What negative Exposure compensation to use in country with bright light like India?
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So, let's start again, from your own words...
It seems your goal is not ending up with too contrasty negatives because of strong sunlight.
If that's the case, your biggest potential problem is not exposure, but development.
You resolve 80% of that possible problem if your film is developed the way that's recommended by Kodak.
Most people and labs will develop for a slightly or for a wildly longer time, because most people and labs want to see negatives with intense contrast even if all scenes were of low contrast as in overcast days.
Those scenes from overcast days should have lowish contrast on negative, and the sunny scenes must have just a bit more contrast on negative: not even the sunny scenes should reach blacks on negative, only medium dark grays.
Now, about exposure:
When the scene is a soft contrast one, it's very very easy: box speed and incident meter aiming at camera, or reflected metering (camera) aiming at middle values of the scene, or spot metering on a gray card.
When there's direct (strong) sunlight, and dark defined shadows, there are more things involved, and more possible problems if we try to use the same compensation always...
One of the reasons is, even if direct sunlight changes a bit from scene to scene (place, hour, angle) shadows change drastically (amount of clouds, surroundings, direction of light) so the difference of light between both can be usually 4 or 5 stops, but often 3 and 6 are common too, and I've metered up to 9 stops of difference when more than one factor reduces fill light.
When we expose and develop a single sheet, it's relatively easy to meter both extremes and decide which exposure for which development, but when we mix different contrast scenes in a roll, what we must take care of is not the shadows (they change too much), but the direct sunlight: we need to expose in a way where direct sunlight hitting whites retain a bit of detail instead of producing a washed out visual feeling.
If as I recommended you before, you develop as Kodak wrote on their datasheets, and if you expose for sunlight correctly, your highlights will be fine in every photograph. But if you compensate the same way (same number of f-stops) from readings done on shadows, some of your highlights will be weak, some OK, and some blocked BECAUSE shadows change too much.
I hope this explains you why with rolls with mixed scenes, we must care about not blocking highlights and we should let the shadows fall where they are in reality: sometimes we´ll have darker shadows, as they were, and sometimes we'll have more open shadows, as they were. You can't decide accurately your sunlight exposure by metering the shadows in different scenes: you can only do that for a single image with an individual and consequent development time.
Depending on the level of light reaching your shadows, and depending on how much of your scene is under direct sunlight and how much is shadows, and depending also on how light and how dark are the subjects in your shadows, and how light and dark they are in those areas under direct sunlight, your camera can be right about exposure when you read -1, or 0, or +1, or +2...
It changes too much as for a precise rule. But when from experience you know a correct development time, and you also know a good exposure to control sunlight, using that exposure is nearly perfect, and as I told you, you won't make gross mistakes.
Good luck with your trip!
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This! And not only. It controls middle tones too, by removing glaring reflections from subjects of interest that would make a flatter mess otherwise - helps fitting all of that dynamic range of the scene in the latitude of the filmz especially if one's interested in keeping detail in the sky and controlling reflections.
+ I can just use it as ND filter when I want shallower DOF
+ Great for bodies of water;
+ Great for playing around with reflections;
+ Have used it to remove that oily sheen from faces in hot weather.
Most of the time my 50mm lens is married with CPL and my 24mm - with Green-Yellow filter. CPL gets removed under poor light.
And I have thought of buying a second CPL to have a DIY variable ND filter by stacking 2 CPL's - say If I want a scene with strong motion blur in my 400 roll shot at bright sunlight... A nice filter to have, because it does so much more than just a simple contrast filter.
OP - why complicate stuff? Do this the easy way first! Take your camera and a notepad (or an app like Exif Notes), and go out.
1) Meter a scene, take notes of settings and shoot your frame;
2) Repeat the same shot, but give now a stop more light by opening the lens a stop more or adjusting the shutter one click slower;
3) When that's done, repeat the same shot, but now give a stop less light that was metered at step 1.
If you do this rhythm consistently (0, +1, -1), it'll tell you what matters straight away: how you like the look best. "Correct exposure" often is not what people really want.
And the notes you take will tell you what settings were used to achieve the results you liked best - take them as a starting point the next time around and bracket again... Teaches you a lot by "wasting" some film.
