nd-filters) fits nicely on my Ø77 lenses on Canon, as far as I can gather, my Carl Zeiss 80mm F2.8 CF T Planar are smaller in size (not sure what the Mamiya lenses are like though, need to check, once I get the things in the mail).

Good to know there are adapters out there, I like to re-use as much as possible if I can

You can buy the 1 degree spot attachment for your Sekonic L-358 or use the lumigrid reflected light 40 degree attachment supplied when bought new, because people were shooting great landscape pictures with normal reflected light meters before spot meters were invented .

Honestly, I would not use slide for this kind of shot, it looks like there's too much contrast. If you do want to use slide, you may succeed, but its more likely that you will need to use a graduated neutral density filter or two. I would use one of the 160 print films. Why don't you try that side-by-side with slide and see what grabs you.

And I wouldn't bother to spot meter. My cheap gossen gives me contrast range and that's all I'd need for this. Well, that and a reading off my hand or some grey object. But if you have a dslr, now that's a great colour metering implement! And if you really want to meter correctly, you do need to colour meter, I guarantee that the colour temp is not 5000K in this scene.

Helinophoto said:

Hi

I have a question regarding your typical cheesy sunset photo, done with Velvia 50 ASA.

Click to expand...

That's why it's called Velveeta (a cheap American cheese)


But, all seriousness aside...

Most color shooters just use incident meters. I use a spot meter, but when shooting color (positive), expose for the highlights using the Zone System and don't overly concern myself with the shadows. But shooting sunsets, though rare, is the one time when I prefer to use an incident meter for the entire scene, rather than a spot. You may also be able to incident meter light extremes near to you in order to "spot" extremes, as previously suggested.

Last weekend I took my LF out and forgot my meter at home. As I am also now learning to use my new digi P&S, I used its spot function to meter. Not as convenient as my Pentax, but after a few translations and calculations, I was able to successfully expose and consequently develop the monochrome sheets from the LF, using the ZS.

As far as monochrome is concerned, with a little forethought, spot metering and the ZS can be used reasonably with 120 film.

Just as an update;

I did a couple of trips this weekend to try things out.
I brought my newly acquired Mamiya RZ67 with me, along with a 50mm f4.5 (Mamiya??) lens.
This lens has 77mm filter threads, so the cokin-p fitted and screwed in nicely, no problems at all there =)

Now for the metering, I used both my Sekonic l-358 and the Sekonic l-208, which came in the bag when I bought the camera used.
I used the 40 degree lens on the 358, but still, with the sun in my face and all, short on time and kind of stressed, I actually ended up using my 1ds mk II's spot to get a few readings around the lighter areas of the scene, as well as measuring the mid tones to get an idea of the contrast.

Still, calculating 5 added stops, due to pola + nd-grads, was kind of tough there and then, so I bulb-exposed from 5 to 25 seconds (light was fading fast as well). Most shots were fine around 10-15 seconds at f16.
Going to take a look at a few of those meters that swhiser mentioned, because I simply don't trust a reflected 30-40 degree measurement, made with the sun directly in my face....thinking that the sunlight must somehow get scattered into the light metering sensor somehow, because they are so exposed...I don't know, a lot to learn i guess

Here's the sea-scape shot I am talking about:
(there was a url link here which no longer exists)

The next image, was measured using only the seconic l-208's 30 degree reflected meter. Here I simply just measured the scene in the middle of the photo and guestimated the sky-balance to be around 2-3 stops (At this pont, I am happy, as long as I get details in there, perfection comes later). Problem was that the meter varied 1-2 stops from measurement to measurement, so it seems like the sun "polluted" the readings a few times.
(there was a url link here which no longer exists)

I did shoot some Velvia frames from the sea-scape scene, will be putting it up later after I get it back from the lab and have finished scanning

Thanks for all the feedback so far =)

Another technique you may try with your L-358 is duplexing.

With the dome installed but retracted take two readings. One pointed directly at the light source the other pointed toward the camera. Average the two.

Helinophoto said:

Still, calculating 5 added stops, due to pola + nd-grads, was kind of tough there and then, so I bulb-exposed from 5 to 25 seconds (light was fading fast as well). Most shots were fine around 10-15 seconds at f16.

Click to expand...

There's an easy way around the filter-factor compensation: you set the uncompensated exposure on the camera, then every click (except for 1/250-1/400... unlikely when using Velvia!) of the shutter speed wheel is one stop. If you go past 8s then the maths isn't much harder (1/4 minute, 1/2 minute, 1 minute, etc) except that reciprocity gets involved for most films so you use Acros or Provia for the really long shots and mostly avoid that problem.

The other thing is that when using an ND grad, I find it easiest to do the exposure calculations on part of the scene that's under the clear part of the filter. Say you have a reading for foreground and sky, the latter being 5 stops brighter. You whack on the 3-stop grad and the difference is now 2 stops so you decide to put the foreground at -1 and the sky+ND at +1. Meter the foreground with an exposure compensation of -1 (i.e. go 1 stop faster than metered) and dial in that exposure. Then if you have a CPL, put two more clicks on the speed dial and close down about 1/3 stop in aperture (for a total of 1.7-stop compensation on the CPL).