A naive question from someone who did not shoot film very much..
I have found an old "Pocket Field Guide to Evaluative Metering" by Art Morris, written in 2002 in his film days.
It suggests exposures for birds in almost every possible condition.
IE " Light background, medium subject in fog: +1/2 or +2/3" - with photo of this condidion.
Is there any reason this would not be useful with digital also? I don't believe this has been published for years, which might be a clue
Good question. If I remember correctly, Art used 35mm Velvia 50, a highly saturated film with about 4 stops of dynamic range. Whether or not the guidelines in his guide will work for you, only you could decide, based upon testing. Being a 4x5 guy who uses a handheld spot meter, I'm not up on what the dynamic range is for digital sensors. That's why I suggested testing Art's assumptions for your own work.
Your light meter, whether handheld, in a digital camera, or a film camera sees the world as neutral grey, of course. If you shift the indicated meter reading up the exposure grey scale, you would have to keep an eye on the significant highlights so that they don't clip (over-expose) producing a less than satisfactory result.
--P
Posted by Richard Ditch on September 3, 2012 at 6:59 PM
The first version of Morris' exposure compensation guide that I saw was in Bird Photography Basics, a "special publication" from Bird Watcher's Digest, copyright 1992. There's one page of correction factors for Fuji Velvia/Front-lit Subject, and a second table of compensation factors for Kodachrome 64/Front-lit Subject. Yes, that implies that Morris used different factors depending upon the film in his Canon camera. Also note that my copy of this booklet has a paste-in sheet of "corrected" Correction factors for the Velvia table. There are Forty compensation factors in each of these tables depending on tone of bird, background, and size of the subject in the frame.
When Morris published the more comprehensive The Art of Bird Photography in 1998 these two tables were replaced by a single table (for Velvia) with only eight subject size, subject color, background color combinations.
When I saw this complexity in the 90's I decided that I would never want to own a Canon SLR if I had to spend my time memorizing so many fudge factors to be able to use the in-camera meter. I happily continued using my Nikon TTL meter and made a lot fewer adjustments to the exposure that the Nikon camera figured out for me.
Also keep in mind that when shooting slide film you had to be very close to correct on exposure when you took the photo - there was no exposure slider or highlight recovery to fix an exposure that was screwed up in the field. With digital, raw conversion, and photoshop it is possible to get very good results with less than perfect in-the-filed exposure.
Posted by David Bostedo on September 3, 2012 at 7:13 PM
Sandy - If all the guide gives you is exposure compensations for various situations, then those are likely specific to the particular meter/film that existed at the time (as Richard mentioned). They might be correct for more modern meters, but given the different modes and capability, I'd guess that a lot of them are wrong for current meters. (It depends on whether or not the modern meters set the exposure the same, and fail in the same ways, as older meters.)
If, instead, it gives you suggested exposure settings for various ISO films, that may be more useful as a place to start with any given exposure. But using the meter in camera set on the proper mode, and some chimping, may still be better for really nailing it.
Posted by Mark Stahlke on September 3, 2012 at 10:14 PM
Something to think about is digital's ETTR (expose to the right) technique. Keep your histogram as far to the right as possible without clipping the highlights. Back when we were shooting 35mm film, we had to nail the exposure. We burned a lot of film bracketing exposures. Since digital shots are free you could do a lot of bracketing to see what works best in your lighting conditions.
Thanks for all the helpful replies! I use my histogram religiously, and am pretty good with exposures.. I was really just wondering if this Guide had value. I surely had no intention of memorizing 100 combinztions of facors that influence exposing well!
Sandy
Posted by David Graham on September 4, 2012 at 8:04 AM
Jumping into this discussion posed by Sandy sans benefit of grounding in the late Bruce Fraser's lucid disquisition "RAW Capture, Linear Gamma, and Exposure" (http://wwwimages.adobe.com/www.adobe.com/content/dam/Adobe/en/products/photoshop/pdfs/linear_gamma.pdf)
is analogous to attempting a critical analysis of the Zone System of Exposure sans grounding in Huerter's and Driffield's technical explication of emulsion sensitometry and Davenport's seminal suggestions re: the practical applications thereof via use of the Weston light meter.
Mark's emphasis on ETTR distills the modern essence of maximally efficient digital imaging. If you can assure that all your image data is crowded as far to the right side of the histogram without loss of the effect of a single photon trying to climb up the right side, then you have assured yourself the greatest possible latitude in interpretive manipulation of that data to permit the greatest possible number of variations of "pre-visualized" images that can be gleaned from your single RAW file. And...Huerter and Driffield, John Davenport, Ansel Adams, Fred Archer, Minor White, and Bruce Fraser would be duly proud!
I continue to be in awe of the degree to which basic principles of photography laboriously worked out with film and the traditional wet darkroom find themselves, in essence, to be immediately applicable within the frame of modern digital imaging!
Oh...and in more pointed and more brief response to Sandy's question, no.
