New To 4x5 Photography - Spotmeter Suggestions

[AERO]

Wonder how photogs managed without meters before they were invented....
Mk1 eyeball ...?

 

[Chan Tran]

Many value the Pentax spotmeter because of its dial. The Pentax commands a high price because of the dial and not because of their measuring capacity. The Pentax is no more accurate than the Minolta, Sekonic or Gossen spotmeters.
So I think someone ought to make the dial to be used with the spotmeter. All spotmeters I know can read the EV value at ISO100 which is the same as what the Pentax shows in the viewfinder. The you can just use that value and set it on the dial. You can make the dial in such a way that it works best for the Zone system.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

I'm impressed only if:
1: She turns out to not be just pretty, but also intelligent, loyal and kindhearted.
2: She remained with this guy for any considerable amount of time (as opposed to hopping onto the next cash machine).
3: She would have/did/will remain(ed) with this guy even if his fortunes turn and the material wealth is gone.

Buying the company of a pretty young lady for a while isn't impressive. It's pretty dumb, delusional, and kind of said for all involved if you think about it.

I hope she's kindhearted too. After all, he spent $180,000 to "get" her.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

That says it all, "approximate". And what is "good enough" for one photographer, might be truly deficient for another. I don't know if you have the same saying in Australia as here; but when people would state their results were "good enough for government work", it meant damn sloppy.

When I'm using the word "critical" myself, I'm thinking of the critical care emergency ambulance ward of the hospital, where they're trying to revive the negative with a defibrillator because the exposure was so far off. I'd just walk off, let the morgue deal with the negative, and take a different shot instead, and hope it lives.

I bracket. Why take a chance on someone's life?

 

[Donald Qualls]

Yes, I sure wonder where Ansel pointed his spot meter for Moonrise over Hernandez???

He didn't -- he couldn't find it in his breakneck setup, trying to catch the image before the Moon dropped into the horizon clouds.

 

[Donald Qualls]

Wonder how photogs managed without meters before they were invented....
Mk1 eyeball ...?

Yep, and experience, and "wasting" dozens of frames learning what that particular brand and batch of plates or film would do in various light.

 

[Chan Tran]

Wonder how photogs managed without meters before they were invented....
Mk1 eyeball ...?

No big deal. I often take pictures without a meter.

 

[Donald Qualls]

I often take pictures without a meter.

Well, so do I, but I'm a lot less inclined to do so with large format cost per frame (especially for color).

 

[Lachlan Young]

Sometimes you're in the valley bottom relatively in shade and your subject is in the sun 1000m+ above you....
you can't replicate the light where it doesn't exist.this is particularly true of sunrise & sunset photographs.... shading w your hand only works if you're in a bright place......

All those examples comply with known exposure values which are readily available to refer against. Your shadow reading is the critical one for neg exposure and it should (I hope) be pretty obvious what you'll need to do development-wise to land on a reasonable paper grade. Not difficult stuff.

 

[GregY]

All those examples comply with known exposure values which are readily available to refer against. Your shadow reading is the critical one for neg exposure and it should (I hope) be pretty obvious what you'll need to do development-wise to land on a reasonable paper grade. Not difficult stuff.

All good stuff...but just because users of incident meters are happy with their workflow....it doesn't answer the OPs question "tell me about spotmeters...."

 

[GregY]

Wonder how photogs managed without meters before they were invented....
Mk1 eyeball ...?

They did marvellous stuff....but just because I treasure Vittorio Sella's work, doesn't mean I will only use glass plates....

 

[GregY]

Phil Davis uses an incident meter in his Beyond the Zone System, he does care about the films ISO or obtain a exposure, that is calculated by the software he developed or uses older Wonder Wheel, what he is looking for is the scene brightness range, zone III and zone VII. For shadow, he just shades the meter with his hand.

Paul, neither Ansel Adams nor Phil Davis are around. Come to think of it i don't remember ever seeing images by Phil Davis.... But Ralph Lambrecht in Way Beyond Monochrome on pages 416-17 gives concise info about various meters....without bias... which might help out the OP....

 

[Doremus Scudder]

Keep it sweet 'n simple!

Examine the scene critically with your eyes, and never rush, no matter how tempting.

Ascertain the dark and light areas, but not the brightest (e.g. spectrals) nor the darkest parts (deep shadows).
Spot once or twice on each, locking in memory, then average all. ...

