Controlling extremes of light

[amandaschmamanda]

I have this project for one of my classes to "create an invisible experience." Long story short, I'm going to take pictures with black & white film, BUT I need them to turn out either all white or all black, i.e. via over/under exposing them. I won't be developing them myself so I need to make sure this happens within the actual taking of the photo, and I want to be able to control it.
Basically my question is, will I be able to do this with the light metre and such alone, or are there other things I can do so they come out black or white? I have a Nikon F65 with a manual setting.
Odd request but it's an odd assignment.

[Marko]

Hmm this seems like a very odd assignment. If I were the teacher I'd want my students to have some detail not NO detail. That's just silly IMO.

I mean if the picture is to come out all black why not take a picture with the lens cap on?

But If you want to do the assignment properly....
For the dark shot with no bright lights - try to get a meter reading from your camera (you should be able to when the camera aperture is wide open) - then just underexpose like crazy Take the shot at 1/8000 at F32 - that will work - but you'll get the same result as if the lens cover were on.

For the light shot do the opposite - meter a cloud in the sky with your camera. Then overexpose like crazy F2.8 for 1 minute - that should do the trick.

I still recommend 'playing' though - you'll learn way more.
Try overexposing on the light shot and underexposing on the dark by 3 stops then 4 stops. That should get you some detail - and make the assignment more interesting in that you can see the limits of over exposure and under exposure before total black or total white.

Hope that helps - and I'd love it if you reported some results.

Thanks

Marko