Accidentally super lowered ISO of a slide film, very sad, can it be pushed ?

Kruger · Jul 30, 2013

Hello everyone,

I'm very depressed since this week end. We went with some friends on an awesome week end and I took pictures all day with a Kodak Ektachrome 100 ISO roll (slide film). All day I was building up the eagerness to see them later when I'll process them. But when I got back to the hotel, a sudden dread got me, I remembered I had played around with the ISO setting on the camera recently. I went to see it and noticed that, as I feared, it was on 1000 ISO and not 100 ISO. During the day it was exceptionnally sunny, very sunny, like eye burning sunny, so I though it was the sun that made my light meter always saying it was over exposed. So I took most of my pictures with 8, 11, 16 or 22 apertures and shutter speeds of 500, 1000, or 2000, but mostly 1000 and 2000.

It depressed me the whole way back and the whole day yesterday. I know I bought an analog camera that is fully manual to discover photography, I just thought the lesson wasn't going that unforgiving. I'll maybe never return to that town in my life.

Is there anyway that the roll could be pushed to hell to get the images or do you think the film simply didn't get any light ? I know that it would require very heavy pushing, i'm ok with that, it might turn up cool or very abstract, I just don't want to have nothing since I barely used my compact digital camera that day.

Thanks for your inputs guys !

darkosaric · Jul 30, 2013

Sorry to hear this. How many rolls do you have, and do you develop by yourself?

thegman · Jul 30, 2013

That would be slighty over a 3 stop push, quite a lot, but I understand films like Provia 400X can handle that, I'm not sure about Ektachrome.

If I were you, I'd try taking one of the rolls to a pro lab and explain the situation, they might be more salvageable than you think. On the web, it seems a 2 stop push might be viable, and then you're only one stop under, which is not as bad as you might think.

Talk to a lab, and try push processing one of them, you might just get away with it. Good luck.

Kruger · Jul 30, 2013

Hi,

Thanks for your replies, you brightened up my day lol ! So you think the film still could have stored some image information ?

The thing is I am in India and the only guy that can process slide films is in Ahmadabad and I'm in Bangalore, he's all to the north, and I'm in the south lol. He is pretty good I heard and a lot of pros send him stuff to process, including slides. He does it in his own house I heard.

So what should I do ? 3 stops or just 2 stops ? The thing is that if 2 stop is not enough I'm screwed and I'll really see nothing right ?

Also Thegman, you were basing your explanation on 400 iso film right ? Cause the one I used is only 100 iso.
Darkosaric, I have this problem with one roll and unfortunately I'm still learning photography so I don't know how to process myself (I looked into it of course but I didn't try it).

Also in this link where somebody has the same problem, someone in the posts below quotes a tech sheet from Fuji saying 4 stops. What do you guys think ?
http://photo.net/black-and-white-photo-film-processing-forum/00XpPi

Thanks for your time and help guys !

PS: Also I just got confused. Can we say I underexposed the film or is it the contrary ? since 1000 iso would mean more reactive film, but I'm thinking the iso knob is just to let the light meter know that I have a 100 iso film or something else in there, and therefore base its calculations on that, so by "believing" the light meter and always choosing fast shutter speeds and small apertures I was effectively under exposing my film and therefore need to push it not pull it right ?
Thanks !

thegman · Jul 30, 2013

Hi Kruger, I based my explanation on your ISO 100 film, if you exposed it at 1000 ISO, then that is underexposed, you work out the number of stops by doubling the ISO number, i.e.:

100 > 200 > 400 > 800

1000 is close enough to 800, so that means it's 3 stops underexposed. I would probably go for a 3 stop push, but you may want to talk to your lab guy.

A two stop push would leave your shots underexposed by 1 stop, which some people do on purpose to get more saturation on slide film.

Talk to the lab, see what they think.

jp498 · Jul 30, 2013

If you need something forgiving, don't be using slide film.

Kruger · Jul 30, 2013

@ thegman, thanks for the explanation. But then why do they recommend 4 stops to this other guy which had the same problem (100iso exposed at 1000 iso). What do you think ?

