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Advice needed on Hasselblad and Mamiya exposure meters

ghoonk

New member
I was just reading about the Zeiss Ikon ZI rangefinder at http://www.shutterbug.com/content/new-zeiss-ikon-rangefinder-35-real-traditional-high-end-system and this statement had me wondering

"As usual, the meter is designed to give optimum exposure with transparency film, where exposures are keyed to the highlights. In black and white, or even with color negative, it is often desirable to set a lower film speed than the true ISO for contrasty subjects where you want good shadow detail. This is not a shortcoming of the ZI: all through-lens meters designed to give good transparencies suffer from the same drawback. With the ZI we followed our usual practice of setting negative film speeds at anything from 1/3 stop lower (EI 80 for ISO 100) on "cloudy bright" days to a full stop lower (EI 200 for ISO 400) in hard, directional sunlight with inky shadows."

With this in mind, I was wondering if any of you have any advice or insights as to whether the meters on the Hasselblad (I have a PME5) and Mamiya (the AE Prism Finder for the RZ67 and the meter on the 645AFD) behave in a similar manner.

If so,

1. for Mamiya 645AF/AFD users who shoot film, do you set the film speed on the back to be slower, e.g. loaded ISO400 film but setting it at ISO320?

2. for Mamiya RZ67 users with metered prism finders, do you underexpose by 1/3 to 1 stop when shooting film, or set exposure compensation to -1/3 to -1 when shooting in AE, or set the film speed on the RZ67 Pro backs to 320 instead of 400 when using ISO400 film?

3. for Hasselblad users with metered prism finders, do you underexpose manually or set exposure compensation

or do we just leave it alone?
 

Bernard

Member
It's not so much how the meters are calibrated as how the various film types respond to light.
Slide film will lose detail in the highlights if you over-expose. Negative film will lose detail in the shadows if you under-expose.

If you give negatives a little more exposure, you will get more shadow detail without losing any significant highlight detail, so it's a good idea to rate your film a little slower (320 or 240 instead of 400). This gives you a little more margin for error.

TTL meters are inherently inaccurate. You can tell this by the fact that the meter reading changes if you alter your composition. The light hasn't changed, but the mix of highlights and shadows that your meter sees does.

Your best bet is to use a handheld meter (spot or incident), and to run some tests to see what works best with your camera and lenses. Barring that, adding a slight "fudge factor" like the article recommends is a good idea.
 

ghoonk

New member
Thanks, Bernard!

If I'm shooting 400 film at 320 or 240, would i develop them as 320/240 or as 400?
 

Guy Mancuso

Administrator, Instructor
Zone system. The old standby rule

Expose for the highlights develop for the shadows. Which means in B&W processing you want to pull the film not push it. Or better said develop for less time.
 

ghoonk

New member
Exactly - shoot 400 film at 320 and develop it as though it was 320, i.e. pull process?

Guy, exposing for highlights and developing for the shadows - I've read that everywhere, am not sully sure what it means.

Let's say I have a roll of 400 film in my camera. Do I set the meter to handle this as ISO320 film? When shooting, i'll meter for the brightest spots in the image, but how do i develop for shadows if my film is sent to a lab? What do I tell them?
 

Thierry

New member
If you set the speed of your film to ISO 320, you are doing nothing else than to tell your meter that it has a less sensitive film loaded, thus the meter will compensate by exposing more (as for a ISO 400 film) = over-expose (with either longer exposure time or larger aperture).

This over-exposure has to be compensated by a under-developing process (less time) = pull-process

In the practice this leads to bring more details in the shadows (they are lit/exposed a bit more/longer), although not loosing the details in the highlights (the over-exposure is compensated by the under-developing process).

There is a bit more to this "Zone System", as one needs to determine as well the effective speed of the film one uses. And more importantly, one needs to know the exact contrast of the scene (how many f-stops above Zone 5 are located the highlights) to be able to get the right compensation in the processing.

But this system allows to bring highlights with details as well as shadows with details exactly where we want them to be, under high-contrast light situations and within a certain range of contrast (10 f-stops).

More can be read here:

Zone System

Thierry
 

Guy Mancuso

Administrator, Instructor
You can tell the lab for example to pull one stop. Most Pro labs know exactly the time to pull given the film and iso applied. In normal situations most likely one stop to pull the shadows out. The zone system should be read by everyone. I was taught many years ago by one of the best Fred Picker and his associates. These where 4x5 film days with spot meters and such. Great memories
 

Guy Mancuso

Administrator, Instructor
Interestingly you talk to some of the old generation shooters and my bet all of them will say they are glad they learned film first in there studies of photography. It was a tremendous learning experience to actually learn without any tools like meters, polariods LCD screens and such. You learned fast or you where basically screwed. I remember the Days of shooting with flash and many of them on a set with no way to tell if you got the shot. You bracketed like crazy and said prayers overnight as your film was being processed. Digital is a cake walk. LOL

Do read the zone system as it is still a great tool to reference with today.
 

