Bracketing exposures

[David Brown]

I have been known to bracket when I was just unsure of the exposure.

MY problem (YMMV) is remembering to meter carefully - especially with chrome. I tend to let the TTL meters in the SLRs do their job. This is fine, until there's a big expanse of sky that overwhelms the foreground, which gets underexposed (but the clouds are pretty :rolleyes: ).

If I would just meter lower, lock exposure, ...

Bottom line, whatever works. But experience will teach you!

Cheers.

David

[rbarker]

Although bracketing doesn't work well with active subjects, as Nicole mentioned, I tend to look at the practice as being insurance. Not just insurance that I have the exposure nailed, but insurance against other factors that might damage the film. Other than with local subjects that can be conveniently re-shot, film is probably the least expensive element in making the image.

So, with LF B&W, I'll often make a backup shot at the same exposure, and then bracket plus and minus by a stop. For color, the bracketing is 1/3 stop. The trick is to keep the film organized so the backup sheets are not processed at the same time as the primary film.

Similarly, when shooting color on important projects, I'll separate the film into smaller batches, and have it processed on different days. That way, if the lab has a problem, the whole project isn't lost.

[Flotsam]

I think that bracketing is especially important when shooting tranparency films. Holding those highlights from going blank is so important and sometimes a scene just looks better a half a stop darker than even the most carefully metered exposure.

[John McCallum]

My 35mm camera could be set to automatically bracket 3 consecutive exposures by a user config'd amount. This combined with the fast motor drive meant I could make a significant contribution to the continuing viability of profitable film manufacture. I've never bothered to learn how to use the feature.

OTOH with the LF my preference is to follow Ole's approach. If the negative could be significant, I like to expose 2-3 sheets the same and develop them differently.

[Bruce Osgood]

It seems to me bracketing exposures is only useful if you process your own sheet film

I have shot 35mm color roll film bracketed and taken it to local lab for 'normal' processing and the stock prints returned all look the same. There is no evidence of my bracketing in 36 images. This means to me that perhaps the 'lab' compensates for over/under exposure in their processing of normal.?

So I feel bracketing is only effective in the development stage of sheet film where processing compensation can be applied one neg at a time.

[John McCallum]

Hi Bruce, bracketing is conducive with processing your own film and printing. I know that labs often use automatic print density settings for the roll of film.

Not so sure if this is also performed for each individual frame printed. However if it were, this could certainly reduce the differences apparant with bracketing (the tone separation and colour shifts may be less apparant without changes in density also).
It might be worth asking the lab to print 'straight' without any exposure compensation adjustments between individual frames, to see if that makes any difference. They should be able to do this imo.

Best, John.

[Loose Gravel]

I shoot mostly BW LF. I don't bracket for this except rarely. Bracketing is a huge waste of time. Chances are the picture is a dud anyway, right? Really. In ten pictures, how many are keepers? Next, there is all that processing, loading holders, cleaning holders, proofing, indexing, and the rest. Then, if I do bracket a frame and then at the end of the day, I'm short a piece of film, I'm really pissed.

Don't bracket, get it right the first time and save that sheet of film for your 'moonrise'.

[John McCallum]

Betcha Ansel wished he'd bracketed Moonrise, with the effort it required to print over the years following.

[Loose Gravel]

Betcha Ansel wished he'd bracketed Moonrise, with the effort it required to print over the years following.

Bracketing would not have cut it. He was so far off. He exposed for the moon (the highlights) in a very contrasty situation and developed for a what? What was the dude thinking? Was the zone system out to lunch on the guy? The way he writes it after the fact, that it was a source of genius that he remembered how bright the moon was, footcandles this and that. Holy cow.

Nice pic though.

[smieglitz]

When I shot 35mm I eventually got around to bracketing by taking three frames at the exposure I thought would be correct, then one over and one under by a full stop. That way, no matter how I cut the film, one frame that was the exposure I planned on being correct would never end up being the last frame on a negative strip and I could always get it flatter in the enlarger negative carrier as a result. It would also leave me two other backups in case the first was somehow damaged and I'd have the other two in case my exposure calculation was off.

Since I stopped shooting 35mm I've also stopped bracketing although I will still expose a backup sheet.