@ jp498, I wanted to explore what slide film could give, and it's cheap here. so why not. The error I made had nothing to do with using slide film or negative film.

Vonder · Jul 30, 2013

Ignorance

jp498 said:
If you need something forgiving, don't be using slide film.

That's just about the most rude, clueless comment I've read here in ages. Jesus. He made a mistake, he wasn't expecting forgiveness in his film.

I don't know what the E-6 situation is in India but you could get an E-6 kit (they cost $20 in the US) and develop yourself. The Tetenal kit comes with instructions on pushing (1 or 2 stops, I believe) so you could extrapolate a bit for 3 stops. That's about the only guaranteed way to do this. Trusting it to a lab is fine, if you have a good reliable lab. If not, it could get processed "regular" by mistake and you'd have very dark images.

Good luck!

vpwphoto · Jul 30, 2013

3 stops is A LOT. How much are you a bracketer? If you go making similar photos at 2 and 3 stop increments, I might go for a 1 stop push and cross fingers.
Either way you are in for some "happy accidents" but mostly inferior results. Sorry to be harsh, but 3 stops in error is a lot. I for instance know the 1000th of a second at f4 is a common daylight or late day calculation I use with 100 speed chrome.... so my experience would have made me realize a meter reading of say 1/1000 at f8 to be suspect!!!

TheFlyingCamera · Jul 30, 2013

Because of the way slides work, I think no matter what you'll have very dark images. ISO 1000 is roughly 3 1/4 stops push from 100. Rounding off the 1/4 is fine - in this case it won't make a difference. I think one reason why there's not much information about pushing slide film three or more stops is that it is generally unadvisable. One reason why it is considered unadvisable is that with that big of a push, you will almost certainly get color shifts, and you'll also have detail-less shadow areas (and a lot more of them) no matter what you do at that point, because of the way transparency films work. Transparency films work by dye destruction - they get thinner and brighter the more you expose them. If you over-expose a slide, there is no possible way to salvage it because the information is just gone. Conversely, if you under-expose a little, you increase the saturation of colors and deepen your shadows. If you grossly underexpose, you have solid blacks that have no detail. I wish you the best of luck with it, and I hope you can salvage some images.

jp498 · Jul 30, 2013

Wolfeye said:
That's just about the most rude, clueless comment I've read here in ages. Jesus. He made a mistake, he wasn't expecting forgiveness in his film.

I don't know what the E-6 situation is in India but you could get an E-6 kit (they cost $20 in the US) and develop yourself. The Tetenal kit comes with instructions on pushing (1 or 2 stops, I believe) so you could extrapolate a bit for 3 stops. That's about the only guaranteed way to do this. Trusting it to a lab is fine, if you have a good reliable lab. If not, it could get processed "regular" by mistake and you'd have very dark images.

Good luck!

It's a little rude/gruff because it's lacking sympathy is general advice rather than technical support, but certainly not "the most rude", and certainly not clueless; I used to shoot a lot of slide film in the 1990's, used Nikon matrix metering for it, with velvia and fujichome100 and kodachrome. It requires care in exposure as it's the least forgiving of film types. Tri-x or color negative can handle over/under exposure very well. All the disposable and cheap cameras use negative film for this reason. Slide film not tolerating of exposure error is sort of like tmax film not tolerating processing error. It's awesome when it's done well. If you are inconsistent, it's not going to be a pleasant choice.

I'd also suggest as Wolfeye has doing it yourself. You will get color shifts by not processing it by directions at the very least, and it'll be unknown what you get for an image. I've developed plenty of E6 and it's not hard.

zsas · Jul 30, 2013

^why didn't you say it like that in the first place? Wolfeye was hardly out of line finding offense with your first post. You've obviously explained why you commented as such, but remember we've a newby in our midst and he/she is looking for pragmatic help to a situation, not directives on how to prevent a future occurrence of said situation....

thegman · Jul 30, 2013

Kruger said:
@ thegman, thanks for the explanation. But then why do they recommend 4 stops to this other guy which had the same problem (100iso exposed at 1000 iso). What do you think ?

