Washed Out?

[Strauss]

I had the opportunity recently to work with studio lighting on some portraits. I did most in digital but a couple on film. Due to the fact that the light meter on my camera, which is a Nikkormat FTN, is broken, I just checked all of the settings on my DSLR to make sure everything looked good. It did. However, all of the portraits look extremely bad. As opposed to being a nice B&W they're just gray.

Here's one of the portraits that didn't come out:

Here's a random shot from the same roll, which came out looking just fine:

If it's necessary to know, I was shooting on Ilford Delta 400 film. I'm quite new to film, so any help as to why this would happen would be awesome.

 

[Robin Usagani]

You have light leak. The flash was hitting the front element of your lens.

 

[Strauss]

Is that something that could be fixed by just taping up the camera or would it need a full restoration?

 

[Paul Ron]

That doesn't look like a light leak, it's more like under exposed.

What was your exposure, and how does the negative look? Do you have any solid whites (black areas) in this frame?

Light leaks are generally localized to a streak or an edge, not consistant over the entire negative as evenly as that. Now if you said fog, I'd be more inclined to agree, old film left in the heat or exposed at the air port? And even then it will still have solid whtes (black areas) in the negative.

.

.

 

[oldmacman]

I am going to guess it is the processing. A machine will see that low key shot and try to compensate by making all that black closer to 18% grey .The image can be tweaked. Here is a quick example but I would leave it to you to take it in the direction you want to go.:

 

[Strauss]

I am going to guess it is the processing. A machine will see that low key shot and try to compensate by making all that black closer to 18% grey .The image can be tweaked. Here is a quick example but I would leave it to you to take it in the direction you want to go.:

Ah okay. This makes sense. Looking at the negatives, the background is completely clear. Thank you. However, some of the others are still incredibly faint. Given that my settings were identical to my digital camera, which looked awesome, why would they come out like this? Could the shutter speed be off for some reason? It looks like the flash synced up just fine, so that's not the issue.

 

[Paul Ron]

Using a digital camera as yur light meter is not always the best way to go. First off you should standarise your meter to your film/exposure/development times/printing techniques by shooting test rolls to determine the ASA of your film and small quirks of your camera. These effect your latatde n give you more control in the soup to achieve good density negatives. Once you've got that down pat, printing in your darkroom will become a breeze, you can consistantly print on a #2 grade paper for normal contrast (varying to suit your taste n effects) you can get the nice mid tones n deep blacks n unblocked hightlights with details with a minimum of burning n dodging. .

By sending your negs out to be developed, you lose control over these and are at the mercy of the "machine." You'll have to compensate in other ways to tweak your printss but will always be chasing the machine as it compensates in it;'s own ways.

Then using yuuir digital camera as a meter... what exactly were you metering for? Was it taking an average, spot the highigs or shadows?... did you compensate your development for the shift in high to lows to compress or expand the tonal range?

Start investing in some basic equipment, do your own processing. It's cheap n lots of fun besides. You don't need a darkroom, just a dark closet to load your tanks.

Enjoy.