Film photography · Medium Format · Photography

Beneath the pier (with a spot meter)

After yesterdays picture of Cleethorpes pier, here’s a picture showing what it looks like underneath.

This is one of the first photos I’ve ever spot metered handheld. I have a Reveni Labs spotmeter that I bought from someone second-hand. I’ve only used it at a basic level so far – looking for a Zone 3 area (dark, but with detail) to take a single reading and place it on middle-grey (Zone 5), and then underexposing a couple of stops from what it tells me (I don’t think I’ve explained that very well…).

It’s worked pretty well on the handful of shots I’ve used it for so far. I’ll likely continue to use an incident meter where possible, but it’s good to have the option to be more precise when I can’t get into the same light as the subject.

The upper part of this picture is pretty dark, but that’s what it was like (and there’s no way I could capture setail there without blowing out the brighter parts of the scene). My intent was to retain detail in the vertical struts, which I’ve managed to do.

Beneath the pier

Fujica GW690 & Kodak Tri-X. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 8mins @ 20°

Taken on 28 December 2023

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