a horrible chapter in our endeavor to become illustrious world famous photographers

[naptime]

so, Asia and I headed out around town on new years eve to do some black and white shooting.

we went to the train station. the riverfront. downtown. the courthouse. and a metropark.

we took with us our new understand of the exposure triangle and a desire to shoot in manual instead of full auto.

we were riding high on our horses.

today, we tried our hands at processing our film.

again, our studies paid off, and we processed 3 rolls without a hitch. everything went exactly as it should have..


and then.... we realized.... it was only the calm before the storm.

after the film was dry, we began to inspect..

all that newfound understand of shutter speed and aperture ....... NOT

over half of each of our rolls is so overexposed... or at least it looks that way. maybe it's underexposed.. heck i don't know. it aint right though, i'll tell ya that. i made some huge mistake... will know more when you all get to see the pics.

i'm fine with mistakes. i know i'm gonna make them. and i will learn from them.. but, i really thought we were on the right track. and blew it.. but frustrating to not even know what we did wrong or why. but i'm sure you experienced folks will know right off.

ok. so, we lost a few pics. we were prepared for that reality...

but then we went down to get the negs put onto cd so we could get them in the computer.

sssscccccrrrrreeeeeaaaaaccccccchhhhhhh STOP right there....

neither walgreens, walmart, or riteaid can scan in b&w film onto cd. they can ONLY scan in c41 film. wth????

so, now we have negs that we processed ourselves, some look descent, some look like crap. but nowwe can't even get them into the pc... ugghhh

then i attempted to scan them into the computer with a regular flatbed scanner. but, just can't seem to get the settings right for good usable negs.  and can't seem to turn them into positives with any luck either...

guess now we wait until i find a place that can scan b&w film

end rant..

 

[cgipson1]

Hmmm.. will be curious to see those. When processing film yourself, especially for the first time... it is easy to miss something and over or under develop the film. Temp, mix, time.. a number of things can bite you! Or it may be possible that it occurred in the in-camera exposures.

Typically if the error is in the processing.. all frames will be bad... if the error were in camera, only some of the frames will usually be bad (depending on how you shot, of course).

P.S.. why do you have HTML tags in your post?

 

[Rephargotohp]

Does You scanner have a Light Bar or Lit top to scan negatives with?

I have to say, I know a lot of old school guys (i'm old not sure I am Old school) think it's a great idea to learn with film and it cool to shoot with film ( id did for 40 years and I really don't want to ever again). But I don't know. It's so back end expensive to do. It can have some problems with getting good processing as you have found (Drug stores are not the best place). I really think it would have been a better learnin process to just go digital and get a couple used bodies. That's just my opinion...I'm sure it's not the majorities

But moving on, Were you metering? when you shot in manual. The funny thing I have found in my classes is. I ask people, Who shoot's in manual? and everyone raises their hands. Then I found out that a good number of them had no clue how to meter or that their camera even had a meter. It kind of shocked me at first. But I found that people that said they shot manual were just guessing at settings and then since they shot digital. Played with the settings till the image looked OK on the back of the camera.

So with you having a large amount of overxeposed images. what was your process to shoot manual?

 

[naptime]

Hmmm.. will be curious to see those. When processing film yourself, especially for the first time... it is easy to miss something and over or under develop the film. Temp, mix, time.. a number of things can bite you! Or it may be possible that it occurred in the in-camera exposures.

Typically if the error is in the processing.. all frames will be bad... if the error were in camera, only some of the frames will usually be bad (depending on how you shot, of course).

P.S.. why do you have HTML tags in your post?

i'm sure it was in camera. some shots appear to be exposed properly. others appear to be either under or over by a lot.

they are in groups though, that coincide with changes we made to aperture. so i know it was camera changes we made.

thankfully though, we had our notebooks and kept a log of all settings foreach of the shots we took. so you all will know what went wrong.

i'mm 99% sure it was my choice of fstop based on the cloud conditions. i think i went too low, and perhaps misunderstood the way changes needed to be made.. as i changed fstop but did NOT change shutterspeed.


not sue why i got the html tags. and the other thread was a duplicate of this one. but without the tags.. grrrrrr

 

[naptime]

Does You scanner have a Light Bar or Lit top to scan negatives with?

I have to say, I know a lot of old school guys (i'm old not sure I am Old school) think it's a great idea to learn with film and it cool to shoot with film ( id did for 40 years and I really don't want to ever again). But I don't know. It's so back end expensive to do. It can have some problems with getting good processing as you have found (Drug stores are not the best place). I really think it would have been a better learnin process to just go digital and get a couple used bodies. That's just my opinion...I'm sure it's not the majorities

But moving on, Were you metering? when you shot in manual. The funny thing I have found in my classes is. I ask people, Who shoot's in manual? and everyone raises their hands. Then I found out that a good number of them had no clue how to meter or that their camera even had a meter. It kind of shocked me at first. But I found that people that said they shot manual were just guessing at settings and then since they shot digital. Played with the settings till the image looked OK on the back of the camera.

So with you having a large amount of overxeposed images. what was your process to shoot manual?

no, the scanner is just an all in one scanner/printer. no attachements for film, or transparencies. i found some videos for scanning film in on our scanner, and made it work, but not with great quality.


i've explained before, perhaps you haven't seen it. digital is our goal. in february. but it was not in our budget for christmas. i couldn't even have gotten her started in digital for the price i got us both started in film. our rebel 2000 bodies were 30 bucks each. the cheapest canon digital bodies i could come across were 150 each. wasn't in the budget for christmas. had other things on the plate.

additionally, her classes will require b&w film. so we would have had to learn the process anyway, and have the bodies.

i know it's costing me on the backend. trust me, we wont be staying with film. and todays problems alone are enough to make me hate film. but, it is what it is. we made this descision for a number of reasons.... and i stand by them..... but, i am praying for february and tax refunds to get her SOON !!! lol then e can grab a few used bodies. or, depending availability, maybe new or refurbs.. but, thats a few months off yet.

