Using an external meter by choice

[markjwyatt]

...And if using a filter you must remember to adjust for that in metering, and transfer the result to the camera....

It is generally recommended not to meter through filters. With a Med Y it comes close enough to not matter (maybe 1/4-1/3 stop of the filter factor), but through a Med Red (25A), you will be off a stop or more.

 

[Sirius Glass]

It is generally recommended not to meter through filters. With a Med Y it comes close enough to not matter (maybe 1/4-1/3 stop of the filter factor), but through a Med Red (25A), you will be off a stop or more.

Excellent point. I no longer meter through filters, I correct using the filter factor.

 

[drmoss_ca]

Only a problem with an incident meter.

I find that as long as I place the meter in the light path between the camera and the subject, and make sure it is aligned, it doesn't seem to matter so much whether the meter is very close to the subject or half a mile in front of it (given how far that light has already traveled, perhaps that isn't surprising). It's more important that I don't personally get in the way of the incident light on the meter, which often means ducking down and holding the meter up a bit.

I took an OM-2n with a perfectly adjusted internal meter (thank you, Mr Hermanson) out into the snow and sunshine today, despite the -22ºC temperature. I used the external incident meter I mentioned in the first post, as I wanted to know how it would perform in snow and bright sunshine, which fools reflective meters every time unless you remember to compensate and do so correctly. I'll try to develop the film tomorrow if the boss allows, and we'll see.

 

[BrianShaw]

I find that as long as I place the meter in the light path between the camera and the subject, and make sure it is aligned, it doesn't seem to matter so much whether the meter is very close to the subject or half a mile in front of it (given how far that light has already traveled, perhaps that isn't surprising). It's more important that I don't personally get in the way of the incident light on the meter, which often means ducking down and holding the meter up a bit.

I took an OM-2n with a perfectly adjusted internal meter (thank you, Mr Hermanson) out into the snow and sunshine today, despite the -22ºC temperature. I used the external incident meter I mentioned in the first post, as I wanted to know how it would perform in snow and bright sunshine, which fools reflective meters every time unless you remember to compensate and do so correctly. I'll try to develop the film tomorrow if the boss allows, and we'll see.

How did the two light meter readings compare? Incident should have been a couple stops more than the reflected in that scenario.

 

[drmoss_ca]

I'm ashamed to say that I never looked at the (manual) internal meter match needle suggestions: I just set the controls for the heart of the sun(shine) and that was it.

 

[Sirius Glass]

I'm ashamed to say that I never looked at the (manual) internal meter match needle suggestions: I just set the controls for the heart of the sun(shine) and that was it.

All of us can learn from anyone.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

People's brains work in different ways. I can understand and accept what you describe, but I think those of us who claim to 'visualise' are imagining the final image, with an imagined degree of contrast, perhaps a shallow depth of field and so on. It's what we are hoping to get when we press the button.

First with color I shoot chromes. I have to get the exposure right. I can't play with it when shooting. Other than the angle, content, subject, DOF, which are determined at the time of the shot, there;s not much else can be done. You do have to wait for the right light.

Second with BW, it basically the same except for tones. Since I don't have a darkroom, I aim for getting the light captured from black to white. I've been shooting with Tmax 100 sometimes with Tmax 400. I can play with tones later. What am I missing with visualization?

 

[RalphLambrecht]

Yes, my very first camera was a Retina, and I got a Baldamatic. Both have a flat diffusor, either packed in the eveready-case, or by little string. attached to a lug.

the small GossenDigimatix fits into any hot or cold shoe!

 

[Craig]

Other than the angle, content, subject, DOF, which are determined at the time of the shot, there;s not much else can be done. You do have to wait for the right light.

I'd call all that visualization. You have an idea in your head of what you want or what would be pleasing and you adjust your viewpoint/ cropping in the viewfinder, both physically and with choice of lens in addition to all the camera adjustments (DOF etc) to get what you want.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

I'd call all that visualization. You have an idea in your head of what you want or what would be pleasing and you adjust your viewpoint/ cropping in the viewfinder, both physically and with choice of lens in addition to all the camera adjustments (DOF etc) to get what you want.

