angeloks: great head-scratching on the summit pic.
Sorry no pics from me, but on the subject of exposing slides for the highlights...
Yes, you do, but not in the same way as when using digital. With digital, you might want to expose for the brightest area in the frame to avoid the nasty pure blown-out whites. You can do this safe in the knowledge that you can recover from the shadows afterwards. With film you can't recover the shadows so effectively, so you need to get closer to the final image using exposure.
With slides (any film really) you do not need to worry so much about the extreme highlights away from the subject. Film is never pure white and the transition to almost white is a much gentler one than with digital. That gives you freedom to expose for the brightest highlight of your subject (or the brightest thing in which you want to see properly exposed detail). The sky may end up high key, but it will not have that digital highlights look where there seems to be a hole in the picture.
Think about a sunset. With film you expose for the brightest bit of sky that is not sun. The sun looks bright in the final picture and lacks detail, but it is not white. It looks naturally bright and the gorgeous sky colours next to it are preserved. If you exposed for the sun using slide film, you would have a disk surrounded by blackness.
TWoK's statement "expose everything for the subject and say f**k the rest" is a great starting point. That's pretty much what I do, but with slide film I expose for the brightest bit of the subject and with negative film expose for the shadiest bit of subject.
TWoK wrote:
Me I expose everything for the subject and say f**k the rest.
Hey, it works for you, so keep doing what you're doing! I have only shot slide film in lower contrast scenes, so maybe I should try to push it and see what happens. Just picked up some Provia...
Tim, yep, that's what I thought and what my general experience has been. Velvia can under optimal conditions produce some wonderful colors:
However it only works for a certain type of conditions where the dynamic range isn't a limiting factor. I guess it's something you learn after a while. With color negatives (Ektar 100, Portra 400, Portra 160 VC & NC) my experience has been mixed. It works for me in some cases but not at all in others. I have gotten some good colors out of it:
But also not too seldom things that look like 1960's East German postcard colors:
Not my thing really. I could probably learn to work with Velvia, but the various limitations - slow speed, limited DR etc makes me think that it isn't worth it (for me) and that I'll stick to digital for colors. So I'm likely to use film for B/W photography. I've only had good experience with TriX 400 and Ilford Pan-F 50. I really like the tonality of those films and that they allow me to do stuff that I can't get with digital.
I think a key to working with color neg nowadays is that you don't have to retain all the range on the negative in your final image/print. Take a chance and try crushing the blacks a lot to get those dramatic looking shadows that you'd get from a slide film. And heck, it's reversible! If you don't like, just hit undo
You might also want to check out T-Max 400 (TMY) or Delta 400. After years of shooting Tri-X (a wonderful film) for several reasons, I'm starting to really enjoy T-Max 400. Many people say they enjoy 'traditional' grain that Tri-X offers, or that it's more flexible, but if you work TMY right, you will be rewarded with results that rival some ISO 100 films. I swear it looks smoother and finer grained than Plus-X to me (they have the same granularity rating).
I was one of those ones who said I preferred traditional grain over T-grain until I did a side by side comparison between TMZ, TMY-2, and Tri-X. I was surprised that TMY renders much finer detail than Tri-X with much finer grain and TMZ captures about the same amount of detail as Tri-X (maybe even more). Also, in my tests, TMY and Tri-X are pretty much the same speed and push about as well in normal developers.
I still shoot a lot of Tri-X - it IS a great film. But I mix in a lot more TMY now. And when I want some grain, TMZ. I almost view TMZ as the modern day version of the classic Tri-X.
A couple of recent pics with TMY and a 75mm. Click on them to go to flickr if you want to see larger scans.
Tim that second shot is brilliant! Regarding B/W film - I shot a roll of T-Max 100 today, but I know basically nothing about it except that it should be very fine grained.
denoir wrote:
Tim that second shot is brilliant! Regarding B/W film - I shot a roll of T-Max 100 today, but I know basically nothing about it except that it should be very fine grained.
1/2 of that will depend on how it's processed and printed.
TWoK wrote:
Ha ha, you are hilarious. Take a look at my flickr or my posts here. I do just fine.
Just looked through your flickr pages. So, not only are you ignorant evidenced by your comments about exposure but, you're eye is clearly equivalent to teenager taking snapshots...boring.
You're no HCB yourself, as for your website is banal and ugly in addition to being slow and poorly designed. Your portraits are about as exciting as having teeth drilled. Thank god you at least live in the center of the world, South Bend!
You must be living high on the hog in your contemporary ranch home. Has your neighbor's house sold yet?
pawlowski6132 wrote:
Just looked through your flickr pages. So, not only are you ignorant evidenced by your comments about exposure but, you're eye is clearly equivalent to teenager taking snapshots...boring.
Ha ha.
Come on, there is no reason to get rude. Nate summed it up perfectly. Expose to your subject (read = what is important for the image) and forget the rest.
If you have a better method though, feel free to post it.
I don't think that was rudeness but a failed attempt at humor. I mean he is supposedly a professional photographer and somebody with even a modicum of experience in the field should have no trouble recognizing the level and high quality of Nate's work.
Zaitz, I know how hard it is to focus on a person and get them to hold still in time for cocking the shutter, setting the aperture, loading the holder and removing the slide... to take one shot and get the dog's eye, I bow to your prowess at both photography and dog control
EDIT: I suppose you didn't have to set aperture here
pawlowski6132 wrote:
That doesn't make sense. What do you mean?
It's pretty much the standard method in B&W photography, even for Zonies. Pull the film by 1/2-1 stop and underdevelop by 10% or so (N-1 development), which reduces grain and provides a longer contrast curve. This is why so many shoot Tri-X around EI 250 rather than box speed.
mawz wrote:
It's pretty much the standard method in B&W photography, even for Zonies. Pull the film by 1/2-1 stop and underdevelop by 10% or so (N-1 development), which reduces grain and provides a longer contrast curve. This is why so many shoot Tri-X around EI 250 rather than box speed.
Thank you, yes that is what I have been doing of late. The negatives look a heck of a lot better than rated at speed.
thrice wrote:
Zaitz, I know how hard it is to focus on a person and get them to hold still in time for cocking the shutter, setting the aperture, loading the holder and removing the slide... to take one shot and get the dog's eye, I bow to your prowess at both photography and dog control
EDIT: I suppose you didn't have to set aperture here
Thanks man, really appreciate it. I aaaaaaalmost got the puppy yesterday.
Good shot Ilya! Do you prefer the b&w or color version? I like the hint of color in this version more so than the b&w conversion.
