Nikon F5 metering with slides / slide questions

Unless I missed it no one has mentioned bracketing exposures (i.e., taking additional shots above and below your meter reading). The F5's meter should handle most scenes fine, but with static subjects in complex lighting (which is often the most interesting), bracketing will give you a lot more keepers. Keep notes so you know which exposure you end up liking; in the future you won't have to bracket so much. I have shot slides for over 20 years and still bracket in many situations because slide film is so finicky. Usually +/- 0.5 stop covers it, but if I'm in a really good unrepeatable situation I'll shoot a full stop over and under as well. The F5 will autobracket to save time.

I also second the suggestion for the F100 if you want a lighter, smaller camera with most of the features and durability of the F5.

Also if you want saturation you should try Velvia 50 too. Slower than E100VS, but with finer grain and (to my eye) more pleasing colors and contrast.

When you guys shoot a scene with shadow and bright sun. Is it better to get an average exposure or expose closer to the shadows? Assuming the details of both are wanted.

Also if anyone is using an Android phone download the app 'phototools'. It has a notepad and a lot of useful calculators (DOF, multiple exposures, minimum shutter speed, blue and gold hour, moon exposure). It even has a light meter (no idea how accurate it is)

Today's contrasty transparency film are not designed for shooting in bright sun. There is no law, of course, specifying that you do not shoot to gay abandon in the brightest and contrastiest light you can find (I've done it on occasion!), but when you mix shadows and bright light something has to be given up, and most meters will strive to bring up detail in the shadows at the expense of highlights (burnout). CWA of an at the margin area (partial shade and sun) can give a better reading, but multispot metering around a mid-tone can avoid either blocks (featureless shadows) or blown highlights. My favourite shooting conditions are grey, wet, overcast days which accentuate the colour of, e.g. rainforests that I have specialised in.

Velvia, as with most transparency films, blows gracefully, but blocks shadows at the slightest provocation. You might want to try 100VS as the first stop before moving onto the less forgiving Velvia stable. Stephen Schoof, above, makes a valid point about bracketing your exposures. Even a third stop adjustment either way will be noticeable, but often 2/3 is too much; so if the camera allows it, you can switch metering steps from say 0.3 (third stops), 0.5 (half stops) or 1 stop increments. Velvia responds well to either 0.3 or 0.5 stops. One big advantage of a handheld meter is to take several readings of different parts of the scene (as mentioned above) to get an idea of the scene's contrast and "fit" to the film's dynamic range. As a tool for analysis, this is worth the expense of a meter alone. This multispot metering of a scene was a big selling point for the venerated OM4.

iPhone meters are popular. An APUG friend of mine was using an iPod with an efficient on-board App meter for 35mm pinhole shots recently; can't recall exactly, but he may also have used it for SFX200 (faux-IR) exposures on that same walk. I'd still specify getting your hands on a decent spot meter to get a grip on the basics. Understanding metering from the spot meter's perspective is much easier than being confounded (or angered!) by unexpected results from evaluative / multipattern / matrix meters.

nikonF80 said:

When you guys shoot a scene with shadow and bright sun. Is it better to get an average exposure or expose closer to the shadows? Assuming the details of both are wanted.

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Dunn and Wakefield's exposure manual suggests that for color, pegging the mid tones, normally provides the most usable result, regardless of the scene's brightness range (SBR). This is also true for any shot, color or B&W, that includes the human face. This is my experience too.

Using Dunn and Wakefield's advice for color or faces, the metering intent; pegging the mid-tones, stays the same regardless of the SBR.

You could and should, IMO, use SBR as a factor in what film you choose for a given subject. On E-6 I'm more familiar with Fuji so I'll give my thoughts from that point of reference. Velvia is well suited for short to very short SBR's and non-face subjects, Provia for normal to short SBR's and reasonably good skin tones, Astia for normal to slightly long SBR's and very accurate skin tones.

nikonF80 said:

When you guys shoot a scene with shadow and bright sun. Is it better to get an average exposure or expose closer to the shadows? Assuming the details of both are wanted.

Click to expand...

If you are using a negative film, you expose for the shadows, and let the highlights fall where they may. Unless the contrast is very, very high, you should get both good shadows and good highlights.

If you are using a slide film, you expose for the highlights, i.e., you take care not to blow highlights. You let the shadows fall where they may. Shadows can be blocked because slide films have less dynamic range than negative films. The final result will typically be unpleasant with blocked shadows, and disastrous with blown highlights. You would go for the lesser evil.

If you own a spot light meter you can measure the exposure range, figure out the exposure "for the highlights", check where the shadows fall, visualize the final result, and if it is awful you save the slide film (you use a negative film if you can, or you give up the picture, or you reduce the contrast, by using fill lights for instance if possible).

Fabrizio

Fabrizio!
Yes that's a good way of doing it and I have found that the matrix meter of the F5 does a good job for slide film but because it does a good job for slide film it does a poor job for negative film.

Chan,
How much does it underexpose neg film?

The problem is depending on the scene. It doesn't underexpose by a fixed amount because if that is the case then it's just a matter of calibration. It depends on the scene contrast and of course whether the it considers the highlight or shadow is important (depending where the area is and how large, of course the matrix metering algorithm is not published and I can't know exactly what it is doing). If the scene is flat then the exposure is ok for either type of film. If the scene is contrasty it tends to favor the highlight and let the shadow goes.
With a large amount of shots where I let the matrix meter totally determine exposure, the slides came out fine (sometimes not what I would think but is good) but a large number of negative film came out underexposed. I have stopped using the matrix meter for negative film altogether.

It's always been my understanding that the meters in Nikons are biased for slide film. I read something about that long ago, but the gist was that Nikon calibrated their meters to properly expose K25.

Thanks for the update.
The only nikon ttl meter I have atm is an FTN finder

Keep the N80 and go find a S.E.I. Photometer and use it. It is designed to meter either for the highlights or blacks rather than 18% (or whatever) gray. I've used mine on and off for a number of years and it does a wonderful job, especially if you know the range of the film.

The F5 is certainly a very nice camera and it's better than the N80 in many ways. However, don't buy it for the meter.