Now you know how to best expose and process the paper AND you know what your negative SHOULD look like. What's left is to figure out how to expose and process the film to produce a negative that matches your negative goals. Perhaps the best feature of this approach is that you can incorporate it right into your normal shooting technique without wasting film or special tests.
1. Expose a roll of film at an ISO film speed of your liking. You can expose the film at the ISO recommended by the manufacctuer, an ISO that is pushed for special situations or at any speed that you want to use or test. Expose the entire roll as you normally would, just save one exposure (it can be at any place on the roll -- beginning, middle or end) for an exposure of your grey card.
2. Set up the grey card in a sunny spot with no reflections or shadows falling on it. Set the lens at infinity but move close enough so that the grey card fills the frame of the viewfinder. Use whatever metering method you like, and make an exposure of the card. If you want, you can make a few bracketed exposures for insurance purposes. For example, take exposures that are one-half an f-stop more and one-half an f-stop less exposure than the meter recommends.
3. Process the film.
4. To be continuied...............
And now you have reached yet another fork in the road. If you are ready for more, you can explore how to expand this technique for use in high and low contrast situation. I like to call it ZONED OUT. On the other hand, if you've had enough of all this exposure and development gibberish, you can return to the DARKROOM. An if you just can't decide, you can go to the FIELD and learn some tips on correct exposure techniques.
COPYRIGHT @ 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005 by Joe McGloin. All Rights Reserved.