Photography gear for Denali

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I've just visited your mountain photography web pages and was very inspired by them. I have been mountaineering for a few years now but have ony just become enthusiastic about photography during the last year. My slides from a Nepal expedition came out fairly well but I am looking for improvements next year on my expeditions to Denali and the Tien Shan.

I have a question if you don't mind answering about your methods for light metering. I have also just bought an FM2n specifically for high altitude/extreme cold conditions because I don't think my F70 is up to it. The FM2n has center-wighted metering and I was wondering if you knew anything about how this metering is weighted. Did you have a general rule or a specific way of thinking when using the built in meter in the snowy conditions (say by opening up by 1 stop)? I am seriously thinking of buying a separate light meter and was looking at the Sekonic range. The L-398M is an incident meter which doesn't require batteries and I was wondering whether this was the model you took as backup? When using an incident meter do you find that the snow is exposed correctly (that is nice and white but still with some texture) or do you have to make a slight adjustment to get the required results? I was thinking of a combined spot/incident meter as I feel very comfortable using the zone system to place the snow in the correct zone. These meters however need batteries and again I suppose I would be faced with the problem of keeping them warm. I would happily just take a selenium cell meter if I could be assured that the exposures would be consistently good.

If you could let me know your experiences with light metering I would be very grateful.

-- Tony Terlecki (ajt@terlecki.demon.co.uk), December 18, 1997

Answers

I shot one frame as indicated by the meter and one frame with one stop over. It would have been a good idea to bracket even more. I think two stops would loose texture in the snow. I had a cheap selenium meter that I ended up not using. From what I read in John Shaw's book, if you use a standard exposure (ie grey card reading or incident, which generally amounts to adding 2 stops) you could loose texture on snow and other very bright surfaces. That's easy to test, esp. if you understand the zone system.

-- Quang-Tuan Luong (luong@ai.sri.com), December 19, 1997.

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