understanding exposure or overdoing it ?

[removed account4]

i imagine there were no light meters until after 1920
there were charts and experience.

before the 20s, are there records of photographers
people who were successful, maybe even well known now who dwelled upon exposure
as people do now?

i've used plates ive coated myself, ive used paper both hand coated and store bought
and i know and understand how difficult it is to manage exposure. it is finicky to say the least.
in denise ross' wonderful book she makes and uses filters to do fun stuff,
and i am guessing maybe photographers before the 20s were savvy and might have used filters?
i've got photographic annuals from 1904 there are exposure charts but no mention of filters so i don't know .

anyways ... modern day photographers spend so much time wrestling with exposure. getting a perfect one
or nearly perfect one, or hopefully great one ... did photographers who used more "primitive" materials
( paper, plates ) wrestle with perfection as modern day photographers tend to?

i ask this because there are so many questions about perfect exposures using all sorts of different methods
and tools it makes me wonder what people from the 1800s would think.

 

[Theo Sulphate]

Extinction meters and actinometers were in use before 1900.

 

[bdial]

Until panchromatic materials became common they could develop by inspection, which probably helped a lot.
I expect there also wasn't the range of speeds we have now, one film, one camera, one lens, one developer simplifies things.

They would probably think we've made things way too complicated.

 

[removed account4]

never an actinometer
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actinometer
figures john hershel invented it ..


ahh, develop by inspecton i forgot the key to the puzzle !

yeah i have a feeling you are right barry, WAY too complicated

 

[NedL]

Until panchromatic materials became common they could develop by inspection, which probably helped a lot.

I don't have a lot of experience, but with the one kind of calotype I've been working with, the amount of control you get during development is pretty amazing... Coming up slowly? Add some silver nitrate. Coming up fast? Add less silver nitrate, and take it out sooner. Development anywhere from 10 minutes to an hour, and it changes so slowly that it's not hard to get it right once you know what a good negative looks like ( that is harder to learn! ).

 

[jeffreythree]

You can make it as complicated or uncomplicated as you want. I shoot at box speed, use one developer at a time until it runs out, use sunny 16 or in camera meters(some with the wrong non-mercury cell no less), and end up printing at grade 2 or 3 most times. They may not be perfect negatives, but they print fine. My odd choices of developers(currently 510-pyro) is about as complicated as I have gone and is probably influenced by how I work. I shoot only roll films currently, by the way.

 

[markbarendt]

I think in some sense the light meter and the zone system has become "a stop watch and a track", democratization of the measuring tools laid a foundation for competition within the craft rather than within the art.

 

[Gerald C Koch]

The lack light meters is evidenced by the many formulas for intensifiers and reducers. A bad exposure could be corrected in the darkroom. Oskar Barnack's prototype for the Leica was intended to test each new batch of film for the existing lighting conditions. There were books of tables which detailed lighting conditions for various locations around the globe for each month of the year. These were painstakingly asssemled by dedicated followers of photography.

 

[Ko.Fe.]

Plates, low, next to no ISO emulsion? Exposure metering must be really important or consistent light, I guess.
Or with positive film. Or even for color negative.
But for bw I don't measure it often anymore outdoors.
One street photographer gave good advice to me once.
Our exposure is provided by forecast in the morning, before you'll go out.

 

[removed account4]

hi Ko.Fe:

the weather matters, i agree but if you are not in open air but open shade
or in an alley or insde a building can you translate that " it is gloomy f4" to
the other place you might end up making a photograph?
df cardwell posted something here, IDK 7 years ago, something i have never forgotten
( together with a photograph from his favorite coffee shop )
he said an interior like that is always wide open and 1/15thS.
can't say how many times i have had that phrase running around in my head when i didn't have a flash.
im no 19th century photographer, that is for sure, but every day i learn a little more how to be one.

 

[pdeeh]

If it's not difficult, you're not doing it properly ...

 

[removed account4]

If it's not difficult, you're not doing it properly ...

yeah i think this might be true.

 

[Mr Bill]

This can lead to obsessing about "placements", exposures/EIs in 1/3 or 1/4 stops, targeting specific negative densities, and development times to the nearest 10 seconds, when in reality that sort of precision is a myth.

Actually, in my experience with high volume processing, we could EASILY meet those conditions. I spent some years as the Quality Control Dept manager with a large outfit, and we would not consider starting up, for example, a C41 processor with a 10 second developing time error. One or two seconds, sure, but more than that, no - go back and adjust the speed again.

"Targeting specific negative densities?" Lots more control than you probably think. We did plenty of controlled tests (gray cards and Macbeth ColorCheckers included). If you were to say, "can you adjust exposure to raise the gray card density by 0.04?" then sure, we could do that. The exposure meter may not have that much precision so we'd probably change flash pack settings by a calculated number then process test film to confirm. Now of course the measured densities are not all perfect, but if we had an aim of, say 0.75, we could probably hit within 0.01 of that, and multiple shots would mostly be within 0.01 of that result, perhaps 80% of the time.

I happen to know this because my department would periodically produce printer control (slope) negs for all of our lab operations. You can't just do this with random film - these were Kodak pro color neg portrait films, selected from the same section of the master roll. (Cross web variations were very slight, but we preferred not to chance it for slope neg production.)

