Olympus OM4-Ti spot/highlight/shadow metering

Svenedin · Nov 4, 2016

I have had an Olympus OM4-Ti for over 25 years (in fact I have 2 of them). I thought I knew how to use this model quite well and most of my photos are reasonable but they could be better.

The camera has a number of different exposure options; the usual centre weighted average, spot metering (including up to 8 spots) and exposure compensation using the "highlight" and "shadow" buttons.

When using black and white film I usually use the spot meter to meter a shadow area where I want to retain detail and use that as the exposure. Over the Summer I took a lot of pictures in the Alps. The problem with landscapes like that is that there is a large subject brightness range from shadow in parts of the mountains to bright fluffy clouds in a blue sky. I almost always use a yellow filter to tone the blue sky down a bit and add some contrast but there is a risk of overexposure of the highlights if metering in the shadows. I find the negatives usually require burning in of the sky as a minimum which makes for slow going in the darkroom (and it is difficult with mountains jutting into the sky).

My question is, am I taking full advantage of the metering options on this camera? Should I perhaps take several spot meter readings from highlight, shadow and something in the middle? Or would I be better off just using centre weighted average metering for my Alpine scenes? My photographs suggest that centre weighted average is not such a good option; there is a tendency for shadows to be underexposed and that is "lost" information. Overexposed highlights can be burnt in but underexposed shadows are just not there on the negative.

I could of course use a handheld incident meter (I have a Sekonic L-308S).

I rarely use the highlight or shadow buttons on the camera. My understanding is that the shadow button underexposes a black subject such as a black cat so that it will appear black and not grey and conversely the highlight button overexposes a white subject such as snow (e.g - and + exposure compensation).

Maybe the solution to my Alpine landscapes is not metering but a graduated neutral density filter (I don't own one, perhaps I should!). That could reduce the subject brightness range to produce a negative that might print with less burning in but the foreground/sky transition is not just a horizontal line in mountain scenery (mountain tops could be spoiled). A polariser is another option perhaps.

Doremus Scudder · Nov 5, 2016

Svenedin,

The problems you have printing are due to the subject brightness range and your choice of developing time. Contrasty negs take a bit of work. The only change that might help would not be to your metering, but rather to your film developing time. You could reduce development a bit for scenes like this and likely end up with negatives that are easier to work with. That said, you might not like the end result as well. I find that reducing development a lot for contrasty scenes can muddy things up a bit. Often the print I like best from contrasty scenes is the one I end up doing the most dodging and burning to. Reducing development is a lot like changing paper grades. Try your prints out on a lower paper grade and see if that helps.

Your metering technique for roll film seems fine to me. For roll film use, where scenes of different subject brightness range are together on one roll, I usually advocate finding a "standard" development time that allows you to use changes in paper grade to deal with the extremes (i.e., the low and high brightness ranges).
Metering for shadow detail in conjunction with this ensures you have shadow detail in your negative. Letting the shadows go black (i.e., no detail = underexposed) is not much different than just printing them black in the print except that if you want, you can adjust your print contrast or dodge the shadows to get detail there, assuming it's in the negative in the first place.

Bottom line: keep metering for the shadows. Adjust your paper contrast first to see if that helps. If you like the less-contrasty print, then there you are. If you don't, you'll just have to settle for refining your print manipulating techniques. If you can't get a low-enough contrast filter/setting to deal with such negs, you need to adjust your development time so you bring this extreme within the parameters of the system.

Best,

Doremus

Hilo · Nov 5, 2016

Like you I have had this camera (also two or three) for such a long time. I do only b/w, develop and print myself.

I have the feeling you do things right, even if I may do them different. Let's say 90% of when I shoot I use the normal metering (average). I find this camera's strength it's light meter and how you see it happening in the finder. This average metering really gets things right. The remaining 10% I use the spot meter. Perhaps in the opposite way to you: when too much light makes important darker parts go too dark, I use the spot on these darker parts. Sometimes I feel the spot meter is too drastic, then I do a second metering to adjust to a more gentle correction. I never do more than two spot meterings.

Some suggestions: check the light meters of your cameras. Check if somewhere along the line you got more problems. It could be that the film you use changed. Or check if you changed your film . . . or film developer - or even your paper . . . or maybe you are moving too strongly with developing . . .

