Gast
How should one expose and develop black-and-white shots of snowy landscapes?
Up until now, based on old advice, I’ve been using a grey card to meter, with underexposure of 1–2 stops and development at N+1…N+2. That gave me good detail in the snow, but the residue was rock-hard.
Recently, I’ve read that I should use spot metering and achieve overexposure by 2 stops.
Has anyone had any experience with this?
Regards
Thomas
MirkoBoeddecker
Thomas,
Don’t use N+1 and N+2 when developing!
Where did you read that, and why?
The grey card is the most important thing – you mustn’t use the snow as a reference.
Or, if you don’t have a grey card to hand, use integral exposure and correct by increasing the exposure by 1–2 stops.
In my opinion, underexposure and pushing is the wrong approach, unless you want to photograph the snow itself rather than a subject in the snow where there are other grey tones present.
In that case, using EXP-2 and DEV+2 would naturally let the shadows go and bring out the highlights in the snow better.
Best regards,
Mirko
Wolf_XL
...you can also use spot metering, or you could skip subject metering altogether and just measure the light... But generally speaking, it’s as Mirko wrote – just add one or two stops and you’re sorted. It makes sense, really – your light meter wants to produce a mid-tone grey, but the snow is white. So the snow needs to appear darker in the negative => the amount of light needs to be increased accordingly...
Gast
Hi Mirko,
Thank you very much for your quick reply.
Well, you just have to decide: either perfectly rendered snow or a tonally accurate background. The latter is probably the better option if it’s proportionally significant.
Best regards, Thomas
Gast
Hi Wolf,
Thank you very much.
See my reply to Mirko.
Best regards, Thomas
Gast
Thomas,
Snow photography is what’s known as a ‘high-key’ shot, which means you should expose the image one stop more than the light meter suggests; otherwise, the snow will turn grey. Then use soft-focus photo paper and enlarge the print so that the snow still retains some definition; the rest will fall into place.
If you’re only taking snow photos, you can increase exposure by two stops, develop for 20% less time and use standard paper – it looks even better.
Another tip: make sure the sun is shining on the snow, otherwise the snow will look like “mashed potatoes”; foggy shots with snow are extremely difficult.
Oleksander
piu58
Well, you just have to make a choice: either perfectly rendered snow or a tonally accurate background. The latter is probably the better option if it’s proportionally significant.
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Modern films manage to render the snow in full detail *and* produce decent grey tones in the surrounding area. In sunny conditions, I’d tend to develop towards N-1, certainly not towards hard. And it certainly won’t be a straight print either: holding back and dodging will probably be necessary.
Without sunlight, snow is really problematic: it’s hard to prevent it from looking like plaster. There’s simply no sparkle to it. But even in such situations, I would develop normally. In the darkroom, a bit more work and experience will then be required.
Gast
Hello Oleksander,
Thank you very much for the tip.
Best regards,
Thomas
Gast
Hi piu,
Thanks a lot for the tip.
Best regards,
Thomas
Gast
Blessed is he who has a manual exposure meter.
Take a light reading and you’re all set. White stays white, black stays black.
The only problem is that snowy scenes usually have a high-key contrast, especially when there are unsnow-covered objects in the frame.
So it’s better to expose and develop at N-1, so that the whole scene still fits on the film.
This works particularly well on an overcast day, as it tones down the contrast a bit, and the light metering is the same for both the meter and the subject.
Best regards
Martin
Gast
How about getting to grips with the zoning system? Then problems like that will sort themselves out.
Gast
Hi Wolfgang,
Unfortunately not. The zone system isn’t misleading at all. It simply helps to find the best compromise within the sometimes rather narrow limits of reality.
The only way to go any further is with tricks used by ‘curve-bending’ developers, who develop the highlights flatter than the shadows (two-bath, water bath, etc.), or with appropriate printing techniques, if you manage to get everything onto the negative.
Best regards
Martin
Gast
P.S.: Ultimately, the problem is quite similar to that of achieving a well-defined sky whilst still maintaining detail in the objects; unfortunately, however, there’s no option to use a red filter to fix it.
Best regards
Martin
Gast
Max: Let me explain in more detail. Thomas initially has an exposure problem. Learning the zone system leads to such a thorough understanding of the chosen film/developer combination—and, above all, its limitations—that he immediately realises: either I have to place one or the other on the characteristic curve, or I put both on it, but then I’ll have to put in extra effort in the darkroom, i.e. in this case, for example, dividing the image into zones with different gradients and exposing them accordingly. You learn all this through intensive study of the zone system, because you inevitably absorb all the basic knowledge about gradient, the characteristic curve, lighting contrast, subject contrast, etc. In my experience, it is only through this that such subjects become manageable and can be printed without frustration. And the best part is: you no longer waste film on ‘safety shots’, because every exposure is spot on (I’m thinking of larger negative formats). And finally: anyone who wants the highest quality in enlargements – and I imagine that’s everyone here – MUST always set the film’s characteristic curve to pretty much exactly deltaD=1.5 (5 stops), otherwise tonal values are lost. Only the Zone System guarantees that for me.
piu58
Max: ... Learning the zone system leads to such a thorough understanding of the chosen film/developer combination...
