Negatives Are Consistently Underexposed

denada · Mar 14, 2017

bright backgrounds might be throwing your meter off. or off of what you want exposed properly. if you have a bright sky background and shadowed foreground or subject, one is not going to be properly exposed.

gsgary · Mar 14, 2017

There is nothing wrong with these images, Film has grain embrace the grain some of us are 100% film because of the grain, i expect you are looking at them at 100%, well don't

Derrel · Mar 14, 2017

gsgary said:
There is nothing wrong with these images, Film has grain embrace the grain some of us are 100% film because of the grain, i expect you are looking at them at 100%, well don't

RE: looking at scans at 100%. With my film scans, made at high on-screen size of between 7,250 or so and 15,000 pixels on the long axis of the scan with 6x6 MF negatives, the orioginal, out-of-the-scanner scans look "soft" when seen on-screen at that size since I scan with no sharpening applied in the scanning phase. However, if I apply unsharp mask later to the scan in Photoshop, and then reduce the display size by 50%, then apply another pass of USM, and then reduce the size again, and then apply final sharpening, the scans look SHARP! As in very,very sharp, and crisp, and detailed.

You want the grain to show up in a scan! You want to be able to see the grain pattern, otherwise there will be no impression of edge acutance, just mushiness. Looking at a scan at 100% can mean that you're seeing what could be a window-sized enlargement, and are peering at little sections of it, a bit at a time...also called pixel-peeping. Many people who have not shot film equate grain with digital noise, and the two are not related.

gsgary · Mar 14, 2017

This is HP5 underexposed at iso1600, scanning always shows more grain but you can hardly see grain in the wet print i have made

gsgary · Mar 14, 2017

This is what you call grain, Double X @iso1600 and 2 hour stand developed in Rodinal

OliverMcDermott · Mar 28, 2017

OliverMcDermott · Mar 28, 2017

There we go, gents - without making any further changes to the camera, this is the latest result - your guidance has been noted, from everyone here - thank you, you lot have contributed to me being a better photographer.

Thank you,