The OM4Ti is a fantastic camera. Unfortunately they also can get problems as they get older. And more so when they're exposed to dust. So I began looking for alternatives. Now I have a Minolta XD7 next to the OM4Ti, same good light meter, but no spot . . .

Svenedin · Nov 5, 2016

Doremus, thank you for your informative reply. It is reassuring to know that I am not doing anything wrong at the point of image capture. Yes, I have experimented with different grades (easiest using multigrade paper which I don't like) but reducing the grade to say 1 or 1.5 can result in a muddy print. Unfortunately, as well as different exposure times for different parts of the print there is probably also a need for different grades. For example, a sunlit foreground might print well at grade 1.5 or 2 but a more distant mountain in haze would be a muddy grey without differentiation between very similar grey tones -that would need a harder grade. Then the sky may need a different grade again. All of this challenges my ability especially in dodging and burning without leaving tell-tale signs of it. I do enjoy darkroom work but I much prefer actually taking photographs so I sometimes find complex prints very tedious and will avoid them in favour of straightforward prints. As far as development of the film is concerned I think my negatives are fairly good and I would not really want to change from standard times very much. I use mainstream developers (e.g Xtol) for development according to manufacturers' recommendations and I steer clear of niche, "wonder" developers and methods as I simply do not believe the claims.

Hilo, yes you are right to mention checking the light meters. One of my OM4-Ti cameras is away for a service for exactly that reason. I think I am being a bit optimistic to expect equipment to be well calibrated when neither of the cameras has ever been serviced.

klownshed · Nov 5, 2016

I've not had an OM-4 for as long as you, but for a snowy scene I'd meter the snow and press the highlight button for +2 compensation and not worry about the shadows.

I tend to not bother with grad Nds much. I have some but often prefer the shots taken without them. But I tend to prefer crushed shadows to a sea of greys. When you have such a large dynamic range something has to give. You can't fit a quart into a pint pot, and it's all about personal preference how you squish the dynamic range of the scene to fit on paper.

As for calibration, there are so many variables when metering a scene there is no such thing as a perfect exposure. taste again plays a part. A calibrated meter won't help much when the dynamic range of the scene is too great for the film (let alone paper!). I recently had an OM-2 CLAd and you can feel the difference in the smoothness of the operation, but there's no real discernible difference to the negatives.

Bill Burk · Nov 5, 2016

Lately I've been taking out my OM-1 and a spotmeter instead of the OM-4. Then I have all the possibilities of Zone System metering reading any spot and placing it on any Zone.

But there will be times when I go out with the OM-4 again, and I might keep the separate meter in my backpack...

In the OM-4 series, "spot-shadow" is a shortcut to "expose for the shadows" - I really would use the camera in Manual and use that feature and adjust the shutter and f/stop to it... then I would clear and do some spot checking, maybe spot-highlight to see if the result is the same combination... clear again and maybe check a spot of something near the middle... If all is good, I'd keep the "spot-shadow" setting I made at first and shoot.

I would hesitate to use "Auto" because you might forget to "Lock" and then you have to re-read and lock, or re-read for every shot... That's too much work... In manual, you can ignore the meter for the subsequent shots of that same scene. If the light changes wildly you can see it in the average reading that shows up.

[When I first got the OM-4, and was interested in Zone System, I was torn, because the OM-4 does not place the shadow exactly on Zone II or Zone III - I think it's somewhere in-between... Lately I have come to the conclusion that it is a trivial difference and "Spot Shadow" will work "just fine"]

p.s. here is a thread that also talks about using spot metering with OM-4 (there was a url link here which no longer exists)

frank · Nov 5, 2016

I had an OM4 and the metering possibilities were awesome. What I found though, was that I was distracted from the aesthetics of photography by the wonderful technical capabilities of the metering system. It was too fussy for me. Great camera though, for those that can tame it!

chriscrawfordphoto · Nov 5, 2016

Use your OM-4T in manual mode, and the finder displays an exposure scale that is heaven-sent for zone system work. Take a spot reading. If you want the reading on Zone V, set the exposure to center the mark on the exposure scale. Want it at Zone III? Set the exposure to the spot on the scale 2 stops under the middle. I never bothered with the highlight-shadow buttons. They're meant for use with autoexposure, which is a waste of the camera's capabilities.