100 to 1000 is "3 and bit stops", exactly three stops is ISO 800, and exactly 4 stops is ISO 1600. Whether you do a 3 stop push or a 4 stop push depends on whether you'd rather a little under exposed, or a little over exposed. It's really just a matter of preference. Personally I'd go 3 simply because it's less of a push, and also slide film is often more comfortable with under exposure rather than over.

But it really is just a personal choice.

wildbill · Jul 30, 2013

"more comfortable with under exposure"?
yeah, 3+ stops is plenty underexposed (I wouldn't be worried about highlights) and a 3 stop push isn't gonna help this roll.Let's be realistic.

thegman · Jul 30, 2013

wildbill said:
"more comfortable with under exposure"?
yeah, 3+ stops is plenty underexposed (I wouldn't be worried about highlights) and a 3 stop push isn't gonna help this roll.Let's be realistic.

Well, I would not expect wonders, but it's either process it, or don't process it. I think for the cost of developing a roll, it's worth the experiment.

vpwphoto · Jul 30, 2013

thegman said:
Well, I would not expect wonders, but it's either process it, or don't process it. I think for the cost of developing a roll, it's worth the experiment.

And as I mentioned earlier... this person may have "bracketed" more than they think.

In my professional slide days this would fall into three categories--

--oh well you loose some.
--can it be "re-shot"
-- push and pray if it's Newsworthy.

I not only did commercial work for years on transparency film, I worked for a year photographing breaking news on E-6 film of all sorts from 100 speed to 400 and 1600 pushable film that was nasty ugly stuff for high school sports.

Kruger · Jul 31, 2013

Hello everyone,

Thank you so much to all of you for your feedback and help. I'll reply to everyone individually but of course anybody can take part ! Thanks again everyone for your time !

@Wolfeye: thanks for your support and input. However I am in India for only 1 more month and hopefully I'll get free time to travel one week so in the end only 3 weeks starting tomorrow, so I can't find the kit here and do it here, it will end up being too complicated and I won't have the time to look into it unfortunately. But it's a good thing you advised me to do that since I didn't know you can do it yourself ! Is it as simple as developing black and white ? If you can do it with a 20 dollars kit why is it so hard to find labs that do it (at least here it is) ?
The guy seems to be recommended by many, i saw his name on forums in the region, on the lomography site and a guy in a store recommended him too. It seems like a passionate that makes a living out of it or at least some extra money. I think he will still do a better job than me.

This is what he replied to me after my enquiry ("rs" are rupees):
"100 iso film shoot to 1000 iso it will cost rs 250 + 200 push = 450 rs will be processing charges for this film

aperture and shutter speed is not a matter

push processing is connected with only with the iso of film and which iso it is shoot"

Does he sound like he knows what he is doing ? It's the best I've got here. I'm surprised he said the shutter speed and aperture don't influence the result. Correct me if I'm wrong but they control the amount of light info that comes on the film and therefore the result, if there is not enough info there is no photo right ?

@vpwphoto: Yeah I know it's a big mistake. I got used to the comfort of digital where you see instantly the result and only then if you see something suspect you change settings. But with the analog camera I thought I was all set, I forgot I had played with the knob. The trauma from this experience will surely impregnate my mind with that check from now on I'm sure, I just would've preferred it to happen on some random test pictures of the garden, not pictures of Pondicherry lol ! Wouldn't 1 stop not show anything at all or barely anything ?

@TheFlyingCamera: That's what I am afraid of unfortunately. But as you can see above, the processing won't be very expensive and therefore it's worth a shot I think, you never know, maybe I'll be lucky and will have either dark images or funky photos we'll see. I'll be very forgiving on the results just as long as I get something. After all I see it like cooking, sometimes you mess up the recipe and end up enhancing it or even inventing a new one !

