Rather than trying to recognise mid-tones (which you will eventually be able to do quite easily), you might want to try incident metering and manual exposure. In situations such as you describe, when I know the meter is going to go haywire, I tend to switch to manual. Now with a digital camera it's also convenient to check the histogram to get an idea of where everything is, and to adjust exposure accordingly if you want to shift everything further to the right.
Some useful common midtones are pavements, grass, brick walls, slightly faded denim, blue sky, rhino skin, bits of pigeon, rainclouds. I have quite a useful book called The Perfect Exposure by Jim Zuckerman. Mostly he just tells you to use an incident meter, but there is a chapter in which he shows a number of colour photographs and points out what he used as the middle tone. You might be able to find a copy in your library. Bob > -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On > Behalf Of Christine Aguila > Sent: 23 June 2008 19:11 > To: [email protected] > Subject: On the issue of blown highlights! > > Hi Folks: > > 1) I'm having a devil of a time with blown highlights, especially in > challenging lighting situations. I've been trying to teach > myself the Zone > System--and I think I've got the gist of it. But for street > photography, > things get a bit rushed, so, as I've learned, I should > quickly spot meter > for a mid-tone, lock in exposure, then reframe, focus & > shoot. What do you > guys consider to be mid-tones in color? > > 2) I'm trying to train my eye to visualize, but it's slow > going. Any tips > for faster learning? > > 3) Also, I've been metering for highlights more, then using > Lightroom to > bump up the shadows, which seems to work, but does anyone > have any other > suggestions? > > 4) Also, virtually 99.9% of the time I have to bump up the > "Lights" in > Lightroom to anywhere from +10 - +39. No bid deal, but is > there something I > should be doing in-camera to avoid this. I wonder if the > K20D, with it's > EDR, eliminates this? Any thoughts. I'm actually thinking > of making a > develop preset to do the things I seem to do repeatedly when > processing in > Lightroom, but thought I'd touch base here 1st. > > Big cheers, Christine > > > > -- > PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List > [email protected] > http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net > to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly > above and follow the directions. > > -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
