Wiggle Room

Last week I discovered that my camera has a tendency toward overexposure to the tune of about half an F-Stop. Overexposure is much easier to deal with than underexposure. There is a saying that you expose for shadow detail and develop your film for highlight detail. I have found that if you overexpose your shots slightly, you are much better off than having underexposed the shots. Underexposure means shadow detail will not be on the film due to "thin" negatives. Particularly for a beginner, such as myself, one is much further ahead to err on the side of over exposure. However, there is much more latitude in highlight detail. Therefore, if film is slightly overexposed, shadow detail is plentiful and highlight detail can be obtained with slightly longer exposure times on the enlarger when making prints.

Now that spring is upon us, shooting Black and White film is a whole new ballgame. As I mentioned, my camera tends to slightly over expose shots. This fact helped to ameliorate the problem of underexposure of scenes that are highly reflective of light, such as snowy landscapes. Snow and other highly reflective surfaces tend to "fool" a camera meter into thinking there is enough light available for proper exposure in a given scene. For proper exposure in such a circumstance, it can be helpful to meter the highlights in a given scene and then to meter the shadows. A good place to start is to split the difference, take a shot, open up a half F-stop (or slow your shutter speed if you prefer to use shutter speed as your priority), and then open up another half stop and take another shot. I believe taking a third shot opened up another half-stop is overkill, but I am rather new to photography and may find it is necessary under certain circumstances in the future. This procedure lends itself to giving plenty of latitude, particularly if you may not get the opportunity to take a particular shot again.

There are also some instances where the above procedure is necessary during nicer weather. For example, shots of white sand, sky or other highly reflective surfaces will require this procedure when composing shots that must also include shadow detail. On the other hand, almost any winter shot with snow on the ground is going to require a little extra work in properly setting a camera for the best results.

I did not have to fight under exposure nearly as much as some others in my class just due to the fact that my camera metered "normal exposure" differently than theirs. In other words, by dumb luck, I did not have to fight underexposure to the degree many of the others did. When I found out my camera metering was "off," my initial reaction was that I would have to shoot all of my shots closed down by half a step. I have since decided that I quite like that half stop of "cushion" and I will continue to use it until such time comes that I have found reason not to. In the meantime, I continue to learn and try to keep an open mind.