What happened here?

pevelg

pevelg

Well-known
Local time
3:19 PM
Joined
Feb 17, 2008
Messages
558
View My Gallery
I was out of 120mm film, so I took my dads FED5 with Kodak BW400 c41 film with me. Where did I go? The Renaissance festival!!! Yes, not the best place for B&W, but it is all I had. Anyways, lots of my pictures looked great, but some looked really weird. I am wondering what is going on. Here are examples.

Roll #1: This entire roll looked like this. Picture is of me and my little sister, parting before I get on a train. FED is sitting on a railing.

3909818800_f27b90ab61_o.jpg


Roll # 2: The first photo looks horrid, the very next photo looks fine

3909806890_c30fdd3e6c_o.jpg


3909036739_63eec7cc35_o.jpg


Roll # 3: Same thing, first photo is horrible and the second photo after this one is horrid. The first photo is a fairy.

3909820040_fa4bdd48db_o.jpg


3909038099_6598b4d06a_o.jpg


Am I just very bad at setting exposure? I thought that if I overexposed, everything would just be blown out, and if I under exposed things would be very dark. Whats up with this murky grey cast? BTW, I've only been shooting slides for a long time, but I never remember seeing anything like this, even when I occasionally shot color or B&W negatives on my M6ttl. Film was processed and scanned at Costco.
 
I'd say they're underexposed.

What does the film look like? When mass-processing labs do scans of underexposed negatives, they tend to be grey, not dark, because the machine doesn't know that there is just nothing in the negative, tries to orient itself somewhere in the middle, and everything goes grey and washed out.
 
I'd also say underexposed. The machine tried to rescue as much as possible, but of course, the result is not necessarily photographically appealing.
 
Ah, to bad. I didn't have a meter, so I tried guessing all the exposures. I thought I had done a good job. Bummer. I bet if I still had my coolscan though I would be able to pull out much better prints.
 
bmattock said:
Somebody please tell me again how guessing exposure is a good idea.
Click to expand...

1) Sometimes you just want it. When desperate and want to try out something not-normal... happens to me once in a while 🙂
2) Sometimes you have no choice. My 6x6 has no meter, and no I won't buy a meter (not in my buylist for a long time, and I don't need it just for one camera).

But, honestly, I didn't answer the question. Now I am interested too! 🙂)
 
ZorkiKat said:
"Wild Guessing", no good. Guesstimate, OK. The latter involves some intelligent deduction based on what is known and observed...
Click to expand...

How do you know if you are a 'wild guesser' or a 'guestimator'?

And of course, the ultimate - how do you calibrate your eyeballs to 'observe' the EV of the light? Funny, when I walk out of a theater in the daytime, the sun always seems so bright, but if I stand there for 10 minutes, it's not so bright anymore. Would a meter be fooled the way my eyes are? I wonder how it is that you 'guestimators' can tell the difference?
 
bmattock said:
And of course, the ultimate - how do you calibrate your eyeballs to 'observe' the EV of the light?
Click to expand...

You don't.

You learn to recognize certain lighting situations, such as "in broad daylight" or "overhead sky" or "in subway stations". Then you learn to make certain adjustments, e.g. whether something is in the shade or whether a given subway station is brightly or dimly lit. Effectively you don't train your eyeballs, you learn to estimate whether lighting situations are comparable to others that you know and are familiar with. It's how exposure tables have been working since day 1, except that you internalise part of the tables because you get used to them.

It works. I wouldn't use slide film that way, but for negative film you get reasonable precision. It takes a little practice, which the OP didn't have, and for the beginning it's a good idea to cross-check with a meter or an exposure table, which the OP didn't do.
 
rxmd said:
It works. I wouldn't use slide film that way, but for negative film you get reasonable precision. It takes a little practice, which the OP didn't have, and for the beginning it's a good idea to cross-check with a meter or an exposure table, which the OP didn't do.
Click to expand...

Reasonable precision, eh? Why bother with sharp lenses or good film or great camera manufactures, then? You get 'reasonable' precision from lesser makes and models. And why bother focusing or framing or anything else? You get reasonable precision from just scale focus. And you know, while we're at it, AF and AE are pretty 'reasonable precision' too. Why bother with any manual controls at all?
 
pevelg said:
Ah, to bad. I didn't have a meter, so I tried guessing all the exposures.
Click to expand...

With negative film, you can overexpose by a great amount and still get usable results. So basically, if you're uncertain of the proper exposure, try overexposing by two stops.

This pic (see attached, ignore the boringness) was mistakenly shot at f8, 1/60, 400 ISO on Fuji Superia.

According to the sunny-16 rule, the exposure was exceeded by five stops!

The photo seems a little pale, but it's definitely usable.

attachment.php
 

Attachments

  • testimg594.jpg
    testimg594.jpg
    47.3 KB · Views: 0
antiquark said:
So basically, if you're uncertain of the proper exposure, try overexposing by two stops.
Click to expand...

Overexposing from WHAT two stops?

That's like saying not to measure your flour when making a cake, but if you have no idea how much to add, pour in twice as much. As what?

Silly people. Use a meter. How hard is that?
 
rxmd said:
You learn to recognize certain lighting situations, such as "in broad daylight" or "overhead sky" or "in subway stations". Then you learn to make certain adjustments, e.g. whether something is in the shade or whether a given subway station is brightly or dimly lit. Effectively you don't train your eyeballs, you learn to estimate whether lighting situations are comparable to others that you know and are familiar with. It's how exposure tables have been working since day 1, except that you internalise part of the tables because you get used to them.
Click to expand...

Exactly. And exposure tables do work.

Cheers,

R.
 
Roger Hicks said:
Exactly. And exposure tables do work.
Click to expand...

With 'reasonable accuracy'. Which is not necessarily to say 'acceptable', eh?

Of course they 'work'. And they were abandoned in favor of meters as soon as meters became accurate, small, and affordable. Exposure tables were fine for the happy snapper, which is why they were printed on boxes of film. Meters were used by those who wanted precise control.

And with meters still available everywhere, cheap, and accurate, it seems odd that anyone would intentionally eschew their use in favor of 'reasonable accuracy'. Especially aficionados who constantly seek the very best of everything in their quest for photographic perfection.
 
antiquark said:
From your best guesstimate.
Click to expand...

You mean the one that's wrong? Of course, we don't know how wrong, since we have no meter. So somewhere on the scale of 'wrong', simply add two stops and then it will be 'right'.

Yeah, that's gotta work.

Nothing's wrong with learning the skill of manual exposure estimation.
Click to expand...

There is if it isn't a skill and cannot be done. A guess is a guess. Memory is memory. They can be 'reasonably accurate' but they are hardly a skill.

Tell me how many carpenters measure boards without a measuring device.

What skill might a carpenter develop to eyeball a board and know how long it is? I mean, they've been measuring and cutting boards forever, so why can't they just do it instinctively by eye?

It's simple. The human eye is not designed for measuring things accurately. Gross estimates are helpful for survival - knowing how long a board is to the inch isn't. Yet we need to measure boards to the inch to build a house. So we use tools.

The human eye is also not designed to measure light. So we use tools.

And tools are available. So why not use them?

I never understand this. Silly people.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom