metering for colour using a spot meter!?

[joe_hoyle]

hey guys. i'd realy appreciate some help!

 

ok basically im a student and up until ive done alot of black and white

photography 120 photography but no colour. i studied the zone system last year

and have a good understanding.

 

but im completely puzzled how to expose for colour film? for example if i meter

a white wall in colour using a would the reading be the mid value so therefore

i would need to increase the exposre by 2 or 3 stops!?

 

i realy have no idea!

 

thanks alot, joe.

[peter_mounier]

Shooting color slides it is more important to get the highlights right, and let the shadows

fall where they may. With color negative film, you shoot for the shadows and let the

highlights fall where they may. The reflective value of different colors aren't really any

different in color than b&w.

In your example, the meter acts exactly the same and puts the white wall into a zone 5,

so yes, you will want to open up a couple of stops. If you're using negative film, you

could open 3 stops and it will be fine. With slide film, I don't think you should open up

more than 2 stops, and maybe bracket on the underexposure side.

 

Peter

[david_henderson]

With slide film it is more important to control the exposure closely because it can handle only 4-5 stops of scene brightness. Fortunately the spotmeter at your disposal allows you to calculate the range of brightness you ideally want to capture with detail, and copare that with the capability of the film.

 

In some cases you might find that there is only one exposure that will capture detail in both highlights and shadows unassisted. In low contrast situations you will need to choose how you want the elements of your subject to appear within the film's capability. So far all this shouldn't be too far away from what you're used to.

 

Where things get different and I expect more challenging is when the scene brightness exceeds the ability of the film to capture it. With contrasty slide films, this happens a lot and you'll need to consider whether you can use grads or fill flash to reduce the scene contrast so its closer to fitting on the film, or whether you can recompose to bring the brightness range down a bit, or even switch to a film with a more dynamic range.

 

Couple of further points. How much you'r prepared to let a highlight appear above a mid tone will depend to some extent on what film you have. For a contrasty film like Velvia I wouldn't expect to see a lot of detail more than a stop and a half above a mid tone. With a more forgiving film like Astia or even Provia 100F I'd take the two stops.

 

Lastly people often say "expose for the highlights" with slide film. Thats because there's less room to play with on the highlight side but also because featureless highights on a slide look pretty awful- whether on a light table or projected or indeed on a print. In my b&w work I don't always shy away from detailless white, but most times a slide will look a lot better if you get some real detail into the highlights. Still, never forget that you have a choice and occasionally you might decide that blasting out the highlights to win some shadow detail is the best trade off you can make. Fact is though that most good users of slide film go armed with the means to reduce or cope with scene contrast.