I don't see many people with pro finishing experience on photo forums, so this sort of thing seems largely "unknown," but the failure of home processors to nail things down is probably more of a weakness in their "process control," as we would say. To be sure, I'm not saying that this is BAD, mostly it's not worth chasing for most photographers. But the possibility of this sort of control is not a "myth."

 

[removed account4]

thank you mr bill -
i always apprecaite your insights !

- john

 

[blockend]

It's important to separate large format practice from miniature camera technique. In the context of 5 x 4 photography it would be silly not to place the tonal range of the negative, or you wouldn't benefit from the format's natural advantages. A 35mm camera was designed to be used on the fly, and may contain 36 frames with widely differing lighting. If your subject is consistently lit it makes sense to adopt a precise exposure regime, but that's the exception for hand held cameras.

That said, in daylight I normally use one of two exposures and standardised development with 35mm film, and find negatives more consistent than slavishly following an in-camera light meter.

 

[darkosaric]

For me it is very simple: if the camera has light meter I use it - if not, then I just overexpose and develop in semi-stand, later in the darkroom it is all compensated in the final print to get the maximum from the negative.

 

[removed account4]

It's important to separate large format practice from miniature camera technique. In the context of 5 x 4 photography it would be silly not to place the tonal range of the negative, or you wouldn't benefit from the format's natural advantages. A 35mm camera was designed to be used on the fly, and may contain 36 frames with widely differing lighting. If your subject is consistently lit it makes sense to adopt a precise exposure regime, but that's the exception for hand held cameras.

That said, in daylight I normally use one of two exposures and standardised development with 35mm film, and find negatives more consistent than slavishly following an in-camera light meter.

hi blockend
while i see what you are saying and can understand why people might
do as you suggest with modern film my question really had to do with
pre panchromatic materials that had a very slim exposure latitude,
(maybe like slide film maybe kinda sorta ) and knowing how difficult it is
to use that sort of material having self coated for 30 years, or used store bought paper for negatives,
i wondered if people "from the olden days" had the benefit of meters. i know they had charts ...
(annuals published the ones i have) ... i was mainly asking if everthing was via-experience and good notes back then.
and if they came into "nowadays" would they think the modern equipment and techniques some folks employ
(spot meters, zone charts, curves &c ) was over the top and over kill, and i guess, would they easily be able to
deal with the convenience of large latitude film, and modern gadget-based photography.

 

[blockend]

There's an over reliance on camera metering systems in my opinion, to the point where people have forgotten, or are unaware of the need to compensate exposure for normal situations like back lighting or snow. Modern films certainly have latitude, but they won't show facial features in a silhouette, or stop highlights being blown out. Orthochromatic films and plates typically had a low speed and very little latitude, meaning the user had to expose correctly.

 

[Soeren]

Remember these from the 35mm filmboxes?

 

[Ken Nadvornick]

It's a missing historical context thing. People forget that the exposure charts and cameras in the 1800s were just as cutting-edge high tech in their day as the most modern meters and cameras are today. They only look quaint and simple to us because we now look back at them from the distant future.

The use today of a camera with modern metering is no different in principle to the use by someone in the 1800s of a pre-calculated and highly detailed photographic exposure chart. Both were the best and most complex tools of their time and the wonders of their day. Both required similar wrestling matches to master and use correctly.

But their respective degrees of difficulty, relative to their historical contexts, were about the same. As will be the respective degree of difficulty of our tools, when those 140 or so years from now look back at us and ask pretty much the same questions. Only the tools will differ.

Ken

 

[removed account4]

Remember these from the 35mm filmboxes? View attachment 154910

thank you soeren !
most excellent painstakingly made exposure chart
as cutting edge as I like to go

 

[removed account4]

There's an over reliance on camera metering systems in my opinion, to the point where people have forgotten, or are unaware of the need to compensate exposure for normal situations like back lighting or snow. Modern films certainly have latitude, but they won't show facial features in a silhouette, or stop highlights being blown out. Orthochromatic films and plates typically had a low speed and very little latitude, meaning the user had to expose correctly.

hi again blocked:

I couldn't agree more with you about over reliance on modern camera metering systems, and
the way people forget or don't know to compensate for certain photographic situations.
while in some respects the modern camera ,minox to modern 20x24might be similar to those
used 14o-160 years ago ( a dark box and a lens and a shutter ) they way most people use them
today is a foreign experience compared to 150 years ago ...
as you said people are reliant on meters (and gadgets ) an most people seem to be
oblivious to the light. 150 years ago someone might have been able to make photograph without a chart..
a lot of people here reject the idea of sunny 16 ... ( waste of resources )
as far as photography has gone into the future, super fast films, high tech cameras, beautiful lenses ...
photographers have taken a large step back ...

 

[pdeeh]

careful now john, you're only a step away from suggesting that digital is the invention of Beelzebub

 

[removed account4]

careful now john, you're only a step away from suggesting that digital is the invention of Beelzebub

actually, i think internal metering and auto exposure were the invention of Beelzebub
not digital, digital was invented by kodak

 

[CMoore]

actually, i think internal metering and auto exposure were the invention of Beelzebub
not digital, digital was invented by kodak

Yeah...it's "funny"...they (helped) brought Digital Photo up from the ground
How many people did Kodak employ, and how many people does Instagram employ.?
Huh, I was going to say I do not own a digital camera, but I do. Guess it qualifies as a Point And Shoot.?
And it is a Kodak Easy Share C875. Probably more obsolete than my Canon A-1 and Nikon F2.