Color negative poor quality

MattKing · Jun 24, 2020

Thanks - that helps.
The woman in negative #22 is definitely under-exposed. I think your camera/meter was fooled by the brightly lit background, and set the camera to more properly expose that background. Then when you went to make a positive image out of it the women in the foreground was lightened too much.
If you make the whole thing darker the colours and contrast will probably improve, but you will still be left with a too dark person.
There are a few techniques that could be used at the darkroom printing stage or digital post-processing stage that could improve the results a bit, but as you are dealing with this digitally, any such discussion belongs in the digital part of the site.
FWIW, the negatives look good, and if you were looking for pictures of the background, I expect you would have been very happy with the results.

jtk · Jun 24, 2020

pentaxuser said:
Really? I feel we have been clearly drifting into hybrid for a while now. A lot of users are hybrid only with no intention of ever doing darkroom printing for a whole variety of reasons and this creates problems when it comes to working out what an apparently negative problem really consists of.

pentaxuser

Actually, you have missed the new Presbyterian-Only rules.

ferditulum · Jun 24, 2020

MattKing said:
Thanks - that helps.
The woman in negative #22 is definitely under-exposed. I think your camera/meter was fooled by the brightly lit background, and set the camera to more properly expose that background. Then when you went to make a positive image out of it the women in the foreground was lightened too much.
If you make the whole thing darker the colours and contrast will probably improve, but you will still be left with a too dark person.
There are a few techniques that could be used at the darkroom printing stage or digital post-processing stage that could improve the results a bit, but as you are dealing with this digitally, any such discussion belongs in the digital part of the site.
FWIW, the negatives look good, and if you were looking for pictures of the background, I expect you would have been very happy with the results.

Thank you! You are great! It will help me so much. I will try with more color negatives with more manual mode. I was using the AE mode of the Fujica.

Auer · Jun 24, 2020

ferditulum said:
Thank you! You are great! It will help me so much. I will try with more color negatives with more manual mode. I was using the AE mode of the Fujica.

Also experiment with the AE-lock, if your Fujica has one.

MattKing · Jun 24, 2020

ferditulum said:
Thank you! You are great! It will help me so much. I will try with more color negatives with more manual mode. I was using the AE mode of the Fujica.

The AE mode may very well work for you - if you combine it with using the AE lock, and take your meter readings from closer in.

Agulliver · Jun 25, 2020

I would agree that the woman in the photo could be under-exposed. So AE-lock when pointed at the intended subject or some other method of exposing by 1/2 to 1 stop more would certainly have helped. While overall the photo does generally show the properties of Fuji C200. Keep experimenting. Bear in mind that how and who prints (or scans) your negatives will also have an effect on the final result. Think about the background, and where the sun or other light is coming from. In other circumstances the sun might be shining directly on your subject, for example.

foc · Jun 25, 2020

ferditulum said:
Yes here it is ready the scanned negative film.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1t0nfi7mrNMVI8rpyyszV8Gp7BD9ch4jL/view?usp=drivesdk

I upload here also the negative strip for the member "foc". Shooted with my phones and there are pixels noticeable,but the strip is clearView attachment 249079

Thanks for posting the neg strip photo.

As MattKing posted, there is your answer.

MattKing said:
Thanks - that helps.
The woman in negative #22 is definitely under-exposed. I think your camera/meter was fooled by the brightly lit background, and set the camera to more properly expose that background. Then when you went to make a positive image out of it the women in the foreground was lightened too much.
If you make the whole thing darker the colours and contrast will probably improve, but you will still be left with a too dark person.
There are a few techniques that could be used at the darkroom printing stage or digital post-processing stage that could improve the results a bit, but as you are dealing with this digitally, any such discussion belongs in the digital part of the site.
FWIW, the negatives look good, and if you were looking for pictures of the background, I expect you would have been very happy with the results.

ferditulum · Jun 25, 2020

Thanks for the AE-Lock too. I make more experiments. What you think about these? Developed at the same place.It is Kodak ColorPlus 200 almost same with the Fuji C200 with Zenit 122. The result is better i think, but still missing something, or maybe i have to much expectation. I used vuescan to scan. It is really better than the epsonscan.

koraks · Jun 25, 2020

Dial back the magenta a bunch and you're maybe closer to what you want.

brbo · Jun 29, 2020

I use Fuji C200 a lot. Print in darkroom and scan with various scanners. I think I would personally arrive at something like this if I printed it on my preferred paper or scanned it on my Noritsu scanner:

Since you haven't said WHAT you don't like about your scan, maybe this can help you articulate what you want/expect? Does that "version" work better/worse for you? Maybe others can make their inversions, you'll see that our perceptions of "proper" colours differ... wildly.

Bikerider · Jun 29, 2020

ferditulum said:
Hello everyone! I don't have any experience with color negatives. Mostly i shoot black and white and develop at home. After a couple of rolls of color developed at the local lab, the quality of the images looks like very poor. I am scanning with epsonscan or with dslr. The quality of the images from black and white negatives are always very good and everything looks like fine. I will upload a photo from the color negative. Should it be like that normally? It doesn't matter if i invert the colors or leet the scanner make this, it's the same. The film is fujicolor c200. It isn't expired. I don't expect so much from this film, but definitely it shouldn't be look like that. What you think? Thank you in advance

Excuse me if this has already been said, but the difference between the shadows (foreground), and the highlights (background? look as if you are asking just too much from the film without any after processing work to be done in the printing stage. There is about 2 stops difference with the exposure. This can be done easily if you have suitable editing software or if you are wet printing by burning in the highlights, but if you do that you may have to correct local colour shifts.
Bear in mind also, as the buildings are a considerable distance away, atmospheric pollution/haze will have reduced the contrast so it will have to be taken into consideration in order it doesn't look un-natural.

Color negative poor quality

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Agulliver

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Bikerider

Color negative poor quality

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