Svenedin · Nov 5, 2016

Thank you for your replies which are very helpful.

Klownshed: Yes, for certain scenes the main subject has to be right and the rest has to be whatever it will be.

Bill: thank you for the link to that thread.

Frank: I like to the camera too much to want anything else in 35mm. With 2 bodies and lots of lenses I am not going to change to a different system. I have no problem with it but was not using the camera to its full advantage so the problem was me!

Chris: A excellent suggestion to use the display bars in manual mode in that manner. I don't really consciously use the zone system but I know what it is and I know what I am aiming for. The limitation of one spot meter reading from an important shadow is that the camera will set this exposure to achieve a mid-grey for that shadow. The camera of course does not know it is a shadow. A spot meter reading of a face for a portrait might be exactly the right tone but not for a shadow. What you suggest makes perfect sense and will give me a visual representation of where that shadow will be placed (in terms of tone) as I change the aperture/shutter. Likewise a spot reading from the highlight. Brilliant. If the only the camera instructions (which I still have) were as helpful! I did have a book on using the OM4-Ti to best effect but I have not been able to find it for years. I can't wait to try this out. It is like I have a new camera!

wiltw · Nov 5, 2016

Keep in mind that the OM-4 spot Shadow is offset from 0EV by -2.66EV, and Highlight is offset by +2.0EV. So if you shoot color neg, which gets muddy with underexposure, you can use Shadow to keep things exposed well for color neg; or if you shoot transparency which loses detail in overexpose highlights, use Highlight bias on a highlight that you wish to retain detail.

Svenedin · Nov 5, 2016

wiltw said:
Keep in mind that the OM-4 spot Shadow is offset from 0EV by -2.66EV, and Highlight is offset by +2.0EV. So if you shoot color neg, which gets muddy with underexposure, you can use Shadow to keep things exposed well for color neg; or if you shoot transparency which loses detail in overexpose highlights, use Highlight bias on a highlight that you wish to retain detail.

Thank you for that. I have tended to take a spot reading on a highlight when using slide film (the opposite of black and white negative film when I would take a spot reading on a shadow) and even then the highlights are sometimes overexposed. Using the highlight button after taking a spot reading on a highlight will avoid this overexposure. Good tip!

Ricardo Miranda · Nov 5, 2016

wiltw said:
Keep in mind that the OM-4 spot Shadow is offset from 0EV by -2.66EV, and Highlight is offset by +2.0EV. So if you shoot color neg, which gets muddy with underexposure, you can use Shadow to keep things exposed well for color neg; or if you shoot transparency which loses detail in overexpose highlights, use Highlight bias on a highlight that you wish to retain detail.

Your first sentence is correct, the rest isn't.
It is exactly the opposite.
The Hi.light and Shadow buttons haven't actually not much to do with shooting with negative or positive colour films.
But, they can be beneficial to those films, just the opposite of what you said.
See the initial post from Svenedin. He got it spot on (sorry for the bad pun):

Svenedin said:
My understanding is that the shadow button underexposes a black subject such as a black cat so that it will appear black and not grey and conversely the highlight button overexposes a white subject such as snow (e.g - and + exposure compensation).

Now, for some anecdotal explanation:
The OM-4 meter, just like most TTL meters reads and gives a reading that puts a scene as 18% grey. That is what an average scene tones and certainly the back of your hand if you are not that white would give: 18% grey.
Now, if you are doing a nice wedding with a bride all dressed in a white dress and in a nice white marquis, then that's where you use the Hi.light button. If you put the Spot on the dress and meter for it, what colour do you think that dress is going to turn up in a colour picture? That's right: grey and bride will not be happy. The only thing you have to do to get a kiss from bride is to press that Hi.light button and everything will be overexposed by +2 stops and dress is now as white as if it had been washed in "Daz".
Your next door old lady asks you to take a photo of her with her poor old black cat. This poor old lady is a widow and she is of Mediterranean origin and so she is dressed all in black. She wants to send a few photos of her to her grandchildren that never visit her.
You know what is going to happen if you take her portrait (and of the black cat) in front of her house, don't you? That's right: her cat and her dress are going to turn up grey. If you put the Spot on her cat and press Shadow, the cat and dress are going to be black as the blackest coal and old lady is going to be very happy that grandchildren are going to feel a bit guilty for not visiting their granny when they see the bleak and dark surroundings.
Thanks to an APUG member and a good friend for the "bride's dress" idea. He used to shoot weddings with an OM-4 and some slide films.

