how do you expose your slide film?

eddo123

eddo123

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Edward Fury
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Hello all,

Just curious of how you all expose your slide film

I have read that lots of people over expose velvia by 1/3rd of a stop. Just interested to hear your thoughts and what you do to expose your film 'correctly'

Cheers, Edd
 
I don't know about large format, but with medium format and Velvia 50, if my light meter reads that I should be exposing for 1/15 seconds, I'll crank it to 1/8, and if it's really dark and I'm not 100% my light meter is accurate, I'll go one slower - 1/4. It's just the nature of Velvia I think. One level over usually seems to do the trick.

Put it this way, I've only once over exposed a Velvia 50 frame, and even then the frame was actually useable despite being purposefully silly, just to see how much light it could take. :)
 
I'd be inclined to expose it at the ASA/ISO it was made to be. I would get 50 or 64 ISO. If you mess too much with it you will get graininess which will show when you project a larger image.

Paul
 
I'd be inclined to expose it at the ASA/ISO it was made to be. I would get 50 or 64 ISO. If you mess too much with it you will get graininess which will show when you project a larger image. But it's good to experiment.

Paul
 
The conventional wisdom was always to under-expose slide film by about half a stop for maximum colour saturation. You have to remember though that slide film was the end of the line as far as processing was concerned. There's no printing stage as with positive film, and no opportunity to adjust any exposure errors. It came out the developing tank and went straight into the slide projector as a done deal for better or worse. For this reason exposure was always more critical with slide film than positive film. This was another reason for under-exposing by half a stop, you needed to avoid blowing the highlights at all costs.

Things are a bit different today though if you're scanning your slides - you do now have the opportunity to edit your images digitally, so exposure isn't so critical, but I'd still err on the side of trying to nail optimum exposure.
 
This is interesting.
I've not heard of the general rule of slightly under-exposing before. I've been doing a lot of slides lately and just going by the meter in the camera or my Weston Master V. CT says to follow the 'slight under exposure' rule to avoid blowing highlights and Ekimeno actually over-exposes Velvia a whole f stop. I have just ordered a few rolls of Velvia 50, I can see I'm going to have some experimenting to do...
Shame...!:nuts:, I really hate mucking about experimenting...:lol:

BTW I took a load of nighttime exposures on slide lately of between 8 and 15 seconds, of city landscapes etc, went by the exposure time a Canon G10 gave itself when set to the same ASA and bracketed either side for safety, but 9/10 times the Canon got it bang on.

(but I have no idea how that information will help you):lol:
 
I think that if you're exposing for the whole scene (say in a landscape-type shot), then your light meter will try to give you the correct reading between the light and dark parts of where it's pointed. But I usually read my meter without the diffuser and like to get a reading of the part of the scene I most want to expose correctly.

If what I want correctly exposed is the sky, then I'll tend to dial in the same reading thats on the light meter. Over exposing the sky will most certainly lead to blown highlights. However, if my scene doesn't include much sky, then I'll be exposing for the main subject - say a building. At this stage I'll then apply my 1-stop over rule as my light meters isn't 100% accurate in shadowy scenes.

But remember that this rule I only apply with Velvia 50. Most other higher speed films I tend to go with what the meter tells me.
 
Genrlly I'll underexpose, so 50 rate at 64, 100 rate at 125. Depending on which camera I use I will try and meter for a mid tone and go with that (good old 18% grey). If I am using my F4 or FA I go with the meter.

But most of the time I use a hand held meter and go with the incident reading.

Doing the above genrally gives me a saturated look which I like. Don't use Velvia these days as I have gone off it.
 
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