why overexposed scans from minilab?

[ampguy]

I shot my first 2 rolls with no meter the past few days, one with 200 color print film, the other 400.

Using sunny 16 and known inside settings from memory, most all the exposures were good, within a couple stops of optimal.

One photo appears highly overexposed, in the sunny outdoors where I'm sure I couldn't have been more than 2 or 3 stops off a correctly metered EV.

The weird thing is, the scanned image is also overexposed. Don't the minilabs auto-correct for this kind of stuff? Shouldn't I have had a computer balanced correct image, and just lost highlights from an optimal exposure?

 

[pvdhaar]

I've heard it said that some machines are set-up to adjust the exposure only to the average content of the first image.

The idea is that this calibrates for the light meter, and that any differences in exposure from there onwards are a conscious decision from either the photographer or the camera built-in evaluative meter.

So, that's auto correct in a way, but not on a shot per shot basis.

 

[ampguy]

Thanks Peter

Thanks Peter

I think it may be machine dependent. After my fisheye roll fiasco, I understand the machine used by my developer tries to compensate or correct for each shot, or is on that setting, and is also set to average that correction over the whole frame.

There is probably a way to override this setting, but my lab operator was not able to figure it out.

I've heard it said that some machines are set-up to adjust the exposure only to the average content of the first image.

The idea is that this calibrates for the light meter, and that any differences in exposure from there onwards are a conscious decision from either the photographer or the camera built-in evaluative meter.

So, that's auto correct in a way, but not on a shot per shot basis.

 

[clarence]

I've given up on minilabs. Even on entire rolls shot in one environment with a constant exposure, shadows and highlights look wrong.

I got a digital camera instead for my digital colour photography.

Clarence