Svenedin · Nov 5, 2016

Excellent explanation. So the Hi.light button is useful for keeping your whites whiter than white (following your Daz theme) with negative film but what about slide film? Surely it will overexpose? I quite often overexpose the highlights of slide film anyway.

faberryman · Nov 5, 2016

I concur with a previous poster. I recommend against using the Highlight and Shadow buttons. They make something easy hard. Just use the spot meter. You do realize that if you take a spot reading of the shadows and use that exposure, you are moving zone iii to zone v, i.e. overexposing by two stops, and risk blowing out the highlights. Although black and white and color negative films are generally tolerant or over exposure, transparency film is not.

Ricardo Miranda · Nov 5, 2016

Svenedin said:
Excellent explanation. So the Hi.light button is useful for keeping your whites whiter than white (following your Daz theme) with negative film but what about slide film? Surely it will overexpose? I quite often overexpose the highlights of slide film anyway.

It will overexpose.

Poisson Du Jour · Nov 6, 2016

Svenedin said:
Excellent explanation. So the Hi.light button is useful for keeping your whites whiter than white (following your Daz theme) with negative film but what about slide film? Surely it will overexpose? I quite often overexpose the highlights of slide film anyway.

Use exposure compensation rather than HI/SH bias, especially with transparency film. I don't think either bias has much of an effect on negative film given latitude, up/down 3-4 stops. OTOH, overexposing highlights is often disastrous with transparency film. If anything, slight underexposure is easier to manage and correct than trying to salvage highlights.
Interpretation of the OM4 spot meter has long been its Achilles Heel with results that are either bang on or so wildly off as to have people launch into vituperative tirades against the camera when sadly it is the photographer that is to blame.

frank · Nov 6, 2016

The arguments/explanations in the posts above would always go through my head when taking a pic with my OM4, and distract me from clear seeing.

Bill Burk · Nov 6, 2016

Ricardo Miranda,

Are you sure of what you're saying? Seems contradictory or counter-intuitive to me the conclusions you draw in your last two posts.

Thought it would help illustrate the concept to show a characteristic curve with some points marked out on it.

This example curve is from Fuji spec sheet for a favorite slide film of mine (Velvia 50).

It's been said (and not refuted) that the OM-4 reduces exposure by 2 2/3 stops for spot-shadow. And increases exposure by 2 stops for spot-highlight.

An unmodified spot meter reading would strive to place -0.8 Log lux-seconds on a 50 speed film.

I marked an unchanged spot meter reading as "V" for Zone V.

2 2/3 stops less exposure is -1.6 Log lux-seconds, and I marked that as "S" for spot-shadow.

2 stops increased exposure is -0.2 Log lux-seconds, and I marked that as "H" for spot-highlight.

As shown, spot-highlight would not be a blown-out highlight.

The spot-shadow would create a very dense 3.0 shadow with color slide film, so not as relevant to proper slide exposure to use spot-shadow.

But for black and white film, I checked what this same displacement would create on black and white film, a density about 0.16 which is a good shadow density.

I would conclude that if you want to use the OM-4 exposure modifier buttons with the spotmeter, it is best to use Spot-shadow for black and white film... and use Spot-highlight for color slide film.

Ricardo Miranda · Nov 6, 2016

Bill,
You are overcomplicating things.
The Hi/Shadow buttons are to be used in particular situations where the meter will be fooled into under-exposure or overexposure due to the nature of that scene.
Any basic photography book will tell you to give a +1 to +2 in a snow scene to counteract the fact the meter will be fooled by all the white snow into underexposure. The opposite goes for a scene where blacks are predominant.

Please, read the OM-4Ti manual page 33 onwards: http://olympus.dementix.org/eSIF/om-sif/bodygroup/manuals/om4ti.pdf

Sorry Bill, but I'm just a photographer, not a scientist with all those log and characteristic curves. Saying that I appreciate that there is Science behind the Art. But, that is it. It is to serve the Art, not to overcomplicate it and dominate it.

