[Leica] Bad Exposure or Something Else?

[richard-lists at imagecraft.com (Richard)]

Ah yes, I recognize Memorial Drive next to the Charles River anywhere!!! I 
think perhaps you are hitting several problems:
- You need to need open up your exposure. It's lopping off the highlight at 
the top so your brilliant white-gold is slightly muddy yellow. I guess 
bracketing will help.

- you may be hitting the dynamic range limit of the film

- the scanner may be auto-exposing it incorrectly (same problem as the 
first one except at the scanner side). I ALWAYS turn off auto-exposure of 
the scanner. After all, if I am trying so hard to exposure it right in the 
camera, why shouldn't I then let the scanner muck it up for me?

At 04:50 PM 12/5/2004, Richard S. Taylor wrote:

>As I turned onto Memorial Drive in Cambridge last week the sycamores along 
>the drive were glowing white-gold in the mid-afternoon sunlight.  I 
>quickly parked and took pictures.  The results were disappointing to say 
>the least.  I've posted one example here:
>
><http://gallery.leica-users.org/PICKS/21_0021>
>
>Photographic qualities of the picture aside, I wonder if any of you might 
>have any thoughts on what I might have done to improve the rendition of 
>the glowing trees that I saw with my eyes.  There seems to be an exposure 
>issue here since the highlights look blown out but would it have been 
>better on a slower film, or is there a scanning problem, or something else?
>
>This photo isn't even close to the image I had in my head. Manipulation in 
>Photoshop to darken the image overall helps but isn't really the 
>solution.  The posted picture is unmanipulated and uncropped.
>
>M7, 50mm 2.8 Elmarit (Current), Portra 400NC, f11.0 at the shutter speed 
>set by the camera.
>

// richard (This email is for mailing lists. To reach me directly, please 
use richard at imagecraft.com)