When you get the hang of and/or bored by this, only then learn the more complex Zone metering people are referring to here. Hopefully this helps. Has helped me to understand metering of slides - hardest type of film to meter because of the limited latitude.
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If you under expose your negatives they will have little or no detail in deep shadows. So if you have detail then they will print and then burn in the highlights. If you have no detail then it is a waste of film! There is a very old saying in UK and I am fairly certain it will also have been said over the pond as well and this was formulated from well before the art of photography became as well used as it is now. "Expose for the shadows and let the highlights take care of themselves"!
It is very well tried and tested, nothing else works as well.
If you use positive film the opposite is the rule.
OP, this is good advice. Don't worry too much, trust your eyes, trust your camera's meter, bracket one stop over, one stop under. Take notes if you have time (you can also record them on your phone, if you don't have time to write). Most importantly, take tons of photos, and remember that you'll make a lot of mistakes, that some of the stuff you really wanted might turn out lousy, but that you'll also have some unexpected gems. That's all fine - you're doing this for yourself, not on assignment for Magnum, so it's good to keep in mind Cartier-Bresson's famous saying: "Your first 10,000 photographs are your worst.”
This thread reminds me of my first year or two of photography, I had a brand new Pentax K1000 and had no clue about film exposure. I quickly found that on a sunny day my exposures were ok but overcast days were a disaster as the bright sky influenced the in camera meter and gave me badly underexposed foregrounds. I quickly graduated to a Gossen handheld, almost always used in incident mode and later to a spot meter which is pretty much the only meter I use now. Taking a meter reading of your hand and closing down a stop is still pretty good advice if you only have a camera meter and are unsure of how to expose.
I use them often, flowing water, cloud movement, traffic blurs, fields of grass blowing in the wind. ND filters are very useful in B&W photography.
Ya… K1000 with its unweighted meter was a great teaching tool! The Canon A1 has a more sophisticated meter to almost assure decent automatic metering most of the time. But like you… I’m an advocate for learning metering options and methods at some point, generally sooner than later. But sometimes fussing with complicated metering too soon or in the wrong situations just guarantees missed shots.
I agree, I rarely use contrast filters, maybe a yellow now and then but anything more just screams "Ansel Adams Wannabe" with the brooding dark skies. Any photo where the filter draws attention to itself is a failure in my mind. I love much of AA's work but that early photo of his that he refers to as his seminal photo, the one of half dome with the almost black sky is awful to my eye. But many people love it! Whatever rings your bell.… only when the filters are used. Not everyone uses contrast filters.
Others seem to use both ND and polarizer with B&W. You might be unique.
Mark, exactly what shade are your palms? I think that you should be opening up a stop from your palm reading.
I'm sitting here with a Gossen Profisix and a reflected reading off of my palm gives a reading nearly 1 stop under an incident reading next to my palm. Reflected reading 1/8 sec at f5.6 while an incident reading is 1/8 sec at f4.
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I am not surprised. The average reading of a Caucasian is one stop less than an incident light reading and also a reflected light reading of a grey card (Or the inside of a breakfast cereal packet) There is hardly any difference, only one tastes better!
Yellow, Orange and R23 filters bring out the clouds but do not turn the sky black. I save the R25A [most common red filter], R29 and R72 [720] for infrared photography.
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I agree with this so much. There are parts of that picture where rock and sky almost just blend into the same black morass, indistinguishable from each other. And it wasn't just that one--there are so many black skies throughout his oeuvre. No thanks.
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Stereotyes, stereotypes, stereotypes. If someone recommends using a hammer to drive in an upholstery tack, does that mean a sledgehammer? And if someone doesn't want to be accused of being an "Ansel Wannabee", does that automatically make him an "Avendon Wannabee" using a white sheet background?
Heck, I use red filters all the time, and I don't get either black skies or blanked out shadows. That's what correct metering and exposure allows. Does anyone here understand the meaning of the term, "nuance". But if, for creative reasons, someone does in fact want pure black, is that a felony? Would you accuse Brett Weston of being an "Ansel clone"? Of course not.
