At 10:14 PM 18/06/99 -0400, you wrote:
>Hello All!
> I have just gotten back my first roll of velvia shot with a 2n mainly
>during the last hour or so before and during sunset. The shots I got back
>were really punchy and great color, just as I expected from this film i've
>heard so much about. A few quick questions i'd like to clear up before i
>burn 20 rolls of this stuff soon...
>
>A) When taking sunsets and or shots with a dominate foreground and
>background (I shot a chapel which was lit by bulbs and it had a statue in
>front) is there a way to get *some* definition in the foreground? I mainly
>got silhoutess with great color in the sky..what could I have done to
>improve this?
You have to expose for the foreground, which will bring the details of the
foreground out of the shadows. Unfortunately, this will *really* overexpose
the background (i.e., the sunset), since the difference in stops between the
foreground and background could easily be three or four stops, or even more.
An alternative is to use fill-flash on the foreground, to lessen the difference
between the exposures required for the foreground and background. For the most
part, in order to pull these tricks off, you'll have to shoot using manual
exposure, rather than auto, because auto's "averaging" the scene's exposure.
(I've also been working on a technique where, using two shots of the same
[relatively unchanging] scene, you can expose for the sky in one, the
foreground in the other, and then digitally manipulate the two images to merge
them into one composite which captures details both in the background and the
foreground. Naturally, this technique doesn't work well if one of the two
parts of the scene has rapidly-changing details...)
>B) Bracketing. I hear so much about this! Am i confusing the little dial
>next to the shutter release and the ASA knob in regards to bracketing? If I
>have a scene and i move the dial down one (the knob that shows up in the
>viewfinder) and up one knob this is esentially bracketing the shot 1/3rd
>stop up and down? Or do I need to change the ASA knob? does changing the
>ASA knob esentially do the same thing, but allows for less control like the
>other switch?
I'm a bit unsure about your meaning here. If you mean that you're moving the
ASA knob down (i.e., negative) 1/3 stop and then using the bracketing function
of the same knob to move up (i.e., positive) 1/3 stop, you've in effect not
changed exposure at all. As I mentioned previously, you can underexpose or
overexpose manually, without aid of the bracketing function (once you get the
hang of it, it's *much* faster). By the by, in my own personal experience,
bracketing slide film by 1/3 stop increments is too fine a gradation to notice
any real differences when shooting scenes like sunsets where the light levels
can easily change within the scene by up to six stops. In these cases, I
usually bracket by 1 stop increments, from +2 to -2 (five shots in all for each
bracketed scene). In several slides I took, even this bracketing wasn't
enough! (I have some slides from Jasper National Park, taken in the early
morning hours of last September, where this problem reared its ugly head.
Still trying to find a technique to digitally enhance them without noise
overwhelming the picture info.)
>C) With the 20 rolls of velvia and 5 or 6 of elitechrome 100, i got the
>fuji mailers. I read that they dont "push process" film. The roll of
>velvia i did develop was done really well at a local lab, but it cost 13
>bucks! For this price I could get processing and a roll of film by mail! I
>dont really care about the time it will take to develop these slides, but if
>i use the concept of bracketing will Fuji develop the scene i bracketed all
>the same?
Not with slide film, no. Slides are developed purely by time and temperature
-- there is no way for the processor to know whether the film you've submitted
is over- under-, or just correctly-exposed. With print films, on the other
hand, automated developer machines tend to correct to an integration of 18 0rey
regardless of the original exposure, so unless you explicitly tell the
developer *not* to correct your prints, they will, and the benefits of
bracketing are largely lost (though you still have the bracketed negatives with
which you can try again).
>D) On the topic of the Auto exposure, i've found that sometimes the needle
>isnt quite around a specific shuterr speed. If I am in manual mode I
>usually find the combination of Fstop / speed to center the needle. Of
>course the little knob by the shutter will change this minutely. I'm pretty
>sure this is how bracketing is done on the 2n. All this talk on photo.net
>and the newsgroups about bracketing MUST be with these flashy new cameras.
>The roll was mainly on auto and it came out well. But of course a few shots
>were darker than expected. Should i have overexoposed 1/3rd or 1/2 a stop?
See above. Switch to manual, and learn the basics of exposure compensation.
Also, don't be afraid to bracket (film is relatively cheap compared to the
once-in-a-lifetime shot which you may never be able to reproduce, which I've
learned to my chagrin on more than one occasion...)
Have fun, and good luck!
Garth
"A bad day doing photography is better
than a good day doing just about
anything else."
The Unofficial Olympus Web Photo Gallery at:
http://www.taiga.ca/~gallery/
< This message was delivered via the Olympus Mailing List >
< For questions, mailto:owner-olympus@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx >
< Web Page: http://Zuiko.sls.bc.ca/swright/olympuslist.html >
|