zone system? you carry a spot meter to meter every parts of the scene before making an exposure? seriously?Thanks catchlight .. When you say expose for shadow ... Do you place it at zone 3, 4 or 5?
I did one roll of portra 400 and set my meter for 400 iso. The color seems washout/desatuated. The shadow area still have details but .. Abit too grainy .. My thoughts now is to up one stop of exposure.
It's fine to always err on the side of overexposure for C41 film. Esp Portra 400, it has huge overexposure
latitude. Ive overexposed it by 5 to 6 stops with no problem. Portra 400 also has the best underexposure
latitude of any colour negative film, but shadows will always look grainy if it is underexposed. The
consumer scans you get from the lab make this problem in the shadows worse because their default
setting applies very aggressive sharpening.
You won't see much differences if you rate it at ISO 320, it is only overexposed by 1/3 stop.This is interesting, I have the same problems too. So I shot roll at ISO 320 to see if there's any difference.
You won't see much differences if you rate it at ISO 320, it is only overexposed by 1/3 stop.
Thanks catchlight .. When you say expose for shadow ... Do you place it at zone 3, 4 or 5?
I did one roll of portra 400 and set my meter for 400 iso. The color seems washout/desatuated. The shadow area still have details but .. Abit too grainy .. My thoughts now is to up one stop of exposure.
I thought zone system is more utilized in large format or single slide/ films. I knew because I tried to learn this technique with my medium format but because I'm shooting a roll, that means I'm shooting with different varieties of exposures.
Also, I find portra a bit desaturated anyways.
Just shoot more and experiment more. Just ask yourself what kind of mood you want to get from the scene/ portrait. If you want the shadow to create a harsh or dark mood then expose for the brighter areas of the scene. If you want to reduce harsh shadows, then expose for the shadows. Sometimes the correct exposure doesn't always give you the best image. But how you interpret the scene can nail a really good photo.
Was rather surprise that 5 stop over exposure in film could still render the image usable.
Seriously, can consider invite old bird who have been shooting film and developing and printing themselves to give a talk at the funan CS gallery. Would benefit new birds enomously and create more interest in film photography.