And there's far more to filters than just clouds and skies. For example, this past week I've used a red filter to bring out the patterns of almond orchard blossoms (white or light pink) in differentiation from green foliage, which red darkens. And in the mountains, after a snowstorm, when the sky turns blue again, then all the micro-texture in the fresh snow has bluish micro-shadows, and a red or orange or yellow filter will variously bring that out better in a black and white image, versus a polarizer, which simply flattens and kills it all. Lots of uses; and one more reason to set aside the stereotypes.
And to Mike specifically - apparently you haven't seen much of AA's overall work. Actually, only a small percent of even his landscape images have blackened skies. Sometimes there was a strategic reason when he did that, like processing streaks on the original film, or even the silhouette of a mosquito inside his bellows, and landing on his film just prior to the exposure. If you look at his most famous Moonrise photo, earlier prints did not have a black sky, and were hell to retouch due to all the processing irregularities in the sky. That was symptomatic of old water bath processing technique, in an attempt to control the extreme contrast of the scene involved.
But given all the air pollution and jet contrail stuff now worldwide, it's hard to get a black sky with a filter anyway. Skies simply are not as blue as they once were, even at higher altitudes in the mountains. Only once in the last 30 years have I witnessed a sky as blue, up around 12,000 ft, reminiscent of what was almost routine in my youth growing up there.
Heck, I use red filters all the time, and I don't get either black skies or blanked out shadows. That's what correct metering and exposure allows. Does anyone here understand the meaning of the term, "nuance". But if, for creative reasons, someone does in fact want pure black, is that a felony? Would you accuse Brett Weston of being an "Ansel clone"? Of course not.
And there's far more to filters than just clouds and skies. For example, this past week I've used a red filter to bring out the patterns of almond orchard blossoms (white or light pink) in differentiation from green foliage, which red darkens. And in the mountains, after a snowstorm, when the sky turns blue again, then all the micro-texture in the fresh snow has bluish micro-shadows, and a red or orange or yellow filter will variously bring that out better in a black and white image, versus a polarizer, which simply flattens and kills it all. Lots of uses; and one more reason to set aside the stereotypes.
And to Mike specifically - apparently you haven't seen much of AA's overall work. Actually, only a small percent of even his landscape images have blackened skies. Sometimes there was a strategic reason when he did that, like processing streaks on the original film, or even the silhouette of a mosquito inside his bellows, and landing on his film just prior to the exposure. If you look at his most famous Moonrise photo, earlier prints did not have a black sky, and were hell to retouch due to all the processing irregularities in the sky. That was symptomatic of old water bath processing technique, in an attempt to control the extreme contrast of the scene involved.
But given all the air pollution and jet contrail stuff now worldwide, it's hard to get a black sky with a filter anyway. Skies simply are not as blue as they once were, even at higher altitudes in the mountains. Only once in the last 30 years have I witnessed a sky as blue, up around 12,000 ft, reminiscent of what was almost routine in my youth growing up there.
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My palms are one stop lighter than a mid grey card.
So are everyone elses.regardless of race.
My views are just a reaction, possibly an overreaction, to generations of photographers following in AA's footsteps with yellow/orange/red filters welded to their lenses and the resultant brooding hero skies. If we look at the current crop of digital B&W photographers we see the trend continuing. According to my friend who attended AA workshops in the late 70's, even AA admitted that at certain times in his career he overused filters and was also guilty of printing with too much contrast and printing too dark. Having seen a lot of original AA prints I agree that quite a few are too dark and too contrasty.
Like toning, my yardstick with filters is that if the print screams "filtererd" when I look at it, I consider it a failure. I'm glad you used the word "nuance". Filters, like toning and burning/dodging, are successful when they do not announce themselves. Your prints may fall into this category but I'm afraid I've seen too many photos where the effects of the filter are all I see when I look at the print.
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Well, we don't need to wear Stetson cowboy hats or beards either, or have a bent nose, to know what we are doing. Speaking of filter abuse, never once have I seen an example of a neutral grad filter shot that didn't look exactly like that, including by a late "ski poster" and travel photographer whose name was prominently on one particular brand of them. His own usage looked particularly fake. But really all this is just like any other kind of tool abuse. Photoshop shows up with a saturation slider, and nobody notices that it doesn't have to be set clear at the top, ala, more sheer noise equals more color. No, that approach only numbs and deafens one.
