Moderator: Andreas Wideroe
I'll say it again - All you really need is a £5 grey card, available from any photographic shop. You could use your internal meter, which despite what anyone here says, will give you an accurate reading. Zoom into the grey card, expose - Voila! Much much more accurate than compensating with an arbitrary 1 stop, or whatever. The snow will probably blow out very very white, because of Kodachrome's small latitude, but that's kind of what you want, no? And all else in the frame will expose OK - people, trees etc., and it won't be grainy. Kodachrome is virtually grainless - it was video noise on your transfer.I must say that I'm still trying to figure out how I should meter using the in camera meter for those days when Its full on dumping and overcast or I'm in the trees and its not so bright out. Wonder if the 1 stop over rule would still apply for good exposure of the snow. Anyone have suggestions on this situation?
So all you need to do is telecine again - but you will get grey snow!I realize now that the reason that I was seeing all the grain was because I was infact using the TTL meter on my Nizo Professional to meter and just like everyone has been pointing out. The meter was attempting to make my prodominantly white background register at 18% grey. I never watched the films projected, (I don't have one and I'm used to going straight to telecine anyway). I told my colorist that the most impotant thing was to make the snow white so he had to jack the levels up to do this and of course, this was going to induce grain into the shot. In effect, I did underexpose for the conditions and the part of the shot that I wanted to expose for.