Dave Graham,
Estelline, SD
Posted by Mark Stadsklev on September 4, 2012 at 12:08 PM
In my limited experience of shooting birds, I find that there is little time to set exposure or even check the histogram afterwards, I'd lose the moment. So instead I have a high speed card and bracket high speed. In addition that allows me to later reflect on what I do or don't like about a scene. That reflection often changes which exposure I might want on a given day.
I think if we have the tools then use them to their maximum effect. We can always delete the not useable stuff. But often I've looked at an image on the back of the camera assessing it one way good or bad to get home and find out it is actually the opposite. Some I would've thrown away in the field turned out to be amazing in full resolution.
For landscapes I'm trying to do more of that thinking in the field so I don't have to do as much at the computer. Wildlife pushes me in a different direction.
http://www.artwithinnature.com/image.php?id=Grizfastfood2928lg.jpg&hgal=Wildlife
My 2 cents.
Posted by John Reed on September 7, 2012 at 8:41 AM
A Canon camera did not force one to memorize all these settings. The point is being missed by those who think it was meant to be a memory exercise. The point was to illustrate through example how a metering system, evaluative or "matrix", would skew it's reading based on the tonality of the scene. By using example to illustrate to the user what the camera meter may do, that user becomes better educated to the point where memorization of numbers is not required but a mastery of technique and recognition is instilled. Recognition and technique is still applicable with even today's modern "mulit-zone" metering systems. The "but" is this. Tese days light meters and computer algorithms have gotten soooo much better that it's all moot & even if one wanted to have a table or chart such as this, it's not needed. All brands of multi-zone metering are just that good and getting better. BTW, I "happily use" my Canon meter and my own brain to get the exposure required without need of memorizing any charts. JR
Discussion
10 repliesI have found an old "Pocket Field Guide to Evaluative Metering" by Art Morris, written in 2002 in his film days.
It suggests exposures for birds in almost every possible condition.
IE " Light background, medium subject in fog: +1/2 or +2/3" - with photo of this condidion.
Is there any reason this would not be useful with digital also? I don't believe this has been published for years, which might be a clue
Thanks -
Sandy
Good question. If I remember correctly, Art used 35mm Velvia 50, a highly saturated film with about 4 stops of dynamic range. Whether or not the guidelines in his guide will work for you, only you could decide, based upon testing. Being a 4x5 guy who uses a handheld spot meter, I'm not up on what the dynamic range is for digital sensors. That's why I suggested testing Art's assumptions for your own work.
Your light meter, whether handheld, in a digital camera, or a film camera sees the world as neutral grey, of course. If you shift the indicated meter reading up the exposure grey scale, you would have to keep an eye on the significant highlights so that they don't clip (over-expose) producing a less than satisfactory result.
--P
When Morris published the more comprehensive The Art of Bird Photography in 1998 these two tables were replaced by a single table (for Velvia) with only eight subject size, subject color, background color combinations.
When I saw this complexity in the 90's I decided that I would never want to own a Canon SLR if I had to spend my time memorizing so many fudge factors to be able to use the in-camera meter. I happily continued using my Nikon TTL meter and made a lot fewer adjustments to the exposure that the Nikon camera figured out for me.
Also keep in mind that when shooting slide film you had to be very close to correct on exposure when you took the photo - there was no exposure slider or highlight recovery to fix an exposure that was screwed up in the field. With digital, raw conversion, and photoshop it is possible to get very good results with less than perfect in-the-filed exposure.
If, instead, it gives you suggested exposure settings for various ISO films, that may be more useful as a place to start with any given exposure. But using the meter in camera set on the proper mode, and some chimping, may still be better for really nailing it.
Sandy
is analogous to attempting a critical analysis of the Zone System of Exposure sans grounding in Huerter's and Driffield's technical explication of emulsion sensitometry and Davenport's seminal suggestions re: the practical applications thereof via use of the Weston light meter.
Mark's emphasis on ETTR distills the modern essence of maximally efficient digital imaging. If you can assure that all your image data is crowded as far to the right side of the histogram without loss of the effect of a single photon trying to climb up the right side, then you have assured yourself the greatest possible latitude in interpretive manipulation of that data to permit the greatest possible number of variations of "pre-visualized" images that can be gleaned from your single RAW file. And...Huerter and Driffield, John Davenport, Ansel Adams, Fred Archer, Minor White, and Bruce Fraser would be duly proud!
I continue to be in awe of the degree to which basic principles of photography laboriously worked out with film and the traditional wet darkroom find themselves, in essence, to be immediately applicable within the frame of modern digital imaging!
Oh...and in more pointed and more brief response to Sandy's question, no.
Dave Graham,
Estelline, SD
I think if we have the tools then use them to their maximum effect. We can always delete the not useable stuff. But often I've looked at an image on the back of the camera assessing it one way good or bad to get home and find out it is actually the opposite. Some I would've thrown away in the field turned out to be amazing in full resolution.
For landscapes I'm trying to do more of that thinking in the field so I don't have to do as much at the computer. Wildlife pushes me in a different direction.
http://www.artwithinnature.com/image.php?id=Grizfastfood2928lg.jpg&hgal=Wildlife
My 2 cents.