Keith Cartmell Photography: Re-dos, and exposure failure

Still shooting the loaner GL690. My GW690 has been repaired by replacing a broken spring, and because of complicated travel arrangements beyond the scope of this blog, I will pick it up a week today. Can't wait!

I enjoy shooting the GL, but as previously noted, there are some learnings in progress. I'd mentioned last time there were issues with dust and hair during scanning. Just so you know, after looking at the hair under higher magnifications, I'm convinced it's Celina.

There were three images from recent rolls that I liked where the scan had been ruined by dust and hair. The plan was to reshoot them, trying for less dust and no hair. Removing dust spots is merely tedious, but depending on the background hair is more difficult.

Here's two of the reshot images, one of Longview, and one from our East Village walk. I'm pretty sure that even people that have never been to either place can figure out which is which. And yes, there are still dust spots. You go pixel peeping and you'll find them. Knock yourself out. Tell me where they are in an email sent to getalife@autodelete.com.

Sean and I went out to Banff for an early morning shoot last week. I brought the tripod, thinking to mount the GL on it and try some long exposure shots. We ended up stopping to help pull a couple out of the ditch. I don't know what the story was about how they got there, or what they had been doing previously at 3 in the morning up a dead end road. By the time that was all over and we arrived at the Lake Minnewanka dam we were well into hand held territory, so the tripods stayed in the car.

From a walk, breakfast, and chat with a friend the morning was a complete success. It's tough getting images in the Banff area that are not banal from over exposure, but from a digital perspective there are a few I'm pleased with.

However, from a film output perspective the morning was a failure, other than collecting more learnings. I knew this experience would happen, and it will almost certainly happen again. No matter what I do, no matter how carefully I work on it, some of the shots are not going to work out. There are any number of reasons why. Some of them are "doh!" oops moments that could happen to anyone. Some of them are compositions or scenes that just didn't turn out as expected, usually because of the difference between how our brains see things, and how the camera sees things. That can happen in the digital world as well.

But for me the thing I'm struggling with is exposure. In the digital world it's easy to see that the exposure isn't right, and one can usually take shots till it is right. Bracketing is the work of a second. I'm still learning the light meter, and trying to train my eyes about what makes a good exposure. Even though for the films I've been shooting so far I've been chanting the mantra, err on the over exposure side, I'm not erring enough. Or I'm misreading the meter. Or the meter isn't seeing the darker areas I'm pointing it at.

The mountain shots were difficult light and I knew that. Morning sky very bright, shaded treed mountain sides very dark. Snow and ice in between. In fact, out of the 8 of them, I didn't like 7. Dark. Dust spotty. Banal composition. I thought at the time one was out of focus, but I can't see it in the scans, so that much is a success at least.

Here's a digital and film version of the only shot I kinda mostly like. I like the film version of the sunlit mountainside better, but there is no info in the trees no matter what I do. So I probably could have pushed the exposure a stop at least, and maybe two. Or get a graduated neutral density filter.