I'm surprised some of y'all are surprised by this. Not only did AA cover the
subject long ago, but within the last year I, dumb as a box of rocks though I
may be, posted right here a quote about it from the National Geographic
Photography Field Guide, which I shall repeat here, since apparently nobody
paid any attention then.
"Scientific studies now indicate that an average scene actually reflects 13
percent (not 18 percent) of the light that falls on it. For the sake of
consistency, gray cards have continued to be 18 percent gray, as is the one in
this book. When using any 18 percent gray card for substitute metering,
increase exposure by a half stop (+0.5 compensation factor) for most subjects,
as Kodak recommends. If the subject is very light -- a snow-covered landscape,
for example -- decrease exposure instead by a half stop (-0.5 compensation
factor) from the gray card reading. This will help maintain detail and
texture."
Walt, who despite all the BS is occasionally informative
--
"Anything more than 500 yards from
the car just isn't photogenic." --
Edward Weston
-------------- Original message ----------------------
From: "John A. Lind" <jalind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Ansel Adams knew about this long ago and has an excellent discussion about
> it relatively early on in Book 2, "The Negative" of his classic
> trilogy. IIRC, he (Adams) found that most light meters overexpose by an
> average of about 1/3rd f-stop . . . which correlates to a slightly darker
> than 18% gray (something slightly less than that) . . . and calls the
> over-exposure shift built into the meter as the "K-factor."
>
> -- John
>
> At 06:00 PM 3/22/2005, Winsor Crosby wrote:
> >One thing noticed by people who are now using histograms on cameras and
> >in software is that metering something that is evenly lit puts all the
> >exposure to the left of the center of the histogram. I was surprise to
> >find that meters are really calibrated to 12 percent gray which is a
> >half stop away. Here is a better explanation than I can offer:
> >
> >http://www.bythom.com/graycards.htm
>
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