Bill Burk · Nov 6, 2016

OK the manual uses the word "overexpose" which is unfortunate choice of words, because it made me think you said something wrong. Even Ansel Adams didn't like using that word when talking about where you place exposure, he preferred "increased exposure" and "decreased exposure".

It was your post #15 where it sounded to me that you told Svenedin that using the "HI.LIGHT" button was the wrong thing to do. If you meant to confirm Svenedin's understanding then I apologize I don't mean to speak out against your really good story... You know me, I much prefer to be encouraging and say "that's right! You got it." So let me know if it was just a misunderstanding.

I wanted to reassure Svenedin it would not overexpose the film, it would be the right exposure.

Intuitively to me, the "HI.LIGHT" button was designed to bring exposure to a really good place for bright parts of the scene for color slide film.

I wasn't sure where "SHADOW" would place the exposure on color slide film...

Basic photo books give general advice assuming that you are using an average meter.

With your OM-4 you have a spotmeter, where the general advice still applies but you can be more specific.

Because Fuji included specific exposure numbers on their graph, I was able to draw lines where a meter would put "ISO 50", "2 steps" increased exposure and "2 2/3 steps" decreased exposure.

Then my interpretation of the graph is...

Two stops increased exposure from meter reading is great for highlight placement on Fuji Velvia 50 because there's still a little room for brighter objects to go brighter.

I was surprised how dark the spot "SHADOW" button places the exposure on a Fuji Velvia 50 color slide, so I wouldn't recommend it for that black cat on color slides... I would reserve that button for black and white work.

MattKing · Nov 6, 2016

My guess is that the two buttons will work wonderfully with colour negative film.

Ricardo Miranda · Nov 6, 2016

Bill Burk said:
It was your post #15 where it sounded to me that you told Svenedin that using the "HI.LIGHT" button was the wrong thing to do. If you meant to confirm Svenedin's understanding then I apologize I don't mean to speak out against your really good story... You know me, I much prefer to be encouraging and say "that's right! You got it." So let me know if it was just a misunderstanding.

It is meant to confirm Svenedin's understanding.
Let's say that "increased exposure" in a snow scene might overexpose some parts of that scene.
The basic principle is that the meter will decrease exposure from what is the "ideal" one when facing large spans of snow. You then increase exposure to return to an "ideal" one.
Any SLR with TTL metering is of the reflected type and it is my believe that those 2 buttons are a help to overcome the negative aspects of that type of meter.
If you are going to use an incident meter say on that wedding dress, you only need to meter from bride's face and that's what a friend of mine used to do. In that case white dress or not wouldn't mater the slightest.

MattKing said:
My guess is that the two buttons will work wonderfully with colour negative film.

My guess is that you are right.

Svenedin · Nov 6, 2016

Interpretation of the OM4 spot meter has long been its Achilles Heel with results that are either bang on or so wildly off as to have people launch into vituperative tirades against the camera when sadly it is the photographer that is to blame.[/QUOTE said:
Vituperative, what a great word. I find the spot meter is excellent and have done since I first got the camera. I am just exploring slightly more sophisticated use of the camera. I think it is rather important where in the scene the spot reading is taken and also to understand what the camera is trying to do. It is a superb tool but it does not replace the photographers brain.

wiltw · Nov 6, 2016

Ricardo Miranda said:
Your first sentence is correct, the rest isn't.
It is exactly the opposite.
The Hi.light and Shadow buttons haven't actually not much to do with shooting with negative or positive colour films.
But, they can be beneficial to those films, just the opposite of what you said.
See the initial post from Svenedin. He got it spot on (sorry for the bad pun):

The point of my post was NOT to specify the design intent of the engineering team who designed the OM-4 system, but to provide two situations under which the OP could employ Shadow mode vs. Highlight mode.
Just as you state, "they can be beneficial to those films".
I did not mean to imply "Shadow is designed for negative films' Highlight was designed for slide"

I know that the true point of Shadow is to make the target black and not 18% grey...it is clearly stated in the OM-4 owner manual.

[/QUOTE]

Bill Burk · Nov 6, 2016

Ricardo Miranda said:
It is meant to confirm Svenedin's understanding.

Then all's good.

There are so many things that can be said about exposure... that some discussions can sound wrong when we are saying the same thing.

Olympus OM4-Ti spot/highlight/shadow metering

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