Averaging high and low readings in scenes with great subject luminance ranges will result in underexposure if you're interested in keeping detail in the dark (not darkest) shadows. That's the problem with averaging meters and with averaging high and low spot readings. If the averaged midpoint (18% gray) is more than three or four stops away from the dark shadow value that needs detail, that detail will get lost.

Photographers that use averaging or center-weighted meters intelligently use exposure compensation to add exposure in very contrasty situations.

The advantage of basing your exposure on a shadow, and really placing that shadow where you want it on the scale, is that you basically eliminate underexposure. The danger of this practice in high-contrast scenes is pushing the highlights up onto the shoulder of the film and losing contrast/separation there. Development adjustments are made in the classic Zone System to prevent this. Most modern films have a large dynamic range and will hold detail fairly well in very contrasty situations, but the extra negative contrast range still makes them hard to print.

Best,

Doremus

 

[Chan Tran]

Photographers that use averaging or center-weighted meters intelligently use exposure compensation to add exposure in very contrasty situations.

Doremus

You can only use exposure compensation if camera is controlled by the meter. With the hand held meter you just can't use exposure compensation.

 

[BrianShaw]

You can only use exposure compensation if camera is controlled by the meter. With the hand held meter you just can't use exposure compensation.

Many photographers compensate average or center-weighted meter readings in their head or on the meter’s exposure calculator dial.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

Averaging high and low readings in scenes with great subject luminance ranges will result in underexposure if you're interested in keeping detail in the dark (not darkest) shadows. That's the problem with averaging meters and with averaging high and low spot readings. If the averaged midpoint (18% gray) is more than three or four stops away from the dark shadow value that needs detail, that detail will get lost.

Photographers that use averaging or center-weighted meters intelligently use exposure compensation to add exposure in very contrasty situations.

The advantage of basing your exposure on a shadow, and really placing that shadow where you want it on the scale, is that you basically eliminate underexposure. The danger of this practice in high-contrast scenes is pushing the highlights up onto the shoulder of the film and losing contrast/separation there. Development adjustments are made in the classic Zone System to prevent this. Most modern films have a large dynamic range and will hold detail fairly well in very contrasty situations, but the extra negative contrast range still makes them hard to print.

Best,

Doremus

Since new film has a wider range, should one compensate using the zone system for that so you don't let's say put the shadows in zone 3 as you would normally do with older film with less range when the zone system was designed? Would you change the development process also?

 

[Vieri Bottazzini]

Wonder how photogs managed without meters before they were invented....
Mk1 eyeball ...?

Probably. And, before photography was invented, they managed with brushes and paint...

 

[Chan Tran]

Many photographers compensate average or center-weighted meter readings in their head or on the meter’s exposure calculator dial.

When they do that they never call it exposure compensation.

 

[DREW WILEY]

It has nothing to do with whether films are newer or older. Good ole Super-XX had a straight line longer than nearly all current films. And placing shadow values way up belly-button high seems ridiculous to me unless you're using a film with a pronounced S-curve and short exposure scale like Pan F. It think that bad habit is derived from paranoia about metering, and leaving a mile and a half of fudge factor between the shadows and what's left of the midtones. Never mind the highlights - they shoulder off. Hence the drastic compensation and minus development remedies resorted to in typical ZS lore - aggressively scrunching and stomping the whole tonality sandwich together due to overexposure to begin with.

So no, Alan, newer films do not necessarily have a wider range at all. But film curves vary between one type and another, just as they always have.

 

[Lachlan Young]

Good ole Super-XX had a straight line longer than nearly all current films

It doesn't. It was Kodak's general purpose sheet film for a long time, that's all. Modern general purpose films beat it hollow and have very similar toe/ straight line characteristics.

The myth of Super-XX has largely been promulgated by those who have/ had workshops to sell to the easily impressionable. Out here in the real world, basic sensitometry shows that there's quite a few materials that'll easily sub in for it.

 

[Doremus Scudder]

Since new film has a wider range, should one compensate using the zone system for that so you don't let's say put the shadows in zone 3 as you would normally do with older film with less range when the zone system was designed? Would you change the development process also?

Alan,

The idea with any film is to give the minimum exposure practical for the shadow detail you want. This prevents really dense negatives and grain. However, when in doubt, I'll give more exposure, especially with LF film that doesn't have the grain issues smaller film does, just to be on the safe side. But, generally speaking, Zone III is still Zone III.

