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Exposure Correction Charts

Recommended Exposure Correction Chart from Sverdlovsk-4 Exposure Meter

Note: The correction tables below are for films made in Soviet Union. Modern color films have much wider range of use. As for modern black and white films, correction values may differ for each type of film. Consult your film manufacturer, make test shots by yourself or use exposure bracketing.


Exposure correction for FOTO 32-250 (silver-based B&W) films for outdoor shooting, depending on lighting type
Electric Light Bright Sun Clouds Clouded Sun or Evening
+1/2 0 -1/2 -2/3

Exposure correction depending on shutter speed
(Compensation of Schwarzschild effect)
Shutter speed according to the meter Correction values
FOTO (silver-based B&W) films, for ГОСТ/ASA/ISO Color Negative Color Slide
32 65 250 130
1/1000 0 0 0 +1/3 X X
1/500 0 0 0 0 0 X
1/250 0 0 0 0 0 X
1/125, 1/60 0 0 0 0 0 0
1/30, 1/15 0 0 0 0 0 0
1/8, 1/4, 1/2 +1/3 +1/3 +1/3 +1/3 0 X
1, 2 +2/3 +2/3 +2/3 +2/3 0 X
4, 8 +2/3 +2/3 +2/3 +1 0 X
15 +1 +1 +1 +1 2/3 X X
0 - no correction required.
X - use of this type of film is not recommended with the given shutter speed.

Exposure Correction for Pinhole

This table has been taken from Robert Kosara's homepage: http://www.kosara.net/photo/pinhole.html.

As mentioned above, pinhole cameras require long exposure times. Starting from about one second, the exposure has to be corrected to account for the reciprocity failure or Schwarzschild effect. The usual way is to open the aperture, but this is not possible for pinhole cameras. So the time has to be corrected, which means that another correction has to be made (because the longer time would need a different compensation ...). The following table gives the corrected numbers for most black and white films (specifically, the Agfa Pan 100 (APX 100)). To calculate these numbers, the following formula can be used (thanks to Dieter Lefeling for that):
tc = 0.1*(10*tm)^(1/(1 - lg 2))
(where tc is the corrected time, tm the measured time, and lg the base 10 logarithm).

Note: The formula can be rewritten as:
tc = 0.1 * (10 * tm) ^ 1.430676558073393

You can also use my JavaScript Calculator.

Measured Time Corrected Time   Measured Time Corrected Time
1s 3s 1m 16m
2s 8s 2m 43m
4s 20s 4m 1h 45m
8s 55s 8m 5h
15s 2m 10s 15m 13h
30s 5m 50s 30m 34h

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