[Leica] Bad Exposure or Something Else?

[dorysrus at mindspring.com (Don Dory)]

Richard, I suspect that you have an initial exposure issue.  When I
looked at your histogram it was very even with a bulge in the middle.
By definition, if the sycamores were glowing, then you should have a lot
of information above middle gray and also a lot of information way below
middle gray.

In Adobe, your blown out highlights are only running 230 or so, you
could run them up to 245 or so and still retain some detail.

To make something glow then you need two things, something very bright,
and something to contrast it with, usually something much darker.  For
example, if you were taking a picture of a back lit balloon, you would
meter the balloon and open up one or two stops to make it glow against
the sky.  Using Velvia or a polarizer also helps a lot.

In the case of your Sycamores, I would move to a position that the
leaves are trans illuminated by the sun and either meter the sky twenty
to thirty degrees off the sun or meter a leaf and open up one or two
stops.

Good luck

Don
dorysrus@mindspring.com

-----Original Message-----
From: lug-bounces+dorysrus=mindspring.com@leica-users.org
[mailto:lug-bounces+dorysrus=mindspring.com@leica-users.org] On Behalf
Of Richard S. Taylor
Sent: Sunday, December 05, 2004 7:50 PM
To: lug@leica-users.org
Subject: [Leica] Bad Exposure or Something Else?

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.

Many thanks.
-- 
Regards,

Dick
Boston MA
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