I hope I am explainig this correctly, so please bear with me.
I have been taking pictures of the spring runoff jsut outside of Boulder Colorado. However, I am not satisfied with the exposure and level of detail in the shadows. So I am seeking advise. Here are the environmental conditions.
1. I am inside a narrow canyon so the side are quite high.
2. The sun is to my right or behind me most of the time.
3. I am inside the canyon approx 9:00 am. Since the canyon is so narrow and the sides are high, this keeps a lot of light out of the canyon and makes some rather dramatic shadows in the areas that do have sunlight that early in the morning.
This is what I have been doing:
1. I am using ISO 200 Speed film.
2. I am using a very narrow aperture for max depth of field and long exposure time.
3. I am spot metering the darkest shadowed area and using that as a basis of the longest time I can leave the shutter open.
In one instance I had an Aperture of around F32 (I think) and a shutter speed of around 1/2 to 1 sec. However, I am still not seeing the shadow detail I want. Anyone have any suggestions at to how I can maintain the long exposure time while also increasing the shadow detail of dark areas without overexposing the rest of the frame?