@jp498: Thanks, I would like to do it myself but at this point in time I won't have the time, I barely have time to go out and shoot. But processing B&W and now slide films is definitely something I would love to get into, especially slide film since you can then just easily scan the roll and you're done, with negative film I'm not sure how to scan it cause if you scan it you will only have the negative in the JPEG or TIFF file, how do you then transform that into colours I have to figure out. Also are B&W films negatives or slide like films where you can see the picture in a small version ? Finally, do you know a good source of information and walkthrough for slide processing ? Thanks.

@zsas: thanks for your support

@thegman: I understand now, thanks ! Indeed I think 3 stops would be better than 4. How about 2 stops ? It would reduce the damage of the pushing but wouldn't it provide only black images ?

@wildbill & thegman : exactly, as the price quoted above indicates, it's not expensive and I'm willing to waste that little sum if I can take a chance and at least save something.

@vpwphoto: I could technically go there again but I don't know if I'll have the time and it's a whole week end with 7hours of bus on Indian roads lol. Also If I have a week end with no plans it would be better to try to find another areas to visit. But we'll see, maybe nothing interesting will be in range and I won't feel like partying and I'll go again, by that time I'll maybe have the roll already processed. What do you mean by the fact that I "may have "bracketed" more than think" ? what is bracketeering ?

Thanks again for all the inputs everyone, very interesting conversation, let's hope I'll have some pictures to show you !

Mark Feldstein · Aug 7, 2013

Sorry if I'm a bit too late to add some advice here but I'll offer you this:

A 3 even a four stop push isn't horrible, in fact it's doable. Ektachrome isn't completely unforgiving. I'd start by placing the film in a plastic bag in your refrigerator until you can get your own E-6 kit from an outfit in the U.S. like B&Hphotovideo.com in New York. Or send it to a Kodak Q lab for processing. With a large note that asks them to SNIP test the first several frames with a 3 stop push and ask them to determine how to process the remainder of the roll based on the snip test and that you shot it at ISO 1000 not 100. That should help out a lot.

Worse comes to worse, you'll probably notice some muddy exposures, a significant amount of grain from the lengthing of the processing, but you might actually find some interesting results.

Also, once your film is processed into the ballpark that the snip tests determine would be about right, leave the film unmounted and then if you have some nice shots that need fixing, have the same lab use some kodak duplicating transparency film to make some additional exposures to improve on the exposures they already have on the originals and boost up some of the detail, help the contrast and maybe give your shadows less muddy appearance.

Take care and good luck. Don't be too hard on yourself. It happens to the best of us you know.
Mark

Chan Tran · Aug 8, 2013

jp498 said:
If you need something forgiving, don't be using slide film.

But if it was say Ektar 100 or a 100 ISO color negative film then it's actually worst because color negative film has no tolerance for underexposure.

Stephen Frizza · Aug 8, 2013

Has the film been processed yet? If not I'm happy to suggest something that will possibly give you an extremely good result by modifying the E-6 process chemically, feel free to private message me.

-Steve @ The Lighthouse Lab.

Mark Feldstein · Aug 8, 2013

Quote Originally Posted by jp498 View Post
If you need something forgiving, don't be using slide film.

And Chan Tran added" "But if it was say Ektar 100 or a 100 ISO color negative film then it's actually worst because color negative film has no tolerance for underexposure."

Actually, I beg to differ with both statements.
Forgiving or not, e-6 films have a fairly wide exposure latitude that can be realized through correct processing, i.e., pushing and pulling the film. When exposures errors are made that can't be corrected completely in the procesing, in urgent situations, dupes can be made on Ektachrome Duplication film to increase and decrease contrast, boost some (though not much) detail in shadows while holding the highlights areas during processing of that film, and a couple of other helpful tricks.

This usually isn't such a big deal if the entire roll suffered the same maladies. The problem is compounded when you have a whole roll of various subjects that's been misexposed. Then once you find your set up for correcting one frame, you have to find it with just about all of them and that's a real time-consuming process altough doable.

