peter_dulfer1

As a former film cameraman I may add what the spotmeter is used for in filmmaking. When you are filming you are shooting in a controlled environment, even if shooting outside. You can soften natural light and you can add artificial light where you want. The lighting is done on the basis of what aperture you want to use. When lighting setup is finished you use a spotmeter to check if the shadows and highlights all fall within the latitude of the film. As a rule of thumb you don't want shadows under 3,5 stops of aperture and highlights not over 3,5 stops. This gives you a latitude of 7 stops. Negative film has a much larger latitude (9 stops and over) but for several technical reasons you want to stay within seven stops. In principle you can have area's which fall beyond this, such as so-called specular lights, but they will become pure white or pure black in the final product. All this goes for film used in photography too. A studio photographer will use a spotmeter in the same way. The problem is that in general photography you usually do not have control over lighting. Especially when shooting a scene with sky in the background you can not reach a situation where the sky and objects on the ground all fall within the latitude of the film. The best way to expose is still using a graycard. A spotmeter can then be used to check if there are area's in the scene that you might want to adjust exposure for. Using just a spotmeter for deciding which exposure to use requires a lot of experience and adjusting. Especially if the scene is predominantly dark or light (snow) the use of a spotmeter is difficult.

I bought a T90 from Steve more than a year ago. It arrived with the infamous EEE problem although it had been 'CLA'd' . I sent it back and never heard from it again. Steve was very slow in answering emails. Luckily I had the package insured and as it could not be verified if it had been delivered, I got my money back from the postal services.

My two cents worth, Peter

In photoshop, how do I change a scanned negative into a positive?

The invert command does not seem to be right to me, because it does

not take into account the orage mask. Anyone can help?

 

Peter