But as far as AA's image reputation, keep in mind that, according to himself relatively late in life, something like 80 or 90% of his print sales came from less than a dozen images. The public themselves gravitated toward the more dramatic and most published stereotypical ones. It can be a logistical dilemma. For example, I hesitate to show any images on the web because the truly nuanced ones, which might be spectacular in a frame on the wall, look like highly dilute clam chowder over the web; and if the contrast is boosted to solve that, it destroys the entire original effect. So if I did do a website (and as I have done before), my whole body of work comes out skewed because only the more contrasty black and white images, or most saturated color images, even begin to come across.
Now of course, AA is basically a marketing trust, steering people toward a limited number of mass-produced images which sell well. Few can afford original signed prints. There are thousand printed by assistants under his supervision, along with many many commercial assignment prints he made; and those aren't worth much at all.
But as far as AA's image reputation, keep in mind that, according to himself relatively late in life, something like 80 or 90% of his print sales came from less than a dozen images. The public themselves gravitated toward the more dramatic and most published stereotypical ones. It can be a logistical dilemma. For example, I hesitate to show any images on the web because the truly nuanced ones, which might be spectacular in a frame on the wall, look like highly dilute clam chowder over the web; and if the contrast is boosted to solve that, it destroys the entire original effect. So if I did do a website (and as I have done before), my whole body of work comes out skewed because only the more contrasty black and white images, or most saturated color images, even begin to come across.
Now of course, AA is basically a marketing trust, steering people toward a limited number of mass-produced images which sell well. Few can afford original signed prints. There are thousand printed by assistants under his supervision, along with many many commercial assignment prints he made; and those aren't worth much at all.
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It just seems like you are a lot closer to the sun 
I have read through all 68 posts and wow, there is some information overload there (no offense intended).
It has been mentioned a few times in different posts above but I agree with the KIS* point of view.
(*Keep It Simple).
It has been mentioned a few times in different posts above but I agree with the KIS* point of view.
(*Keep It Simple).
- Shoot at box speed.
- Use the camera meter/handheld meter.
- Enjoy the experience.
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mschem - There's no wax holding my feathers on - nothing to melt. But if "closer to the sun" implies spending a lot of my life at higher altitude, that is true. That's where I learned about filter usage. Our topographic maps here have contours line increments of thousands of feet, not millimeters like in Iowa. How do you determine the highest mountain in Iowa when the size of gopher mounds changes on a daily basis?
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foc - I'm guilty as charged. But sometimes some peripheral information is needed just so someone can figure out what actually applies optionally, versus what is always basic. And that dilemma was inherent within the original post itself. Automated exposure compensation is itself an unnecessary complication. The most directly answer, in this case, would have been a redirect to fundamental metering technique itself. But maybe that would have seemed rude, so off we all went into related directions, without hitting the nail on the head, lest we hit a finger instead. Still, hopefully something useful has come out of all this.
Sigh… deep sigh.
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Take a good nap, Brian, and then go out and buy a box Brownie, and "let Kodak do the rest". I personally learned metering with the first Honeywell Pentax model offered in this country, long before the K1, using an external meter and fussy Kodachrome, and almost never botched an exposure. There's simply no substitute for sheer familiarity with one's own equipment, as well as the lighting situations likely to be encountered. Trying to dumb it down below that fact doesn't help anyone. It's just like learning to ride a bicycle - a certain amount of scrapes and bruises are inevitable. That's the only way someone is going to learn to get from Point A to Point B efficiently. The "training wheels" gotta be removed sometime. I never had them to begin with.
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Hmm, I just had a look at the back of my hand and then the palm and it didn't look to be a stop different. Then I used a reflection meter on both back and front and the difference was very marginal.
I should add that right now the reading was under an incandescent bulb( it's night in the U.K.) but I'd have thought that whatever the light source a one stop difference is a one stop difference
It is also still the winter and maybe the back exposed to daylight has gone lighter over the last 5 months when what little sun we see has lost any tanning power it may have had
pentaxuser
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