Are these under developed and why

Shooting Neopan 100, using an RB67. Developing in R09 for 6 minutes. I believe the images are correctly exposed, as there is no loss in detail in blacks or highlights. So why are they so flat ?

Have tried printing and scanning and everything comes out like the pictures attached.

1. Please show us a picture (smartphone...) of your negative held against a uniform background, e.g. overcast sky, white ceiling... (but not lying on white paper: this effectively doubles the density).
2. Your scans: can't say much without specific details, and we are not allowed to discuss them on this forum
3. Your prints. What paper grade did you use?
4. The pics you show in your OP: scans of film or scans of prints?

First you must be certain that the negatives were correctly exposed. Then use an old photographer's trick for determining whether a negative is over/under developed. You should be barely able to read a newspaper on which the negative is placed. If the newsprint is easy to read then the negative is under-developed.

I was particularly vague with my description. I would be very surprised if they are under exposed, as Polaroids are correct, and the colour neg, I have to send away to be developed are fine. the picure above it a phone shot of the neg, on a sml light-box, haven't got a print example to hand of this image. And I have also included the polaroid of the test shot from the same event. Fuji 100

Flat lighting and lens flare?

And possibly printed too light.

If you printed down the photo of the guy, in order to render the hand more normal, I expect the face and the rest would appear with more rounding and depth (although maybe darker than you wish).

The picture of the woman looks like increase of base fog. Could this film have been very out of date, or left on the dashboard of a car in death valley for a couple of months?

The colour shot is a different picture.

I'm not the best at lighting but they are not that bad thanks and the film is all new bought from a reputable supplier.

Rupie said:

I'm not the best at lighting but they are not that bad thanks and the film is all new bought from a reputable supplier.

Click to expand...

Never mind that, the colour shot is a different picture than your OP. Please explain.

What you posted in the OP, are those scans of darkroom prints? Or of the negatives? If those are scans of darkroom prints, then the guy in the dark shirt could use a higher number filter and a little more exposure in the print. The person in the white shirt looks like the paper is fogged or something. The tonal response is very odd.
While the color negative can sorta be compared, the exposure and tonal response of instant film is not exactly the same as that of Acros. Each recording medium really should be judged on its own. I get good exposures at box speed with Fuji 100C, but I meter Acros at ISO 80 instead of 100. YMMV because you're using a different developer than I am.

Is your print developer fresh ? Overworked or stale dev can cause this.

I haven't approached the evidence in this thread very well, I might delete and start again. The bottle of Deb is kept sealed and is only 3 months own, and still 4/5 full.

you need to agitate your prints in the developer continuously or they might look like this .
----
is the developer stock or dilute in the bottle?

If printing on grade 3 try grade 4. If still too flat, increase negative development of your next roll by 20%.

Thanks everyone, I think the fault is with the neg. The film is within date, bought from Imaging warehouse.
I used to develop and print my own years ago, but have come back to in in the last few years. I think the next step would be to take two identical rolls and one developed by someone else, and compare results. Or even do a number of clip tests, with different times and dilutions.

Once the neg is good, I will move onto the print stage.

I will report back, one day.

Rupert

Dear Rupert,

The negative of the fellow with the watch looks very printable to me.

Good luck,

Neal Wydra

The bottle development at 100ASA says 6 minutes at 1:25 20ml in 500ml tank normal agitation. Many posts here on this site suggest 10 or 12 minutes, how can these be so different to what the bottle says ?

the bottle's instructions just like iso are starting points / recommendations
often times one has to bracket exposures and do a development run to see
if everyting is business as usual.

jnanian said:

the bottle's instructions just like iso are starting points / recommendations
often times one has to bracket exposures and do a development run to see
if everyting is business as usual.

Click to expand...

You are correct but double the bottles times are a massive difference !

Rupie said:

You are correct but double the bottles times are a massive difference !

