sploppert Loc: Rochester, NY

when metering film I was taught in school to expose for the shadows and print for the high lights and with slide film it was best to under expose up to a stop. How does this apply to digital?

User ID

Not at all. Different medium entirely.

Some have found comfort in trotting out a few parallels but basically you’ll do best in tackling digital exposure “from scratch” as a new entity, unrelated to film.

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You may even encounter a movement to transpose the Adams-White Zone system onto digital. It’s an interesting attempt but best ignored. Film is film. Digital is digital. Embrace it directly.

Ysarex Loc: St. Louis

It doesn't, and you were poorly taught concerning slide film. Slide film has little latitude and should be exposed properly.

There are different ways to approach digital. Is your goal a normal appearance JPEG from the camera? Is your goal a raw file that you intend to post process? Those can be considered differently. If you're goal is a normal lightness JPEG from the camera then treat it like slide film and get the exposure right.

My goal is a raw file that I will post process and so I expose to fully utilize the sensor which pragmatically equates to placing the diffuse highlight at the sensor's clipping threshold.

User ID

Yes a critical medium like chromes should be exposed carefully. But don’t disparage the informal guidance to “under expose” it slightly. The advice is correct for legions of users whose metering method is quite pedestrian and dare I say mindless. IOW that “slight under exposure” ... in the hands of the simplest meter users ... most often results in the correct exposure rather than under exposure.

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

Use your camera meter and especially use the digital feature in the playback that 'blinks' for the over-exposure highlight warnings. Push your exposure to the right to the point of either:

a) you have some blinking highlights in non-critical aspects of the image or,

b) you see highlight warnings and you move the meter just back to the left until all blinking stops in your test image.

Then, compose, focus and shoot from there. The approach above is based on the 'all-over' metering option, Evaluative in Canon, Matrix in Nikon and similar.

sploppert Loc: Rochester, NY

thank you for your answer but I must disagree with your comment about slide film. this is the way I was taught at Kodak and served me well for 40 years as a profession photographer.

sploppert Loc: Rochester, NY

thanks I prefer to expose for the high lights as they can't be recovered if blown out other than that I shoot RAW and edit in PS.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

Please use the “quote reply” function so we’ll know who you are replying to.

frankie c Loc: Lake Havasu CIty, AZ

I agree with you and shared your learning experience (38 years I worked at the film factory).
Yes overexpose negative film and under expose positive (slide) film. The reason was when you were processing the film and printing in the dark room.... you had more latitude when you negative was a little denser allowing you to recover more information (you could not recover from a thin negative). With slide film because the process actually created the image with the residual silver halide from the exposure (basically the process eliminated the exposed silver halide and then exposed the unused silver halide to create the positive image this also had an impact on the amount of dye (dye coupled) that occurred giving you riche colors and saturation. Most people did this by adjusting the ISO plus or minus from the actual value which would bias your meter to either under expose or over expose. example (ISO 100 set the Camera ISO to 80 to over expose negative film), the inverse for slide film. You just then used normal exposure metering to set your exposure. Now in digital you use a function called exposure compensation and since your dealing with a positive image slightly under exposing tends to work very similar to what we use to do with slide film. This is subject to the metering method you use. But if you are using matrix metering generally using that old film rule to keep from blowing out the highlights works pretty good. It helps if you understand your cameras dynamic range. film vs digital the physics are different but the same rules still work pretty good. I can almost hear all the little guru's telling you why this is BS but it works for me :) have a great day.

selmslie Loc: Fernandina Beach, FL, USA

I also learned about slide exposure while working for Kodak but that's not what I was told.

Most of us who shot slide film simply rated it as thought it was about 1/3 stop faster than box speed, for example, Kodachrome 25, 64 and 200 were metered as 32, 80 and 250. That made only a slight difference but it got the brighter colors a little darker and more saturated. And when in doubt, bracketing was not just for sissies.

In those days slide film was intended to be projected in a dark room where the shadows could still show some detail. With a good film scanner we can see that transparencies actually do have a good deal of latitude, just not as much as negative film. And like most films slides have a shoulder so that you are not as likely to blow out the highlights horribly like you can with digital capture.

But the bottom line is that there are real differences between film for slides, color negatives, B&W negatives and digital. Each has to be approached differently.

sploppert Loc: Rochester, NY

thank you I agree with you 100% I never use the matrix meter in the camera as I don't like reflected readings. I never seen a person that was 18% gray. I always use my hand held incident meter and never less than 2 strobes. I'm not a landscape shooter and I never shoot Jpeg. I was well aware that film had more latitude than the paper that was used to print and shot accordingly and digital has more latitude than film which makes it better for post processing that's why I always shoot raw. I don't want the camera to decide how I want my image to look that's why I don't shoot Jpeg. I am a studio photographer and always shoot with strobes. Film is different than slide film and digital is different than them both but one thing that remains the same is light. Understand how to see and use light and you will always have a beautiful end result with little effort.

sploppert Loc: Rochester, NY

thank you

BebuLamar

I know that you should meter differently but my film camera's meter and digital camera's meter read the same.

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

I have the same experience with EOS bodies. For long exposures or manual flash settings, I 'test' the exposure with the DSLR. When happy, I use those settings for the film camera and / or EX flash.

BebuLamar

Even when I had only coolpix I could take test shots with it and use the same settings on film and it worked fine.