The problem with films with long dynamic ranges (including good old Super XX if that film really had that) is that all the information that can be recorded on the film often doesn't fit easily on printing paper that will still give the desired local contrast.

Nevertheless, with such films, I find I can often develop normally, even in high-contrast situations, print for the highlights and use printing techniques to get a satisfying print.

Using a contrast grade paper to get the local contrast desired, then dodging up the important shadows burning highlights, etc., to get a print with good local contrast that still displays the full dynamic range of the negative is the goal.
Other things like split-grade printing, flashing and masking (if you're able to do that) are useful too. Still, development controls in conjunction with VC paper filtration settings remain a useful tool in for really contrasty scenes.

Working hard on a print from a normal-contrast gradient negative (normal development) on high-dynamic-range film of a contrasty scene is often better than the blocked up highlights associated with films with pronounced and low shoulders,, or the murky micro-contrast needed to tame the highlights with such films used in contrasty situations.

Best,

Doremus

 

[Lachlan Young]

Since new film has a wider range, should one compensate using the zone system for that so you don't let's say put the shadows in zone 3 as you would normally do with older film with less range when the zone system was designed? Would you change the development process also?

Most of the questionable practices derive from trying to force Tri-X professional to not deliver its designed-in characteristic curve that has a longer toe and upswept highlights (as per portrait films of the past - it derives ultimately from Kodak Portrait Pan which Adams was a keen and proselytising user of, developed in D-23), relative to general purpose materials that have a shorter toe and more linear/ rolled off highlight performance. By overexposing up the scale and messing around with processing they attempt to force TXP's curve to straighten out while exposing high enough to not have their shadows affected by the longer toe of the material. The sane approach is to use TXP320 where you want its inherent character, and a general purpose film (Delta, Tmax, HP5+, FP4+ etc) where you want a more linear rendering. That's about the extent of it.

 

[DREW WILEY]

Lachlan - Super-XX did ! Anyone with eyes, either for the film itself or its official Tech Sheet graphs can easily see that Super-XX had an exceptionally long straight line way deep down to the shadows. That's why Kodak explicitly marketed it a "Straight Line Film" in contradistinction from medium toe and long toe films. All kinds of printmakers and especially those who needed color separations depended on that fact - go argue with all of them, if enough are still around. In fact, you're the ONLY experienced person I've ever encountered who tries to deny it. In my REAL WORLD, with plenty of brass tacks experience of my own, I'll side with the 99.99 % opinion of the majority of pros, and officially of Kodak themselves.

Even TMX 100, the functional replacement for Super-XX, can't dig down into shadow separation as deeply as the classic 200's like Super-XX and Bergger/Lotus 200 could. Are hundreds of sheets of film and actual prints themselves lying to me?

 

[Doremus Scudder]

Since new film has a wider range, should one compensate using the zone system for that so you don't let's say put the shadows in zone 3 as you would normally do with older film with less range when the zone system was designed? Would you change the development process also?

The problem with average readings is different. The meter tells you to expose for a middle value. If the subject luminance range is great, that exposure will be too little to get shadow details exposed properly. In Zone System parlance, if you have a scene with a shadow you want in Zone III and a highlight that falls in Zone XI, the meter will tell you to expose Zone VII or higher, thinking that's where middle gray (Zone V) should go. That means that Zone IV or V will be exposed at Zone III density and anything with less exposure than that will have no detail. Hence the idea of giving an extra stop or two exposure so the Zone III gets Zone III exposure or thereabouts. Then you just have to deal with the highlights

Doremus

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

It has nothing to do with whether films are newer or older. Good ole Super-XX had a straight line longer than nearly all current films. And placing shadow values way up belly-button high seems ridiculous to me unless you're using a film with a pronounced S-curve and short exposure scale like Pan F. It think that bad habit is derived from paranoia about metering, and leaving a mile and a half of fudge factor between the shadows and what's left of the midtones. Never mind the highlights - they shoulder off. Hence the drastic compensation and minus development remedies resorted to in typical ZS lore - aggressively scrunching and stomping the whole tonality sandwich together due to overexposure to begin with.

So no, Alan, newer films do not necessarily have a wider range at all. But film curves vary between one type and another, just as they always have.

So why bother with the Zone system?