We're photographers, not painters. We have to find the right spot at the right time for the right lighting or wait. You get what you got. Have you seen the original shot of Ansel Adams' Moonrise? It's ugly. There was no previsualization, It was all post visualization.

 

[BrianShaw]

We're photographers, not painters. We have to find the right spot at the right time for the right lighting or wait. You get what you got. Have you seen the original shot of Ansel Adams' Moonrise? It's ugly. There was no previsualization, It was all post visualization.

If you read what St Ansel, himself, wrote and said about that image… there was both.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

If you read what St Ansel, himself, wrote and said about that image… there was both.

What did he say?

 

[Zathras]

We're photographers, not painters. We have to find the right spot at the right time for the right lighting or wait. You get what you got. Have you seen the original shot of Ansel Adams' Moonrise? It's ugly. There was no previsualization, It was all post visualization.

I think that Adams did okay considering the conditions he was working under when he made the exposure for the "Moonrise" negative.
He was losing daylight quickly and could not find his meter. He clearly saw his desired image in his mind and took an educated guess
for the exposure. There was in fact visualization happening in this situation, as he mentally placed the luminance of the moon on Zone VII
and proceeded to calculate an exposure based on the moon's brightness according to an old exposure formula. He was also concerned
that he didn't give the film enough exposure to render adequate detail in the and he was turning the film holder around to make a second,
longer exposure when the light faded. As a result he only had one negative for this scene, and it was less than ideal. It took him a few years
to finally get the process dialed in so he could print what he actually saw in his mind's eye that day.

 

[MattKing]

Adams never exposed negatives for straight contact printing purposes - he always incorporated the potential for darkroom manipulations into his exposure decisions.
And for Moonrise, he captured that in an incredible rush, with no opportunity for a meter reading.
He saw the scene and the light, hopped up on top of the car and grabbed a shot, all the while visualizing the prints he intended to make of the negative.
His visualization evolved over the years, particularly after he took steps to correct the under-development he used (he intensified the negative).

 

[BrianShaw]

Adams never exposed negatives for straight contact printing purposes - he always incorporated the potential for darkroom manipulations into his exposure decisions.
And for Moonrise, he captured that in an incredible rush, with no opportunity for a meter reading.
He saw the scene and the light, hopped up on top of the car and grabbed a shot, all the while visualizing the prints he intended to make of the negative.
His visualization evolved over the years, particularly after he took steps to correct the under-development he used (he intensified the negative).

… and doing mental arithmetic in his head, all at the same time. But even on images where he worked slower and actually metered, the same process was what he described and performed. This has been documented by him as well as discussed on Photrio and elsewhere so many times before.

 

[BrianShaw]

What did he say?

I spoke to him recently. He said you should read his books. LOL.

 

[Craig]

We're photographers, not painters. We have to find the right spot at the right time for the right lighting or wait. You get what you got.

For landscapes for example, you can pick your vantage point and do all sorts of things to get the type of image you want. You might be far way with a tele, or closer with a wide angle, maybe bring the camera right down to the water level of a river while looking up, there are all sorts of choices that can be made before releasing the shutter than will affect the final image.

We may not have the total freedom that a painter has, but you are also not forced into a "take it or leave it " of the first vantage point you see at normal standing height. As mentioned, in Moonrise, Ansel set up the camera on the roof of his car to get the shot he wanted. It would have been quicker and easier to shoot from the ground, but he didn't. One of my favourite photographers was Nicholas Morant who worked for Canadian Pacific. He built himself a scaffolding that could be transported on the running boards of locomotives to remote locations where he wanted the height to get above the trees. That's visualization and taking steps to get the shot he wanted.

 

[Bill Burk]

Second with BW, it basically the same except for tones. Since I don't have a darkroom, I aim for getting the light captured from black to white. I've been shooting with Tmax 100 sometimes with Tmax 400. I can play with tones later. What am I missing with visualization?

