ARG! wrong ISO setting!

[AeisLugh]

I can't believe I did that! I had a photo shoot saturday night for a group project I'm part of (actually, I was the one who organized it ) The problem was that none of us had any lighting equipment, and the location we had access to as a "studio" was rather dark.

I'm used to shooting with 100 and 200 ISO film, so trying to get good shots of the models was a tough prospect, especially with 4 photographers stepping on each others toes. After trying to jury rig some extra lighting (and giving up) and firing off a roll of film (which I'm anticipating suffering from camera motion blur pretty bad) one of the other photographers tossed me a roll of 800 ISO film. I remembered to change the setting on my camera to 800 before shooting, and got some really good shots in (I think, I'll find out once I get the film developed) but then, when we switched to doing some still life shots, I switched back to 100ISO, and guess what I forgot to do?

I fired off a whole roll of film with the camera still set for 800ISO film!! I tell you, I was growling at myself at that point.

My question to everyone is, is there anyway to salvage those shots? Or are they a write off? I think there are some pretty good shots on that roll, and would like to salvage them if it's possible, but it's not like they couldn't be duplicated at a later date.

 

[Amund]

B&W or color film?

 

[AeisLugh]

B&W or color film?

Colour

 

[df cardwell]

You're probably going to be just fine.

You can either give normal development, or reduce the development.

Reducing the development will bring the highlights back to where you wanted them to be at the expense of shadow and midtone contrast.

Three important questions:

1. Which film did you shoot ? A general purpose film like Superia 800 gives normal contrast over a long scale, while a portrait film like Pro 800 has lower than normal contrast.

2. Was the most important information in the shadows or highlights ?

3. What was the tonal range of the image ?

 

[Dave Parker]

DF,

I read his message to say he shot a roll of ISO 100 at a setting of 800, which would be a three stop push on the film.

Dave

 

[Amund]

df, he has underexposed ISO 100 film three stops, I don`t think reducing development would help much

Find a good prolab that can push-process the film and pray for the best....

 

[AeisLugh]

Double ARG!

I just realized, I have no idea which of the 3 rolls of film that was now! I hadn't noticed the camera was on the wrong setting till after I changed to the next roll

I guess I'm just going to have to hope for the best.

I guess I learned a lesson out of this. ALWAYS check your film speed settings when changing rolls of film lol.

 

[Sanjay Sen]

DF,

I read his message to say he shot a roll of ISO 100 at a setting of 800, which would be a three stop push on the film.

Dave

Thanks Dave, DF had me confused for a moment. The film indeed needs a 3-stop push processing, as you mentioned.

 

[Sanjay Sen]

I just realized, I have no idea which of the 3 rolls of film that was now! I hadn't noticed the camera was on the wrong setting till after I changed to the next roll

I guess I'm just going to have to hope for the best.

I guess I learned a lesson out of this. ALWAYS check your film speed settings when changing rolls of film lol.

I learnt it the hard way too, fortunately I did not shoot anything too important.

Good luck with the processing!

 

[AeisLugh]

I learnt it the hard way too, fortunately I did not shoot anything too important.

Good luck with the processing!

Thanks. like you said, I didn't really shoot anything important either. They were all still lives, and can be duplicated if I really wanted to do so. Luckily, the other photographers likely got similar shots of the setup for the project, so it won't effect the project much. Mostly it's just me kicking myself because I wasted a roll of film (and I do hate to waste film on such a stupid mistake).

It could have been worse I guess, at least it was only one roll of film, with shots that were relatively replacable. It'd have been much worse if I'd fired off 2-3 rolls with the model I was supposed to work with yesterday (unfortunately she didn't show for some reason ) so I'll count myself lucky.

 

[df cardwell]

Quite right guys... I was in a rosy, optimistic, fine Sumatra induced morning mood.

lalalalala

AeisLugh.... unless you've got some fairie dust in your pocket, I think you're done.



d

 

[Cooki]

So, as an aside, if you forget to reset your camera when changing from Delta 400 to Kodachrome 64 you get slides thick enough to stop bullets. Although, I could actually make out the horizon on a few of them. Oops.
Cooki

 

[AeisLugh]

Quite right guys... I was in a rosy, optimistic, fine Sumatra induced morning mood.

lalalalala

AeisLugh.... unless you've got some fairie dust in your pocket, I think you're done.



d

Yeah, that's what I figure at the moment, though there might be some hope in rescuing the images via *gasp* paintshop. I've rescued a few underexposed shots that way, but nothing quite as bad as this. And it's so much nicer when you don't have to resort to such things.