The problem is underexposure, so you need to give more exposure, so you could do that by setting a lower ISO speed. So using 400 film, go down to 200 or even 100.
If something is too dark you want to increase exposure so you would set your ISO to 200. 200 is a full stop more exposure and cameras generally allow either quarter stop or one-third stop increments on the ISO dial, so with experience you'll get to know just how much is correct, it may be half a stop and not a whole stop for example but one stop more exposure is a good starting point.
Not sure which 400 film you're talking about but if it the Portra 400 then it can handle quite a bit of overexposure . . .
Kodak Portra 400 exposure range by Les DMess, on Flickr
Also, which camera? Typically they have available a +2 to -2 compensation range instead of manually changing the ISO. Effectively same results though.
Les' point about color negative exposure latitude is unfortunately not best depicted by the above series of shots, which depicts different levels of brightness (as if shooting color transparency, not color neg). While this has been ideally illustrated by photo magazine articles decades ago, recent illustrations on the web are all similar to Les' So let me explain further...
If you expose color neg within the range of -3EV to +4EV, and then get a machine print of all 8 shots, you will find that there is not a lot of visible difference in the brightness/density and detail and color seen in 6 of the 8 shots. The print from the shot at -2EV might have a slight bit of 'muddiness' of colors in the shadow areas of the shot, and the print from the shot at +3EV might exhibit a bit of loss of details seen within the highlight areas, but they will all be quite acceptable in quality and similar in final brightness seen in all 6 prints....wide exposure latitude in the film.
Only the shots at -3EV and at +4EV will be noticeably compromised in the final prints, in their lack of color saturation and/or color shifts, or loss of detail in the highlight.
A better test of attitude
A better test of attitude was done by Jones and Nelson. They printed the negatives painstakingly to get the best image from each, then had a panel of observers rank the prints.
Those crayon box prints look like someone made them with their eyes closed.
Les' point about color negative exposure latitude is unfortunately not best depicted by the above series of shots, which depicts different levels of brightness (as if shooting color transparency, not color neg). While this has been ideally illustrated by photo magazine articles decades ago, recent illustrations on the web are all similar to Les' So let me explain further...
If you expose color neg within the range of -3EV to +4EV, and then get a machine print of all 8 shots, you will find that there is not a lot of visible difference in the brightness/density and detail and color seen in 6 of the 8 shots. The print from the shot at -2EV might have a slight bit of 'muddiness' of colors in the shadow areas of the shot, and the print from the shot at +3EV might exhibit a bit of loss of details seen within the highlight areas, but they will all be quite acceptable in quality and similar in final brightness seen in all 6 prints....wide exposure latitude in the film.
Only the shots at -3EV and at +4EV will be noticeably compromised in the final prints, in their lack of color saturation and/or color shifts, or loss of detail in the highlight.
This will give you a better comparison, somewhat like the tests printed in prior decades by photo magazines, with a somewhat constant level of brightness...
...this image borrowed from this thread https://www.photo.net/forums/topic/517490-difference-in-exposure-latitude-kodak-portra-400-and-160/
I expect you mean "A better test of "latitude".
Testing "attitude" is something for the Photrio moderation team to concern itself with .....
You believe the snippet you posted from photonet is better then the whole frame of each exposure, (+10 over and -4 under) and the full color spectrum crayola box (that everyone has access to see to verify colors themselves cheaply) backed with a gray card?
the full color spectrum crayola box (that everyone has access to see to verify colors themselves cheaply) backed with a gray card?
I expect you mean "A better test of "latitude".
Testing "attitude" is something for the Photrio moderation team to concern itself with .....
A better test of attitude was done by Jones and Nelson.
There are several problems with that test; they've been pointed out before in other threads. They don't remove all of the usefulness of the test; I think your example shows that you can get a presentable image with significant overexposure, at least under certain conditions and within certain quality criteria. I'd not dare go much further than this somewhat vague qualification, because indeed, there really are things that I feel stand in the way of further interpretation:
* The subject brightness range of the setup is very low. Hence, the test isn't very representative of most real-world photography.
* Both color and contrast meander in the test; basically, the colors 'wander about' a little around average center values. This points to an influence of the digital post processing that twists the results; we're not just looking at negatives, we're looking at scans from negatives. Of course, we're virtually always looking at either scans or prints from negatives, but this does draw into question how much we can say about the negatives to begin with.
* The subject matter used relies on pigments in the crayons and printing ink on the carton for the hues. These are all relatively low-chroma hues compared to real-world, natural scenes, and therefore this example won't really show what happens with significant over/underexposure of a real-world scene.
* The subject matter involves inanimate objects. This may sound kind of silly, until you realize we pick up hue variations a lot more if we're looking at e.g. human skin tones. If you translate the present example to something like that (human skin), you'll see that what presently feel like small variations (partly as a result of a low-contrast, low-chroma setup to begin with!) end up very significant. They'll make a perfectly normal face go from deep red with underexposure to sickly cyan with even modest overexposure. Mind you, in your particular example, with your choices of post-processing/scanning. I'm actually a lot more optimizing on how skin colors can hold up with proper filtering in overexposed negatives, but this will come at the cost of some other hues in a real-world scene shifting about significantly.
Again, despite all this, moderate overexposure can still yield acceptable results; it's just that this particular example doesn't really demonstrate it. It seems to support the conclusion, but this argumentation breaks down if you dissect the methodology. Which is something I kind of feel lame at doing, because I understand the time and effort you took in preparing it and it's one of the very few examples along these lines we ever get to see in the first place - but because it keeps popping up for years on end, I feel we should also collectively understand its limitations as well as its merits.
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