It has been a busier week than usual. We spent time in a wildlife refuge in southern Rhode Island, visited Mystic Seaport, CT., shot during magic hour on College Hill in Providence, and around the Back Bay in Boston. I will post about the travels in the next few days as I get the film back, though I will cover some of my first adventure in infrared today.

Leading up to all the adventure this week I had an interesting, and annoying, set of realizations. Amie acquired a light meter last week which is identical to mine except newer and cleaner. I tested them against each other and I had 2 major realizations:

1) My light meter's spot meter attachment was overexposing by 1/3rd stop for the past 9 months.
2) I have gotten into the habit of equating lower EV number with less exposure when I am bracketing.

The first issue wouldn't have been a real big deal were it not for a couple of recent events. I happened to be reading a book about photographic exposure a week ago. In the book was a beautiful and vivid example of two images shot 1/3 stop exposure apart with slide film. The subject and framing were the same, the first image was shot at the light meter reading and the other 1/3 stop underexposed. The underexposed version was more contrasty and looked crisper and better. It was striking enough that I sought Amie out in the far corner of the bookstore where she was reading to show her the two pictures.

A couple of days later I contacted Steve McCurry's studio to ask him about a particular image on his site. If you don't know him by name you will recognize his images; he shot the beautiful NG cover image of the Afghani girl with green eyes in the 80's. One of the people at the studio told me he was unavailable, but they tried to answer my question. I had asked about an image of an Afghani woman wearing yellow against a blue drape in an indoor scene. The colors are unbelievable and it is obvious that the scene is lit with only the sunlight from the doorway to the room. The results, I was told, were likely so rich because Steve McCurry likely underexposed by 1/3rd stop.
So, when a couple of days later I found out that my meter has been leading me to overexpose by 1/3rd stop, this suddenly seemed like a big deal. The salesmen's talk of "don't worry about those dots on the lens, they won't effect the image" was balony. My old spot meter attachment was not letting in enough light and was throwing the results off by 1/3rd stop.

Now this would have been enough by itself, but then I realized yesterday that I have somehow formed a bad habit. When I go to read my light meter, if the results fall off of a half-stop I round to the nearest half-stop. But, I have been thinking of the numbers backwards, when I round down to the nearest 1/2 stop (or EV number as it is displayed on my meter) I am increasing the exposure of the scene, not decreasing it. So, I've been compounding my meter's accuracy issue by rounding down and overexposing more.

This next batch of color film will be interesting because it is the first batch shot since I have re-calibrated my meter reading and my bad habits (mostly).

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For the past few days I asked people I ran into about using infrared film. Not many were familiar with it, and those who were weren't always helpful. I had gotten the flawed advice from a young Hunt's Camera guy in Melrose to treat high speed infrared from Kodak (HIE) as if it were 3200 speed. Thankfully Richard McCaffrey over at Renaissance imaging told me this was crap and to look in the box for more information. HIE film doesn't have a ASA rating. You have to decide for yourself what you want it to be. They (Kodak) recommend ASA 200, before #25 red filter, and ASA 50 after. The odd thing about this is that my "R2" red filter (which is supposedly the equivalent to #25) has a 3 stop darkening effect so it would be 200 ASA before and 25 ASA after. *note: the after number is for use by a handheld meter to compensate for the lessening of light going through the lens due to the dark filter.

I was confused, but I lucked out as I happened across a book on infrared photography in the library. The author recommended the odd advice of just shooting f11 @ 125th/sec for a whole roll shot outdoors. This seemed like it would be destined for failure, but as I had no other starting point I went with it. What I didn't realize is that you can actually use your light meter to some extent to judge the exposure of the film, regardless of the fact that it is infrared and not visible light film. The source of the light is the same, so as the sun fades during the day, so does the intensity of the infrared.

I shot many many photos and the earlier ones from around noontime were the best while the later ones were very dark (4 pm-ish). Interestingly 1 stop of difference for the infrared was very dramatic as illustrated in this photo. I didn't like initially trust the 125th speed so I bracketed at 250th as well. The lighter shot is the 125th and the darker the 250th right next to each other on the roll of film. It was a COLD COLD wind that blew over the ocean at the beach. I was bundled up but my face burned as the wind lashed it.

As I scan more images I will relate more of the story. It was an adventure, though a simple one, and the film shoot was challenging both during and after. As little information exists on shooting infrared to begin with - there seems to be even less about processing the film after you're done.
more to come in the next day or two...