Help: Film Developing and Scanning (Exposure)

DTW

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Hi everyone,
I've been shooting digital cameras for some time now and have a decent understanding of cameras/digital photography. However, I've just started to explore the world of film and am feeling a bit lost after I got my first roll of film back. Here's the story.


I took a roll of film and did a bunch of test shots to get a feel for how film reacts. I understand that negative film is quite forgiving and has a wide exposure latitude, and that they are also generally more forgiving for overexposure than underexposure etc. I used a roll of Fuji 800Z in a Nikon FM2n and took 4 shots of random things:


1) 1 stop under exposed
2) normal exposure
3) 1 stop over exposed
4) 2 stops over exposed


I dropped the film off at the local lab for developing and scanning. Now the film has come back and the thing is:


1) Both the negatives and the scans look almost identical for all 4 shots. No difference at all in terms of exposure. Ok maybe a very very slight exposure difference between the shot 1 and the rest. But shots 2-4 look identical in terms of exposure. I can see more magenta in the overexposed shots but no difference in brightness.
2) They are all darker than I expected. I took matching test shots with my digital camera so I can compare. And they are dark in comparison to the digital. I'm guessing about 1 stop or 1.5 stops darker than what came out from the digital camera at 'normal' exposure.


Why is this? Development of film is a standard process so it can't be that. Is it the scanning the lab did? If I got my own scanner, would I be able to get it to look the way I expected by adjusting scanner exposure? i.e. did they just run it through an auto scanner that guessed the correct exposure and adjusted everyone of them so they are the same exposure?


I don't understand how a +2 EV can come out darker than 0 EV on digital.
And I'm also puzzled why a span of 4 stops had almost no difference in the final result. Is this the way negative film reacts?


Any help would be appreciated!


Thanks

Darren
 
Why is this? Development of film is a standard process so it can't be that. Is it the scanning the lab did? If I got my own scanner, would I be able to get it to look the way I expected by adjusting scanner exposure? i.e. did they just run it through an auto scanner that guessed the correct exposure and adjusted everyone of them so they are the same exposure?


I don't understand how a +2 EV can come out darker than 0 EV on digital.
And I'm also puzzled why a span of 4 stops had almost no difference in the final result. Is this the way negative film reacts?

That is most likely what happened - their auto scanning software made all the decisions.

How much under- or overexposure matters with negative film depends a lot on the brightness range of the scene - the greater the brightness range the less room there is for changes in exposure. Most colour neg film has plenty of room for 'overexposure' (or more exposure), and much less for underexposure - this is a consequence of the way film speed is determined according to the ISO Standard for colour negative film. The effects of underexposure usually start to show up with an increase in graininess in the shadows, then a loss of detail. Overexposure has much less effect, until it is extreme.

Best,
Helen
 
One stop under to two stops over is well within the latitude of most modern color neg films. Especially the faster films like Fuji 800.
You're not likely to see much difference in the negs in that range.

It would likely be more evident if you'd shot color reversal (slide) film. And, to a lesser degree, if you shot traditional B&W film. But,
even so, modern films of all types from the major manufacturer's generally have greater lattitude than older films did.

As for the scans, that's in the digital realm and has its own parameters. Automatic printers and scanning hardware usually compensate for
light levels in order to produce more or less uniform midtone values. But sometimes they are "fooled" by certain types of images and
produce odd results.
 
Thanks for the replies.

Yes, many of the shots were backlit so perhaps the lab's scanner got tricked.

I suppose it will pay off for me to get my own scanner since I'm the only one who knows what I wanted the photo to look like in the first place.
 

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