What has happened here?

[the abmmc]

I shot four rolls of print film, one colour (400 iso) and three b&w (400 iso) using the same metering pattern and flash set up, with these results: I had the photos developed by a high street retailer and cd's made. what the f*** has happened?

....Sorry but I am new here and can't work out how to show my photos so you can tell me. What has happened is that I have correct exposures for the colour print film, which were developed in store and terribly overblown overexposures for the black and white print film. Aren't machines able to deal with these problems? Or is it something I have done. I know it will be hard with no photos to show you but I would appreciate some ideas.

 

[Artemis]

Mate, get one of the pictures, upload it to somewhere, anywhere that will allow you...like photobuck or something, then go.

but dont have the spaces between the img tags

 

[walter23]

photobucket.com

 

[Big Mike]

Welcome to the forum. Read this to learn how to post photos.

As for you problem...the way photographic prints look is Dependant on two people...the photographer and the printer. If both are the same person...you can get what you want. However, if the printer does not know exactly what you want it to look like...they may have tweaked it to suit their view.

Were you using traditional b&w film? In which case the place that developed your color print film may have had to send out the b&w to get it done.

Even if you used C-41 b&w film...it may have different characteristics than the color film you used. Many experienced photographers become familiar with specific films and learn to compensate their exposure to suit that film.

You may be able to simply take the prints back and have them reprinted. Show them what you think they should look like and tell them to make the prints like that.

 

[the abmmc]

Cheers Big Mike, my problem is that the colour prints are well exposed and have good lighting balance, but the black and white prints (HP5 Ilford film 400 iso) are overexposed to the point of blurriness and have huge areas of overblown highlight. I used the same camera settings for each of the film types and even dialled in some underexposure for all shots because the people in the photos were wearing black. I've created a gallery in fotoptic and will direct anyone interested to that later once the photos are in there. What I really want to know is if I mucked up this shoot or if the lab did.

Thanks again

 

[j_mcquillen]

Check your negatives to see if they look overexposed or not - If the negs look fine, then it's a problem at the printing stage, so you should be able to get them re-done.

If the negs are overexposed, then it's either a problem with the metering/flash/shutter speed etc, or a problem during development (eg being developed as if for a different film speed), and unfortunately, there won't be a lot you can do to rescue them