Lighting and telephoto rule of thumb?

[richard_wrede]

<p>I'm going to be shooting with my 135mm Hektor on vacation and I don't want the same thing to happen as last time... most of my shots in less than perfect lighting conditions came out grossly under exposed and hard to get a good scan. I've heard of a rule of thumb for compensating meter readings while using a telephoto. (hand held meter)<br>

<img src="https://farm3.staticflickr.com/2885/13800741375_02dfe6b34a.jpg" alt="" width="500" height="328" /><br>

As you can see, yes a crappy scan none the less. Most all of my shots with heavy overcast turned out like this.<br>

Some shots came out just fine where lighting was favorable<br>

<img src="https://farm4.staticflickr.com/3734/13800770313_b9bc668c9b.jpg" alt="" width="500" height="345" /></p>

 

[JosvanEekelen]

<p>Please give us a few more details about your equipment, camera + setting, lens used, etc. Are you using a had held meter or the one in camera? Do you use slide film or negative?</p>

[paul_k1664875007]

<p>In my experience there no special compensation for using a hand held lightmeter with a telelens exists.</p>

<p>What does play a role however, is that a hand held meter light meter takes its reading over a certain angle of view, which is usually much wider then that of a telelens. Consequently when e.g. shooting a landscape, much more of the usually bright sky is taken into the calculation, resulting in underexposing other areas.</p>

<p>That is why eg Gossen has special tele metering adapters for its Lunasix, Mastersix etc meters</p>

<p>With regards to the landscape picture you posted, I don't think that any meter can compensate for the dull light it was taken in. I however downloaded it to have a go at it and found that by playing around with the levels and curves you can easily add a bit more punch to it.</p><div></div>

[paul_k1664875007]

<p>The result after some playing around</p><div></div>

[michaelmowery]

<p>its called bracketing. shoot one shot at your cameras meter reading and take two more each with an increase of 1/2 exposure</p>

[craig_shearman1]

<p>Exposure is exposure. Focal length of lens doesn't matter. <br /><br />In a scene like the one you posted, however, there is a lot of bright sky (brighter than the land, at least) that would fool a built-in or reflected-light meter into underexposing regardless of the focus length. As Paul explained, the meter typically takes in the field of view of a normal or even wide angle lens, so it probably took in a pretty large amount of sky, thereby increasing the problem.<br /><br />As Paul also said, the lighting in this scene is pretty dull so even with "correct" exposure it isnt' going to make the picture look much better.</p>

[richard_wrede]

<p>Thanks all. I goofed,... the compensation "rule of thumb" I was thinking of is for extension tubes and Macro, not Telephoto. I too played around with it with a better new scanner but it is just too dark. I'm currently experimenting with great success using Incident readings so we'll see what happens. <br>

Film is expensive so I don't bracket unless it's a really important shot I don't want to miss. </p>

[Jochen_S]

<p>Incident readings seem the way to go. If you meter straight forward towards the coast line you posted you get of course enough sky to cause underexposure. - I have the Gossen 1° spotmeter add on. While it is really useful for metering nasty stuff like concerts (with lots of light sources around the performers), it appears a bit too bulky to carry it everyday & everywhere.</p>

[stephen t]

<p>As Michael wrote, I'd always consider bracketing a shot. However, with color film I would go 1 stop on either side, 1/2 stop with slide film, and 2 stops with black and white.</p>

[richard_wrede]

<p>The mystery is solved I apparently didn't have a good reading before. This is with an Incident reading (pointing meter at camera, not light source) It was a dark rainy dreary day. The colors on the lighthouse are perfect<br>

Canon L2, Canon 135mm 1:3.5 lens<br>

<img src="https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7598/16908743869_68b9d50934.jpg" alt="" /></p>