Help please! :)

[Bayan]

Hello,

I’m completely new at photography and decided to get a canon Ae-1 - has fun shooting with it and I wasn’t expecting the pictures to turn out great but 2 pictures are unbelievably blurry and the rest are dark or just some weird egg-shell white with zero outlines of anything or anyone (even though everything was shot in daylight!)

I’ve attached some pictures to show exactly what I mean. Can anyone tell me what I’m doing so wrong? I spent quite a bit of money to develop a film that has zero good pictures and I know practice makes perfect but I don’t want to waste another reel when I’m clearly doing something very wrong.

thank you!

 

[Space Face]

Setting and such details might help.

 

[Ysarex]

The photo of the women at the window is severely underexposed. Not enough light reached the film. The flat grey image no clue what's going on.

Why the first photo did not get adequately exposed -- there's a lot of possibilities. Assume you got a good battery for the camera. You may have had the camera set incorrectly. The camera my not be working properly.

http://www.canonfd.org/manuals/ae-1.pdf

Joe

 

[Bayan]

The photo of the women at the window is severely underexposed. Not enough light reached the film. The flat grey image no clue what's going on.

Why the first photo did not get adequately exposed -- there's a lot of possibilities. Assume you got a good battery for the camera. You may have had the camera set incorrectly. The camera my not be working properly.

http://www.canonfd.org/manuals/ae-1.pdf

Joe

Most of the images came out like the flat grey one or like the picture of the woman at the window so I definitely will check it out and try not to underexpose. Thank you for your help and the link to the manual!

 

[charlie76]

Posting that grey photo is pretty funny stuff....not that I am having a laugh at your expense or anything, I just think it's funny....

Anyway, it seems like you are needing to look at the fundamentals of exposure, film speed, etc. I recommend getting a cheap digital camera so you can play with it to really figure out aperture, shutter speed, film speed, and the relationship between all 3... Also this info is available for free on about 1,000,000 sites on the web.

Cudos to you for diving into film in the age of digital photography. I have great respect for film quality and tones, but I'd suggest pickup up a cheap digital to learn. Will save you tons of $$

 

[webestang64]

Like Joe said, underexposed with the gray image being vastly under.

 

[Soocom1]

The AE-1 has an auto setting.
The first thing i would do is run a roll in full auto and develop it to see if there is any light leaks.

Get FRESH film!!!!

Do a quick and fast as a test first, then play with the rest of the setting after we establish a base line.

otherwise your playing whack a mole.

 

[wfooshee]

I grew up with an AE-1 which I got brand new back in the day. The AE-1 does not have a full auto setting, it's only shutter-priority or full manual. (AE-1 Program does have full-auto capability, but you still have to set the ASA correctly.)

The camera does not read the film's speed automatically, so unless you've set the camera's ASA dial to match the loaded film's ASA rating (basically what we now call ISO,) you have no chance at proper exposure. The film speed is set by lifting the shutter-speed dial and rotating to get the film speed into the window. For auto-exposure, make sure the aperture ring of the lens is on the 'A' mark. You can set an aperture manually if desired. Set the shutter speed. The meter in the viewfinder should be somewhere in the available range and not at one extreme end or the other; if the meter stays at the bottom, you picture will be underexposed, and if the meter is all the way at the top it will be overexposed. You adjust the shutter speed until the meter is in the usable range. If you don't have the lens on 'A' it should be manually set to the aperture indicated by the meter in the viewfinder.

So while the camera does have an auto-exposure mode, there are still settings that have to be done correctly. There's no fully-automatic-no-matter-what-happens mode. Set the ASA, an absolute must. Set the shutter speed reasonably, with higher numbers (faster shutter) for brighter light, generally speaking. Leave the lens on 'A' and the camera will set aperture according to its meter reading, assuming you've set the ASA correctly.