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PRACTICAL EXPOSURE METERS UNDER PRESENT PHOTOGRAPHIC CONDITIONS
Hatto Tappenbeck, A.S.C.
UP TO date the professional cinematographer and photographer has given very little thought to the exposure meter. This is due to several reasons of which past experience is perhaps the principle one.
Every cameraman has built up his photographic knowledge without exception from practical problems and actual work behind the camera. The uniformity and reliability of the standard film in the past gave the experienced photographer a base from which to calculate his exposure. Constant handling of the material and the use of privately owned cameras, the lenses of which were intimately known to the cameraman, made his judgment of exposure practically foolproof in all cases.
During the past year conditions in the motion picture industry have materially changed. On rare occasions we find a cinematographer still using his own camera. He has to take what the studio will give him. Arc lights have made way to incandescent to a large degree while in some both kinds of lighting equipment are still in use. But above all the film emulsions have been improved so rapidly that he did not have time to get acquainted with one, when already another, faster one succeeded it.
The change from orthochromatic film to panchromatic was slow, and gradually the pan type two supplanted that. Then, suddenly, the new fast film arrived; three times as fast. It took the motion picture industry by storm, but the storm was still blowing, when the new pan type two supersensitive grayback, antihalo film appeared. Still speedier than its predecessor!
Twice in a short time the photographic end of the industry was shaken up. Developers changed to an unheard of long time, lights were reduced to a minimum, lenses stopped down to stops, only used previously in bright sunlight. On exteriors, in turn, neutral density and other filters cut the light almost in half, before it reached the film.
And experiments and inventions are still in progress, in fact, seem to have only just started. At the same time the trend of films seems to lean towards pictures away from the home base in foreign countries and atmosphere, where light conditions are so different as to even fool the most experienced photographer at times. These are the new conditions and the environment to which the present cinematographer has to adapt himself.
In the past we used to confirm our photographic judgment by a short hand-test, a very reliable method, if carefully employed. But at the present where the saving of overhead and time on productions is of the most vital importance, we cannot hold up a company half an hour for a test. That is the time now required; the five minute soup of the past has been replaced by a development of twelve, fifteen, and even twenty minutes in the modern machines.
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