ghoonk

New member
Here you go, google is your friend: http://tinyurl.com/3jwjs44
That was unnecessarily unpleasant of you. I have googled, and googled again, and I just haven't been able to find any articles that actually answered this question - which is why I posted here, in the hope that more experienced members of a respectable photographic community would be able to share their knowledge and experience on metering for negative and slide film
 

ghoonk

New member
You can tell the lab for example to pull one stop. Most Pro labs know exactly the time to pull given the film and iso applied. In normal situations most likely one stop to pull the shadows out. The zone system should be read by everyone. I was taught many years ago by one of the best Fred Picker and his associates. These where 4x5 film days with spot meters and such. Great memories
Thanks - this basically comes back to advice that an old shooter once gave me, but didn't explain the why behind it - When shooting 400, meter for 200/240/320 and develop it as such, and the picture comes out with better contrast.

I'm still reading up on the 'how this works' - understanding the Zone System, using a digital camera and Lightroom. Shooting at ISO400, exposure compensation at +1EV, then going to Lightroom and dropping it by 1EV..
 

Guy Mancuso

Administrator, Instructor
Actually I know Graham that was not intentional just a bad link. He really is a sweetheart of a guy. Maybe try searching for Fred Picker , Ansel Adams as I am pretty sure they have had books on the zone system. Pretty sure Fred does
 

Guy Mancuso

Administrator, Instructor
Thanks - this basically comes back to advice that an old shooter once gave me, but didn't explain the why behind it - When shooting 400, meter for 200/240/320 and develop it as such, and the picture comes out with better contrast.

I'm still reading up on the 'how this works' - understanding the Zone System, using a digital camera and Lightroom. Shooting at ISO400, exposure compensation at +1EV, then going to Lightroom and dropping it by 1EV..
Basically the bottom line is your expanding the dynamic range of film. Holding highlights and getting better shadow detail.
 

ghoonk

New member
Thanks, Guy - I'll give Graham the benefit of doubt here. The Zone System has been pretty tough to understand, at least from Wikipedia. I started with digital and am learning to shoot with film (negatives and slides), with no experience in developing my own film (pretty hard to get a darkroom set up, and chemicals I need aren't easy to find here in UAE).

Going to need more reading, but i had posed my original questions in the hope that I could get an easy answer and try to engineer the concept and process from there :)
 

Guy Mancuso

Administrator, Instructor
Not a lot of easy answers here since most of us have gone digital and we may tend to forget all our processes from the past. I honestly have not developed a roll of film in maybe 18 years or so. Scary but I do forget all the developers and timings on this.

Maybe in the analog forum you can get some tips on this with developing film and what folks are doing now.
 
The only thing to do with any exposure meter is test it. Expose for the shadows and develop the highlights with negatives. Reciprocity protects the highlights (as more light is added the film becomes less responsive) but once you've lost shadow detail, you're dead. With slide you protect the highlights as with digital. Slide is easier as once it's done that's it, you have a bit of lattitude and typically you can go 1/3rd under to increase saturation and over to decrease it.

With negatives, metering entirely depends upon the final output, if you're scanning you want to be very gently to not get too high density especially on B&W. Once you've calibrated your meter based upon. 1. the film, 2 developer, 3 final output, 4 how you like to meter, you should get your own exposure factor for the given film.

Defintely get some of the books as Guy suggested, I think Kodak still print their darkroom books too.
 

ghoonk

New member
Guy, i guess Matrix metering has gotten the better of some of us. I'm working to figure out how things work, which is what this quest for info is about.

wentbackward - you're right - metering for slide is the same as metering for digital - I usually meter for the highlights, and pull detail out in PS/LR. Not sure how I can control the development process since I usually drop them off to a shop that does it for me, but I'm guessing that if I just develop normally, I should retain enough shadow detail on slide and highlight detail on negatives to be pulled out during the printing/scanning process.

I'll have to look around the internet for darkroom books, but that's a good suggestion - thanks!
 

jlm

Workshop Member
fred picker: "Zone VI"
also one of my mentors, describes a method to calibrate you, your film, development, camera, light meter and the print. sort of geared for roll film
and one of the best, more focused on sheet film:
ansel adams "the Negative"
 

ghoonk

New member
Thanks, jlm - I'm going through Amazon to see if they have any of these on Kindle. If not, I'll have to check to see if my local Borders has them in stock.

Back to the original question -

Based on the review and quote that mentioned that the meter on the Voigtlander / Zeiss Ikon ZI was calibrated for slide film, and therefore should be set to a lower ISO (i.e. set ISO320 for ISO400 film, and develop it as 320). If Voigtlander/Zeiss calibrated their meter for slide film, would the same have applied to Mamiya on the RZ67/645 or Hasselblad, i.e. are the light meters on the 645 AFD, RZ67 and 500CM (PME5) be calibrated to expose 'correctly' for slide film?

I'm guessing that a meter that is calibrated for slide film at a set aperture and ISO would recommend a slower shutter speed as opposed to a meter that is calibrated for negative film at the same aperture and ISO, under the same shooting conditions.

Does that make sense?
 
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