As to Color stock, it's very versatile stuff. As I said earlier, a good printer should be able to get excellent print quality from a negative that's under or over exposed four stops either way. Ask someone in a professional grade color processing lab. In fact, most pros shoot C-41 film at least one full stop over to get better color saturation, and I sometimes go 1 1/2 stops over shooting agriculture products. That's used to be particularly true of Vericolor S (exposed at 80-100 instead of 160ISO) and others. But you should experiment and match your processing (or lab) to the film and use their recommendations as well.
Mark

Mark Feldstein · Aug 8, 2013

Quote Originally Posted by jp498 View Post
If you need something forgiving, don't be using slide film.

And Chan Tran added" "But if it was say Ektar 100 or a 100 ISO color negative film then it's actually worst because color negative film has no tolerance for underexposure."

Actually, I beg to differ with both statements.
Forgiving or not, e-6 films have a fairly wide exposure latitude that can be realized through correct processing, i.e., pushing and pulling the film. When exposures errors are made that can't be corrected completely in the procesing, in urgent situations, dupes can be made on Ektachrome Duplication film to increase and decrease contrast, boost some (though not much) detail in shadows while holding the highlights areas during processing of that film, and a couple of other helpful tricks.

This usually isn't such a big deal if the entire roll suffered the same maladies. The problem is compounded when you have a whole roll of various subjects that's been misexposed. Then once you find your set up for correcting one frame, you have to find it with just about all of them and that's a real time-consuming process altough doable.

As to Color stock, it's very versatile stuff. As I said earlier, a good printer should be able to get excellent print quality from a negative that's under or over exposed four stops either way. Ask someone in a professional grade color processing lab. In fact, most pros shoot C-41 film at least one full stop over to get better color saturation, and I sometimes go 1 1/2 stops over shooting agriculture products. That's used to be particularly true of Vericolor S (exposed at 80-100 instead of 160ISO) and others. But you should experiment and match your processing (or lab) to the film and use their recommendations as well.
Mark

Chan Tran · Aug 8, 2013

Mark Feldstein said:
Quote Originally Posted by jp498 View Post
If you need something forgiving, don't be using slide film.

And Chan Tran added" "But if it was say Ektar 100 or a 100 ISO color negative film then it's actually worst because color negative film has no tolerance for underexposure."

Actually, I beg to differ with both statements.
Forgiving or not, e-6 films have a fairly wide exposure latitude that can be realized through correct processing, i.e., pushing and pulling the film. When exposures errors are made that can't be corrected completely in the procesing, in urgent situations, dupes can be made on Ektachrome Duplication film to increase and decrease contrast, boost some (though not much) detail in shadows while holding the highlights areas during processing of that film, and a couple of other helpful tricks.

This usually isn't such a big deal if the entire roll suffered the same maladies. The problem is compounded when you have a whole roll of various subjects that's been misexposed. Then once you find your set up for correcting one frame, you have to find it with just about all of them and that's a real time-consuming process altough doable.

As to Color stock, it's very versatile stuff. As I said earlier, a good printer should be able to get excellent print quality from a negative that's under or over exposed four stops either way. Ask someone in a professional grade color processing lab. In fact, most pros shoot C-41 film at least one full stop over to get better color saturation, and I sometimes go 1 1/2 stops over shooting agriculture products. That's used to be particularly true of Vericolor S (exposed at 80-100 instead of 160ISO) and others. But you should experiment and match your processing (or lab) to the film and use their recommendations as well.
Mark

Color negative film when underexposed by 3 stops would look almost clear.

brucemuir · Aug 8, 2013

what happened???

Ask for a clip test and start with 3 stop push.
A clip test is where the lab tech will clip a few frames without exposing the rest of the roll to ambient light and processing those few frames for inspection and to determine how to proceed with the bulk of the film.

Mark Feldstein · Aug 8, 2013

Chan Tran said:
Color negative film when underexposed by 3 stops would look almost clear.

And you're speaking from how much experience with professionally printing underexposed C-41 negatives and on what kind of equipment ?
M.

Accidentally super lowered ISO of a slide film, very sad, can it be pushed ?

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