[Leica] Question about M8 exposure

[mark at rabinergroup.com (Mark Rabiner)]

Opening up when you shoot snow is not over exposing.
Its placing the snow where its supposed to be.
As your meter always thinks its looking at middle gray or maybe a little
lighter not accounting for that would be severely under exposing bright
textured whites like that.
A field of snow is not a field of gray card cards.
If you expose for it. It will be come.

But when shooting slides transparencies or making a capture you'd want to
err the side of under exposure. Because once it goes over the top its gone.
The image is fried.  And if a dark area it goes quite dark to black  you can
still most often than not pull it out and get detail out of it.
Blank white areas on almost any image rarely cut the mustard.
You need a full rendition of the high areas.
That translates to that's what you are exposing for.

To expose for something does not me you aim your meter at that and leave it
in the middle.

Mark William Rabiner



> From: Geoff Hopkinson <hoppyman@bigpond.net.au>
> Reply-To: Leica Users Group <lug@leica-users.org>
> Date: Mon, 19 Jan 2009 08:42:57 +1000
> To: 'Leica Users Group' <lug@leica-users.org>
> Subject: RE: [Leica] Question about M8 exposure
> 
> Mark this is about M8 exposure firstly. But what is being suggested is
> filling the right side of the histogram, not chopping off a lot of the
> highlights.
> You must increase your exposure sometimes, surely? Shooting snow recently I
> found this necessary, for example.
> 
> 
> Cheers
> Geoff
> http://www.pbase.com/hoppyman/e
> http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/gh/
> Pick up your camera and make the best photo you can.
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> Subject: Re: [Leica] Question about M8 exposure
> 
> Actually Bob placing your histogram in that direction of over exposing a
> slide or digital capture is not an option a photographer happens to have at
> all and not for any conceivable reason. Once you've lost detail in your
> highlights their gone.
> So yes it is in a sense "mindless". As doing so indicates a complete lack 
> of
> knowledge of what one is doing.
> 
> And even if in working with negative materials you expose your highlights
> too far to the top of the curve no amount of under development is going to
> address the situation. - you have to expose with highlights in mind to you
> can't just develop for them.
> 
> 
> Mark William Rabiner
> 
> 
> 
>> From: Bob W <leica@web-options.com>
>> Reply-To: Leica Users Group <lug@leica-users.org>
>> Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2009 21:28:21 -0000
>> To: 'Leica Users Group' <lug@leica-users.org>
>> Subject: RE: [Leica] Question about M8 exposure
>> 
>>> Typically when I'm standing next to a person using a DSLR or
>>> M8 if they look
>>> at their screen at all it will pop up rally over exposed.
>>> Same as when I've seen peoples stuff on their laptops.
>>> Mass over exposing mindlessness.
>> 
>> What makes you think it's mindless?
>> 
>> If it looks over-exposed on the screen there's a good chance that they
>> are exposing to the right of the histogram deliberately, to maximise
>> the amount of information where it's most useful. Then on the PC you
>> adjust the tone curve as required to distribute the tonal values as
>> you wish across the image, making full use of the dynamic range without
> introducing noise.
>> 
>> It's no different in principle, and no more or less mindless, than
>> exposing for the shadows and developing for the highlights, which are
>> perfectly respectable things to do in film photography.
>> 
>> You should perhaps understand things a little before you start tossing
>> the insults around, and maybe give your fellow photographers a little
>> credit for knowing what they're doing.
>> 
>> Bob
>> 
>> 
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> 
> 
> 
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