Bracketing photo's?

Question

I am trying to learn my camera. I have a Canon EOS Rebel X (film camera). When I take a reading, and my camera gives me (what it thinks) is the correct shutter speed/aperture, but lets say, the reading is not accurate for low light situation. If I want to take a shot of what the camera says is accurate, and also want to take the same photo but over expose it by a stop and under expose it by a stop to see the different results...how would I do this? If the camera says the correct exposure is 1/30 f 5.6...would I change it to 1/60 f 5.6 or change the fstop? How would you change the settings to get 3 different looking photo's of the same subject?

I think I understand what you are saying...let me pose a question this way...say I'm shooting at 1/30 f 5.6, could I leave it at 5.6 and take one photo at 1/30, then just change the shutter speed to 1/60 and take a shot, and then change it to 1/15 and take a shot..would that give me 3 different exposures? Would that be underexposing and overexposing the shot?

Answer 1

Bracketing is usually done by changing the f stop not the exposure time which is often more awkward to do. The traditional is to go one stop up and one stop down besides the best stop.
Modern film and modern film processing (if you are not doing your own) takes away a lot of the choices. Print film has more latitude than slides.
I once took a roll of print film, after I had spent many years doing slides, and took a series of pictures of a shopping center with the same exposure as the sun was setting and the light fading, about every 5-10 minutes, I don't recall the interval. When I had the film processed, almost all the prints were nearly identical, only the most extreme varied. When I looked at the negatives, the density of them changed dramatically, but the detail was present in all and the post processing recovered images. If I had done the same with slide film, the images would have gotten unusable by the fifth or sixth image - to get good images I would have had to constantly adjust the exposure. This is what you are doing when bracketing - seeing if one f stop up or down produces and better image.

Answer 2

You can do this one of two ways. First, keep the shutter speed but change the f-stop. So if your meter is reading F 5.6 @ 1/60 then shoot one at that, then shot one with your aperature open by one stop and then another closing the aperature by 2 stops (1 stop to get you back to 5.6 and the next to close it down.) Another way is to change the time. So shoot one at F 5.6 @ 1/60, another @ 1/30 and another @ 1/125. If you notice that your camera's meter is way off, you might want to invest in a handheld meter and just go by that, thereby ignoring the camera's meter.
Hope this helps.

Answer 3

1/30 to me means that you should have a tripod, so 1/15 would mean that also. 1/60 is iffy, but the best results would be with a tripod.

If your camera tellsyou that 1/30 f5.6 is what you need and you want to guarantee a good shot, I would shoot one shot a that setting, then one tighter on the f stop and two below the f stop.

That would mean 3 photographs, one of which would be manageable by having it developed at Target or Walmart which can adjust the best one to give you the best results. Actually, it would adjust all of them the best that it could.

That will work on standard bw, C41 process bw, or color print film. Those can be ajusted on printing, however on slide film, where there is no latitude in the developing process, at least one of them should be where it needs to be.