Right, you are not going to do the whole “make the barn roof look like Zone VII” thing. But if that’s what you want to do, you can order a one stop push from the lab and it will kind of lead into the barn roof being lighter.

More practical you could do this:

If you see the sky is going to be blown out compared to the interesting part of your picture you can recompose and maybe only include a sliver of sky.

 

[Chan Tran]

First with color I shoot chromes. I have to get the exposure right. I can't play with it when shooting. Other than the angle, content, subject, DOF, which are determined at the time of the shot, there;s not much else can be done. You do have to wait for the right light.

Second with BW, it basically the same except for tones. Since I don't have a darkroom, I aim for getting the light captured from black to white. I've been shooting with Tmax 100 sometimes with Tmax 400. I can play with tones later. What am I missing with visualization?

Visualization is simply imagine the final image in your mind as regardless how you do it the final image looks a lot different from the real scene. For example you take the camera out and shoot slide and you simply let the camera does it automatically if you can visualize it you can imagine in your mind how the final image will look like. It doesn't have to be what you like but you know what you are going to get.

 

[markbau]

Adams never exposed negatives for straight contact printing purposes - he always incorporated the potential for darkroom manipulations into his exposure decisions.
And for Moonrise, he captured that in an incredible rush, with no opportunity for a meter reading.
He saw the scene and the light, hopped up on top of the car and grabbed a shot, all the while visualizing the prints he intended to make of the negative.
His visualization evolved over the years, particularly after he took steps to correct the under-development he used (he intensified the negative).

Did AA say he underdeveloped the neg? I would have thought that much more development would have blown the moon and clouds to print pure white. I think you'll find that he intensified the foreground, not the whole neg. Personally I think the foreground looks like an illogical tonality.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

I spoke to him recently. He said you should read his books. LOL.

I guess I'm lucky. Since I don't have a darkroom, I can't worry about most of those things. I have to focus on content and lighting at the time. My understanding was that with print papers the way they were back then, you had to think beforehand what you wantedto do in setting up the exposure. So is it possible that today, the trick is to just get the widest latitude for the picture so that will give you the ability to create what you want in the final photo? Will Tmax 100 cover the range that I would need or anyone else for that matter as long as you capture the blacks and whites and everything in between?

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

For landscapes for example, you can pick your vantage point and do all sorts of things to get the type of image you want. You might be far way with a tele, or closer with a wide angle, maybe bring the camera right down to the water level of a river while looking up, there are all sorts of choices that can be made before releasing the shutter than will affect the final image.

We may not have the total freedom that a painter has, but you are also not forced into a "take it or leave it " of the first vantage point you see at normal standing height. As mentioned, in Moonrise, Ansel set up the camera on the roof of his car to get the shot he wanted. It would have been quicker and easier to shoot from the ground, but he didn't. One of my favourite photographers was Nicholas Morant who worked for Canadian Pacific. He built himself a scaffolding that could be transported on the running boards of locomotives to remote locations where he wanted the height to get above the trees. That's visualization and taking steps to get the shot he wanted.

That's not previsualization. Nothing "pre" about it. That's what he's seeing and getting at the time in the viewfinder. He's seeing it in real-time. Every photo you take does that. You change the lens, you see a different picture. You move the camera and change the angle, you see a different picture. We're making it seem like some sort of black magic. Maybe I;m missing something.

 

[Bill Burk]

TMAX 100 will do that if you give it enough light. It has a very long straight line. But, if you don’t give enough light there will be nothing on the film.

 

[markbau]

It is generally recommended not to meter through filters. With a Med Y it comes close enough to not matter (maybe 1/4-1/3 stop of the filter factor), but through a Med Red (25A), you will be off a stop or more.

Indeed! If you have a densitometer it's a fun exercise to read your filters, even neutral density filters give readings that are not close to the filter factor.

 

[Raghu Kuvempunagar]

If you can imagine how your final print would look like at the time of photographing the scene, if not in its entire glory but at least conceptually, you've previsualized. Of course it is imperative that you subsequently take all technical steps needed to materialize the imagined print.