And after just two years, you’ll have a perfectly decent snow photo in your hands.
Seriously though: despite all the learning, testing and experimenting, you should also end up with a few decent photos along the way. To achieve this, you first need a little tip. It goes without saying that you should also understand the basics of sensitometry. Unfortunately, that doesn’t happen overnight.
Gast
Piu58: this thread has a lot of readers, so the topic is clearly generating a lot of interest. I therefore think it’s important that we provide realistic information here. “2 years” was surely meant as a joke.
To grasp the basics of the zone system and at least test out one film/developer combination, you’ll need about 10 evenings after work and no fear of a bit of maths when dealing with density curves. And then you can start gaining experience with your first shots. It’s perfectly fine to carry on taking photos ‘conventionally’ alongside this. You can actually benefit greatly simply by taking your current film/developer combination, exposing a grey scale (10 steps with the light intensity doubled for each, meaning one frame per step for 35mm), measuring the film—for example, with a lab exposure meter—and plotting the density curve. That takes just one evening.
All I can say is this: when I lay my negative archive on the light table, I find it a shame that I didn’t come across the Zone System when I was 16. The leap in quality in the negatives, in terms of yield alone (since then, close to 100%), is impossible to overlook. And there is simply no subject left that leaves me at a loss. Of course, the Zone System doesn’t simply resolve tricky contrast situations like Thomas’s. But it creates the best conditions for achieving the optimum result in conjunction with the subsequent stages, whether in the darkroom or using digital image processing. And that’s when the fun really begins!
piu58
Piu58: this thread has a lot of readers, so the topic is clearly generating a lot of interest. That’s why I think it’s important that we provide realistic information here. “Two years” was surely meant as a joke.
A bit of humour, yes, but not completely over the top.
I ploughed through St. Ansel a few years ago. He’s not particularly easy to understand. And once you’ve got the hang of it: what’s actually still in the frame? And what if the film’s characteristic curve isn’t linear across 11 zones and compresses the highlights? Or the shadows get washed out? Mind you, you don’t realise that at the start; you just know something’s not right.
And then there’s the visualisation. Where’s the snow actually supposed to go? Sure, it’s white. But I still have to perform exposure to a light grey. There’s a picture by A.A. where the snow is dark grey. It still looks convincing.
If someone *explains* it to you and then gives you pointers later on, it all goes much faster. If you struggle through it all on your own, a whole year can pass. In any case, there’ll be no snow left by then; winter will be over.
I think studying sensitometry is worthwhile and, for really good shots, even necessary.
But we’re not actually that far apart. Ten evenings spent just on the zone system – that’s ten weeks or more. Evenings serve various purposes, and photography evenings also need to be used sometimes simply to process or enlarge the new material.
Gast
I’d see it much the same way as Uwe.
Going through the theory once helps with understanding (and also prevents you from blindly following tips that are obviously based on incorrect assumptions, such as N+1 – N+2). (Of course, it may be that the subject in question here consisted solely of snow, and therefore actually has a very low dynamic range).
There are now plenty of ‘attempts at alternatives’ to the Zone System on the web. When you consider that Adams was writing for amateurs, his work is really quite dense.
In practice, especially when it comes to “multi-frame” films like KB and 120s, a “Pi x Zone” approach will nevertheless prevail.
Regards
Martin
Gast
In the age of the 35-hour week (a week has a grand total of 168 hours), young people in particular should surely be able to spare more than one evening a week for some meaningful broadening of their horizons.
There’s one very positive side effect of the zone system that I haven’t mentioned yet: the need to thoroughly test the film and developer automatically puts an end to this constant trialling of different films and developers! Because who hasn’t been there: you’re unhappy with your results, the latest advert for xxx is ringing in your ears, and before you know it, there’s a new developer in the darkroom. Before you know it, you’ve got 10 half-used and slowly turning brown developer concentrates sitting around, the vegetable drawer in the fridge is also full of various types of film, and the results haven’t improved—no, in fact, they’ve got worse precisely because of that. The zone system puts a stop to this daft behaviour and forces you to focus on just 1–3 combinations. But you’ll know these so well that no miracle film or miracle solution, used in the conventional way, can hold a candle to them.
Gast
While Martin was replying, I’ve just had a quick go at it: Adams’s is hard to read, whereas Andreas Weidner’s is much easier to understand – though I’ve simply replaced his approach with split filtering. But why shouldn’t someone interested just pop on Google and search the web for easy-to-follow instructions?
