Query on developing colour 35mm film

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Captain Kidd

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Hi,

I have a Leica M6 that was serviced and adjusted maybe 5 years ago by Malcolm Taylor. The reason I mention that is because I’m at a place where I am trying to identify if I have a problem with my camera, light reader (I use a sekonic L-308X) or when I get my film developed into negatives.

I use a Plustek 8000i to scan in my negatives, and have settings set to Christopher Crawfords colour film scanning introduction (https://crawfordphotoschool.com/digital/film-scanning-intro.php).

Basically sometimes my pictures look perfect but most of the time I need to jig around the white point, and brightness to get the picture looking properly exposed, they can quite often be dark.

I wanted to give as much background as possible but my question is relating to the development of my negatives, I’m thinking of trying somewhere different to see if the issue continues. The place I use, uses a Fuji Frontier 570 print lab. Would these machines always output the same results and how sensitive is the developing process. ie is it easy to have varying results? Or is film just so sensitive that exposure can be off quite often.

It’s not so much a problem, I can adjust, but when I scan in and it’s quite dark and looking underexposed then I worry there might be a problem somewhere.

Thanks for any help
 
If some of the pictures come out fine it's unlikely a development problem.


from your description it sounds like maybe your not metering the scene correctly?
 
Thanks for the reply, I always use the meter by pointing it towards the subject and aiming the light meter back towards the camera.
 
Show us a snap of the negatives including the border, just hold them up against the window or something and snap with your phone. Then we'll be able to tell you more.
 
If, when scanning, sometimes the film frame edge OR the film holder edge is present in the image area...the scanner's auto settings will use that to determine the scan 'exposure' and throw off the overall tonality of the image.
 
Captain Kidd said:
Thanks Zenza, even in vuescan when you have your settings profile saved, it still will do something automatically somewhere?
Click to expand...

Yes, it must base the black and white point off something. Having edges of the film holder or film frame gives it something not related at all to the actual image to base that off.
 
Thanks for this, when I scan in on vuescan it always seems to scan a little extra of the image ie. some frameing etc. The only way to change this is the dotted line, where you select what will be included in the final scan. But preview will always scan everything, including outside the dotted line.
 
Here's something you might try. Take a pair of each picture you are shooting. Do one pix with the M6 built-in meter and one pix with the Sekonic. Comparing them will help identify metering problems if there are any.
 
Ive attached 3 images of negatives, would these looks reasonably well developed? I had to reduce the size to upload but the hope the overall colour helps see the quality of the development.

Thanks
 

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They look alright to me. You probably just need to optimise your scanning. That some postprocessing is needed is normal. If you also post examples of the scans you're unhappy with, people here can probably also help with that.
 
Thanks Retinax, I generally need to tinker a little to get them right, I just worry that they should all be scanning in looking about the same exposures but some are as i mentioned a bit darker. But it probably does just come down to my exposure reading, if i'm taking the same subject I probably don't take enough readings as between pictures to capture any change in light i'm not aware of. Glad you think they look alright :)
 
Some got a little less exposure, are those the ones that you got darker scans of? Then maybe you should look at the auto exposure settings in you scanner software. And as Zenza mentioned, auto exposure could be thrown off by a number of things.
 
The negatives look perfectly fine. All negative film needs a fair bit of post processing. It seems that you're letting Vuescan do all of the work...which means you're giving up control over how the image is post processed. I highly doubt many of us would even be able to tell the difference between two frames shot a stop apart on professional C41 film. I definitely can't in the rare instances I bracket a stop on a film like Portra.

The differences you're seeing are due to the scanner's auto settings. You'll never get consistent results this way unfortunately. It's like putting a digital camera on auto exposure, auto WB, etc. Two photos taken moments apart may turn out to look completely different tonal and colour-wise.

That's just my $0.02.
 
Negs are fine.
My Plustek 8200i is kind of finicky. Sometimes it work better with VueScan, sometimes with SilverFast.

My old Epson 550 just works with its native application, but not as sharp as Plustek.

Maybe it is time to switch to DSLR scanning.
 
Thanks, I always do post processing, just sometimes I wonder why some pictures are darker than others, but i will always work on them after to get them right, its just some require more Post processing thean other and i wondered why that was, I was worried it was an exposure problem. Im not sure where the exposure setting are in Vuescan but I have nothing set to automatic. Thanks everyone for the input and help
 
Captain Kidd said:
Im not sure where the exposure setting are in Vuescan but I have nothing set to automatic. Thanks everyone for the input and help
Click to expand...

Unless your scans are being saved as straight up negatives and you're doing the inverting and black/white point and white balance adjustments yourself, the scanning software is doing lots of post processing and automatic adjustments. How to turn those off with your particular setup I'm unaware.
 
You scanner is much like your in camera meter, in a sense. It may not properly measure a negative high and low tones. I have a Epson V700 and usually use the Epson software. When scanning medium format negs I use the dotted line box to scan one neg at a time. If I crop a scan with the dotted box the overall exposure can change dramatically. The scan is still good (the neg is good) and I need to adjust the scan in post processing.
 
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