 

[naptime]

how did we meter..... ?

no clue... couldn't tell ya.

someone sent us a link to an exposure table. we took that with us, and THOUGHT i understood it.

in a nutshell it was.. for a perfect sunny day, use a shutter speed to match film speed. and f16.

step down for overcast

step down again for heavy overcast.


we were using iso 100 film. so we set shuttspeed at 90.

it was overcast, grey skies, no sun. so i set aperture at f11.

on some shots, it had gotten a little later, so i stepped down to f8.

once i can see all the images, i think the f8 shots are the ones that are really screwed up.

also, i only changed the fstop. i never changed the shutterspeed.


some images are just completely white, like i can see a building outline but no detail like windows, doors, etc...

you'll see..

i know it was just my misunderstanding of the chart. but once you all see them, hopefully we can make heads or tails over exactly what i did wrong.

 

[marmots]

thats because you need a light meter, it will tell you the correct exposure

 

[Infinite_Day]

how did we meter..... ?

no clue... couldn't tell ya.

A quick search suggests to me that the Rebel 2000 has an internal light meter so the question becomes: Why didn't you use the camera's meter to judge your exposure? Sure a chart might get you to a close starting point but you should then use the body's meter to evaluate your exposure from there.

 

[Proteus617]

What's up with sunny16? Your camera has it's own meter that you can use even in manual. In fact, you are looking at it when you look through the viewfinder. Also (as per previous thread), scanning your BW rolls are going to run you $15 each. A good beginner scanner is less than $150. Crazy deals on Amazon for Epsons right now.

 

[naptime]

What's up with sunny16? Your camera has it's own meter that you can use even in manual. In fact, you are looking at it when you look through the viewfinder. Also (as per previous thread), scanning your BW rolls are going to run you $15 each. A good beginner scanner is less than $150. Crazy deals on Amazon for Epsons right now.

how did we meter..... ?

no clue... couldn't tell ya.

A quick search suggests to me that the Rebel 2000 has an internal light meter so the question becomes: Why didn't you use the camera's meter to judge your exposure? Sure a chart might get you to a close starting point but you should then use the body's meter to evaluate your exposure from there.

i thought i made it clear with my "no clue" comment...

i dont know anything about metering. this is our second day taking pictures with the camera. we don't know about metering yet. i only know about the sunny16 chart because someone sent me the link the night before we went out. as much as i wish i could, i can't learn it all overnight



as far as our b&w film. it's a little frustrating. we were told beforehand that it would only be 2.99 to scan the processed film onto cd. this is why i bought the developing tank and chemicals. the "photo tech" at rite aid told me. of course, they also told me yesterday that they could do it.. then they realized they can't.

we'll just have to get our own film scanner. it was discussed here before christmas. but it's not in the budget at the moment. so it'll have to wait a bit. modifying the home scanner is eh, halfway suitable, nothing i would attempt to make prints from, but at least enough to know how bad we screwed up while out shooting.


thanks for the advice & comments.

 

[tirediron]

Do you have a copy of the the manual for your camera? If not, that should be your first step; get a copy and both of your read, and re-read it a couple of times. It will explain all of the camera's functions, basic, metering included. Sunny 16 is a handy tool, but if you're not experienced enough to know the difference between light and heavy overcast (from a photographic perspective) it's not a lot of help.

 

[cgipson1]

Tirediron is right! I assumed you knew about metering... and how to use it, so didn't bother commenting on that. Definitely the first skill you need to learn...

I found this for you... it may not apply to your particular model.. but should still be helpful...

http://consumer.usa.canon.com/app/pdf/slr/Rebel_Ti_manual.pdf

Canon EOS 1000/Rebel* Manual

 

[naptime]

yep. Have manual both digital and paper.

just taking a bit for all of it to sink in. I learn by doing.

I can't read it, and instantly understand it.

I have to read it, and have the camera in hand to practice it, when it clicks it clicks and I'll never forget it.

maybe it's silly to those of you with experience, but when went out we were overwhelmed just at trying to get composition correct, and trying to make sure we were setting the shutterspeed and aperture correctly. Which, of course we had not anyway. I was exhausted by time we got home.

there is no denying I need more time with my manual. No denying that at all.

we've been so focused on the art side of it, and hoping to improve composition and follow the rule of thirds and not have distractions, and watching the backgrounds, etc... That we haven't put as much effort into the technical side.

but let's remember. We went out 1 day and shot on full auto. And now we've gone out a second day and shot full manual.

two days. Of course we haven't learned all we can learn.

but seeing results like we have, certainly shows us first hand how important the technical side is. Not that we doubted it.

 

[naptime]

Tirediron is right! I assumed you knew about metering... and how to use it, so didn't bother commenting on that. Definitely the first skill you need to learn...

I found this for you... it may not apply to your particular model.. but should still be helpful...

http://consumer.usa.canon.com/app/pdf/slr/Rebel_Ti_manual.pdf

Canon EOS 1000/Rebel* Manual

thanks. Yeah we have the actual manual in each of our cases. And I have it in PDF on the computer as well.

maybe I should put more time into the manual and less time into PG .....

but the manual is sooooooooo boring. ;-)

 

[c.cloudwalker]

Thank god your daughter is cute.

You're so nasty/scary looking you may not last long here on your own :lmao:

J/K.

There is most probably a manual online for your camera. Any problem finding it, let us know. Someone here will find it for you. But, yes, your camera has a meter and it should be your starting point.