Exposure or scanning question
Posted: Thu Jan 24, 2013 12:07 pm Etc/GMT-1+01:00
Hi Folks,
The subject could be in two forums, so thought I'd post here.
I am new to large format photography. I am using a pentax digital spotmeter to meter and am fairly happy with reading tones and using the meter. I am using both slide and negative films. With slide film I can view on a light-table and am happy with my metering and the images look exposed quite well. I can not see how the negatives are exposed.
So, I sent three negatives and one slide off for scanning as TIFF's to a company who only do scanning and nothing else, so hopefully experts at it and they used a calibrated EPSON V750. The negatives are Kodak Portra 160 and when viewing the scans in photoshop elements or capture NX2 the exposure was off with blown highlights. I have a calibrated monitor and printer. The negatives include sky whereas the slides do not. When metering for the negatives the approach I followed was based on the dynamic range being 10 stops, being biased to the highlights. So, I metered the darkest tone and set at -2, giving me a mid-tone to set for exposure. I am sure the brightest tones were will within +8, so the contrast should have been handled by the film.
Is there something wrong in my metering for neagtive or my dynamic range of 10 stops assumption? Could the scanning have been done improperly so that I lost highlights? Since the exposure of my slides look OK on the light table and scanned, I'm happy with my light meter.
Thanks
Graham
The subject could be in two forums, so thought I'd post here.
I am new to large format photography. I am using a pentax digital spotmeter to meter and am fairly happy with reading tones and using the meter. I am using both slide and negative films. With slide film I can view on a light-table and am happy with my metering and the images look exposed quite well. I can not see how the negatives are exposed.
So, I sent three negatives and one slide off for scanning as TIFF's to a company who only do scanning and nothing else, so hopefully experts at it and they used a calibrated EPSON V750. The negatives are Kodak Portra 160 and when viewing the scans in photoshop elements or capture NX2 the exposure was off with blown highlights. I have a calibrated monitor and printer. The negatives include sky whereas the slides do not. When metering for the negatives the approach I followed was based on the dynamic range being 10 stops, being biased to the highlights. So, I metered the darkest tone and set at -2, giving me a mid-tone to set for exposure. I am sure the brightest tones were will within +8, so the contrast should have been handled by the film.
Is there something wrong in my metering for neagtive or my dynamic range of 10 stops assumption? Could the scanning have been done improperly so that I lost highlights? Since the exposure of my slides look OK on the light table and scanned, I'm happy with my light meter.
Thanks
Graham