Can anyone help me with a peculiar situation: Sometimes we have a very wide range of light conditions in one frame, i. e. very dark shadows and "light lights". As a result we have either absolutely black or absolutely white parts in our picture (hystogram shows it definitely). What can we do to broaden the Exposure of the film?

The example is here:

http://www.renderosity.com/viewed.ez?galleryid=1164023
You can definitely see the snow plain is over-exposed (there are no halftones - white only) while the dark parts in the shades of the trees in the right or in the far forest in the left are absolutely black).

1. I'm using various cameras (film ones mainly now), with very good optics (for instance Zeiss optics on my Hasselblad is highly estimated practically by all pros), Nikkor 17-25mm F/2.8 is a very good lens as well.

2. I tried different films (Velvia, Provia, different Kodak films and Agfa) - nothing helps. So the trick should be in my poor technique.
   Please do share Your opinion and advice!
   Summer is coming soon and the contrasts are likely to increase :-)

Thank You in advance,
-Anthony.

Message edited on: 02/24/2006 16:55

Normally, the lower the contrast of the scene and the faster the film, the greater is the exposure latitude. Modem high-speed films have an overall exposure latitude of several stops for an average subject. However, regardless of the brightness range of the scene, colour reversal and very slow black-and-white and colour negative films have very little exposure latitude because of their increased inherent contrast. Thus the range of exposure lies within a narrow limit that may be less than one-half to one f/stop. You will get better results with slide film and if you tried that then you need to consider a good exposre meter.. If there is any mid tones within the scene try and expose for that... Hope that helps Anthony

I thought color negatives had a much wider exposure latitude than slide film. At least, that's what I've always been told. I'm thinking the trick isn't exactly poor technique. You are just trying to capture an image with a brightness range beyond your films' capabilities. One of your mistakes was trying to get the entire range on inherently high-contrast Velvia and Provia slides. To me, it looks like you overcompensated for the brightness of the snow and got quite a bit of overexposure. I enjoy Provia and Velvia, but they seem to be the wrong choice for a scene like this if you want the full brightness range. These films are high-contrast and have incredible color saturation, but your scene is also naturally high-contrast and not exactly colorful. It almost looks black and white with a little blue in the sky and some green in the trees.

if you are using a film camera.. you will need a higher quality negative higher the grain in the negative the better quality of the exposure.. l would say iso 400... or even iso800..((smaller grain is lower iso.25, 50, 100. and so forth)) and a tip keep film in the fridge... !!!! l dont think its the brand of film .. just the iso level of the negative.. obviously setting of your camera.. ! l alway used fuji or minolta s own but going back a few years !!!

Snow is particularly challenging, and you handled it quite nicely. Not sure you'd want this shot much different; it shouts cold! In general, there are a couple approaches: a) Color negative film has a wider exposure range than slide film. b) For B&W, you can reduce the development time to reduce contrast. Not practical for most. c) Some folks have had good results with split neutral density filters, if you can get them to line up OK with the horizon. d) For landscapes, there is a good technique here: http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/blended_exposures.shtml e) With digital, should shoot using RAW mode, checking the histogram to mahe sure that highlights aren't completely lost. Can then do wonders in an image manipulation program like Photoshop. f) In Photoshop, try LAB mode. You can use curves adjustment to selectively change contrast in the very light and very dark regions, without messing up the colors.

Hm, just looked back to your picture and I remember the moment adding my comments in which I mentioned the colors in the snow washed out. Reading the reactions here I got the impression most things are said yet. I asked myself, does the original look similar to the RGB-version we see here on screen? The limitation to only 24 bits means, in fact, 8 bits per channel, that is 256 tones. The needed range for this picture is beyond that, but it can be your original showed them far better and colors might have gotten lost in the digitalisation process. My slides show usually far more details compared with the digital version. Dark regions get black (and noisy), and the same might happen to negative film in the bright area's. So perhaps your original is sufficient while the scanner is not. But you're the only one who can check that.

In addition to all the good advice from these skilled people, I would like to suggest that you Google the phrase, "dynamic range bracketing". This should trigger the usual torrent of information one gets from Google. You will find that all films/digisensors have ranges of luminance they can capture and all are not the same. Indeed film and digital also differ in the way they capture illumination. The bottom line for me has been "bracketing", a procedure by which you can capture the scene several times at several exposures to capture the entire lumination range in (hopefully) 2 frames with overlapping intensity ranges. In the "bad old days", I combined the two frames optically. This was a migrane-producing experience each time I did/attempted it. With digital, it's much easier. With digital film scans, it's possible, even doable. With a digital camera having a bracketing feature, it's easy. A good photo editor, of course, is required. I use Photoshop and there are others that also work well to combine the frames. I've solved this problem many times over the past 10-15 years with much more success in the past 5 with digital cameras. Best of luck and I'm looking forward to your improved results no matter which way you choose to tackle the problem. ArnieC