Click to expand...

depends on the developer
i have processed 1/2 box speed exposed film in xtol for 2x the listed times on the olde kodak chart
and the film was thin and flat.

i know nothing about RO9 or rodinal
if it was sprint, dektol, ansco130, caffenol,
dk50. gaf universal, xtol, i might have been able to add something useful
but i'm on empty when it comes to rodinal ...

if you have time and effort and film to spare, i'd
do a development test,
photograph something full tone, outside, whatever
bracket your exposures by 1 stop ( so do 1 stop as your meter reads ( f5.6 for example )
then1 over and 1 under ( so f8 and f 4 )
and develop as it says on the bottle.
then do the same test and increase your development by 30 or 50% and see what happens
and what you like. people do all sorts of dilutions with rodinal from what i understand,
maybe your dilution was off, and your development time didn't reflect its concentration/

The example photos in post #4 make clear that these are B&W copy photos of small color prints. I refer to the apparent curvature of the image of the bottom edge of the small print as can be seen in the right edge on the negative.

This introduces problems associated with copy work. The magnification is likely somewhere near 1:1. This indicates a proper exposure of about 2 stops greater than given by an external meter. The exact amount of exposure compensation can be calculated from the bellows extension and focal length of the lens. Mamiya RB67 cameras make the bellows extension measurement easy with the millimeter scale mounted on the right side of the camera.

A second problem is that a print is a subject of above-average reflectance. An incident-light meter reading is better choice in this case. A reflected-light reading is likely to be inflated due to the above-average reflectance of the print. If you must use a reflected-light meter, a gray card should be substituted for the meter reading.

Possibly you’ve taken these into account. The image of the negative looks of reasonable density. Many copyists prefer to give copy negatives somewhat extra exposure compared to photographing general scenes in order to secure good printing density.

Another problem in copy photography is that an increase in contrast in the negative relative to that of the original print can be expected. This can cause problems and make it difficult to obtain a proper copy print. This can be dealt with by altering the exposure and development to yield negatives with a range of values that better fits the enlarging paper (or whatever system you use to obtain a final image).

As a possible example, review photo 1 in post #1. Note how the hand near the wristwatch and the arm and elbow of the other arm are nearly white and without detail. If these have considerably more contrast relative to the face in the original color print, then there must have been a considerable contrast increase from the original to the copy negative. If not, then the contrast increase must have occurred in the steps following the making of the negative.

Quick update.

Due to work I had to leave the project alone, til after christmas. I took a dozen rolls of HP5 developed in R09 and it was rubbish, flat, lifeless. I then had a few days off this week and spent most of it getting lighting perfect, shooting things on different formats, digital, film and polaroid. I checked and tested everything against film that had been developed for me, and if it hd been scanned, what the settings were. In the end I developed a roll in Ilford Ilfosol 3 and it was perfect, I cant believe what a difference it made.

I was convinced, because I had read so many reviews that there should be nothing wrong with the R09 but it was the developer all the time. I shall take another couple of rolls in due course just to check, but there we go.

Rupie said:

I was convinced, because I had read so many reviews that there should be nothing wrong with the R09 but it was the developer all the time. .

Click to expand...

Just a possibility also that (1) there was a problem with the particular R09 you had or (2) there was a processing problem. This is not to deny that some films may look better in certain developers, depending on what you are looking for but I'd be wary of concluding that it is a case of developer X bad and developer Y good.

pentaxuser

Ian C said:

The example photos in post #4 make clear that these are B&W copy photos of small color prints. I refer to the apparent curvature of the image of the bottom edge of the small print as can be seen in the right edge on the negative.

Click to expand...

I thought he explained that the Polaroid was the test shot from the same session before he switched to rollfilm

I have scanned, not printed these images, just to show my results, except the colour photo of the polaroid. All with no adjustment at all.

Test image is FP4 processed in R09 for 9 min @ 20c 25 +1. I have many rolls that look the same as this, all flat and lifeless. The colour was the polaroid, taken just before this, showing lighting. The other image Ilfotolf8 was taken later in the day FP4 in 4min 30 sec 1+9 20c. The lighting should have been identical but someone moved the lighting stand slightly, and also my wife, went away, changed and got bored, in the hour or two it took me to go and buy a new bottle of dev. But nothing was deriged, or moved. It clearly shows the massive difference between the two developers.