ASA and Film speed question

[legitballer]

I was just wondering if you need to set your ASA to the same as your film speed. Or can I use 800 speed film and set my ASA to 400? Thanks

 

[voodoocat]

I was just wondering if you need to set your ASA to the same as your film speed. Or can I use 800 speed film and set my ASA to 400? Thanks

You can do that but your shots will be overexposed by 1 stop. Setting the film speed on your camera is for the meter to decide the correct exposure.

 

[photogoddess]

I was just wondering if you need to set your ASA to the same as your film speed. Or can I use 800 speed film and set my ASA to 400? Thanks

You can do that but your shots will be overexposed by 1 stop. Setting the film speed on your camera is for the meter to decide the correct exposure.

If you need to set your camera up or down from the ASA rating of your film, you can do so. However, when you process the film, you will need to either push or pull process the film. Having to pull film is less common than having to push film. Here's as example

Say you get to a church to shoot a wedding and you brought 200 speed film and a flash. At the last minute you are told that you can't use your flash in the church. It's fairly dark in there and you don't have any faster film. In order to salvage the situation, you set your camera to 400 with your 200 speed film loaded and start taking pics. Nice ambient lighting with shutter speeds still high enough to not have blurry pics. When you take that roll to the lab, you tell them to push it a stop.

Pushing it is basically overdeveloping the film to compensate for your underexposure. With the auto color film developing machines, they simply turn the machine off for 1 minute per stop you want the film pushed. This works with film rolls under 30 exposures due to the length of the developer racks in the machine. To pull the film, they have a hand crank and a chart that tells them how fast they have to accelerate the film through the racks to get the correct processing time.

From my experience, about 2 stops either way works well.

 

[legitballer]

Thanks for the info (even though my meter is broken, lol)! It is greatly appreciated!