ISO rating for NPS and landscapes

[roger___3]

Next week I am off for a week of landscape and flower photography in

the Rockies. I remain a humble learner and am just starting to get a

feeling for film differences. My print film will be NPS and I'm

guessing that I'll have my share of sunny mornings and cloudy

afternoons. I've gathered that at least one school of advice would

be to shoot the brighter scenes at 160 and the overcast scenes at

100. As I've figured that the manufacturer rating has some reasoning

behind it, I'm questioning whether to follow this rule. And I really

don't have the time before I leave to play with around and see what's

best beforehand. Advice appreciated.

[scott f.]

Because of its generally static nature, landscape photography lends itself well to bracketing. Since you don't have time for testing beforehand, it will be easy to perofrm your testing in the field. You may have to bring more film than you originally planned, and you'll have to take notes to get meaningful results, but you'll have the satisfaction of knowing you have gotten the exposure you wanted. Otherwise, you will go out and shoot at 100 on an overcast day, then get the prints back and wonder, "Gee, how would that have looked if I shot it at 160? or 64? or 50? or 200?" Testing yourself is the only way to know for sure.

[roger___3]

Bracketting is an option, but gets expensive with the LF. It's my understanding that the "theory" is under exposure will block up the shadows and make them irretrievable for the printer, whereas over exposure can be compensated. So you improve you odds of a good print by overexposure(??).

[michael_moon]

I rate it 125 for fall & winter scenics, flowers & butterflies. Beyond that, my feeling is that you get more result on the neg by adjusting your filtering, fill-flash, reflectors, etc.

[scott_eaton]

NPS works fine shot at 125 for all conditions, unlike NPH, which does like a bit of exposure adjustment depending on scene contrast.

 

Just remember that NPS gets real murky under overcast conditions. You can correct this if you scan the film and go digital.

 

Carrying an additional type of print film along that is both faster and snappier for low contrast conditions is what I recommend for nature excursions. Carrying along a couple of rolls of Kodak Supra400 (or Fuji NHG II) might not be a bad idea, and you'll also get a feel for the diffrences between Kodak and Fuji print films.

[ross_geredien1]

I'm confused; what exactly is NPS and NPH? (National park Service?)

If this is print film wouldn't bracketing be unneccessary due to the large exposure latitude/ (+,- 2 full stops).

 

Ross

[rightimage]

Ross,

<BR><BR>

NPS and NPH are both professional print films made by Fuji. NPS's film speed is 160 and NPH's is 400, although many people shoot them at a slower ISO in order to overexpose.

[patrick_chase]

Hi Roger;

 

If you're shooting LF and you can get your exposures _reasonably_ close (within 2/3 to 1 stop of underexposure and, say, 1/3-stop of overexposure), then you might want to consider the following alternative to traditional exposure bracketing:

 

Expose two sheets of film of each scene at your best estimate of the correct exposure. When it comes time to develop, send one through and keep the other. Examine the first one, and then adjust development of the second as required to correct any exposure error (many labs which handle 4x5 will do pushes and pulls in 0.1-stop increments for a minimal premium). The key thing is that the two originals have to have initial exposures which are as nearly identical as possible for this to work.

 

The nice things about this approach are that it only costs you 2 sheets of each scene versus 3 or more for bracketing, and you don't have to pay for development of the second sheet if you get the exposure right to begin with (of course, you could do the same with bracket sets in LF).

 

Shooting LF in pairs has saved my hindside more times than I can coulnt, when I've sone stupid things like forgetting about that 2/3-stop reciprocity correction for Velvia at 8 seconds...