Exposure problem

Ludwig Wigren

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Hi! New to the forum, hope I posted in the right place. I have shot almost a roll of Kodak gold 200 and I mainly use the sunny 16 rule as I don't have a light meter. It was pretty bright on the day, and I shot with 200 iso, 250 shutter speed and then 2,8 aperture, accidentally. My question, are my pictures fucked, and if is it possible to adjust it in the development?
Thanks in advance
 
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OP

Ludwig Wigren

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Well it was a poor choice of words, I'm sorry about that. Are you serious that they are ruined, nothing to be done?
 

shutterfinger

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C41 developing time is 3 minutes 15 seconds for normal, 3 minutes for pull processing on over exposed film, 3 minutes 30 seconds for push processing for under exposed film.
Color film has a wide latitude so exposure errors can be compensated for in printing or scanning.
 

Andrew O'Neill

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Ludwig Wigren said:
Well it was a poor choice of words, I'm sorry about that. Are you serious that they are ruined, nothing to be done?
Click to expand...

No, I'll bet they will be fine. Years ago in Japan I overexposed 4x5 C41 film by several stops. Came back from the lab quite dense, but still made a decent print. They developed the film normally.
 

jeffreyg

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You will probably get different results on some of the frames unless they were all under the same lighting conditions. Some may work fine and others who knows. I would have them developed normally. Scanning and editing you might come up with some unusual effects and there you will have abstract art pieces. As is said if you get lemons make lemonade.

http://www.jeffreyglasser.com/

http://www.sculptureandphotography.com/
 

grat

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You're 5 stops overexposed, assuming you should have been at 1/250 @ f/16. If it wasn't quite full bright, you're at +4 stops.

The good news is, if you check out some of the C41 exposure tests online, the images should be recoverable. They won't be *great*, but they will be usable, and you might need to scan them yourself. They might even resemble some of the pastel / blown-out images that are popular in certain segments of the film community.

Develop normally. Scan carefully. Then, I suggest you head over to https://www.reveni-labs.com/ and look at the standard light meter.
 

gone

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I don't know, but there's probably only one sure way to find out. Develop them and see.
 

Pioneer

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Hard to say. But one thing for sure, you shouldn't have any problems with the shadows.

Sometimes I think Kodak made their consumer color films for exactly this type of problem. I have had some major mistakes with color film turn out all right. They may not win any awards but you should be able to get prints.
 

wiltw

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Andrew O'Neill said:
No, I'll bet they will be fine. Years ago in Japan I overexposed 4x5 C41 film by several stops. Came back from the lab quite dense, but still made a decent print. They developed the film normally.
Click to expand...

Overexposed by 3EV is within the exposure latitude of color neg, but 5EV overexposure would have irrecovable detail loss in the highlights. Midtone areas would be OK..
 

Adrian Bacon

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wiltw

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Ludwig Wigren said:
Thank you for all the answers. Found this article; https://petapixel.com/2015/08/10/how-much-can-you-overexpose-negative-film-have-a-look/ , is this an accurate representation?
Click to expand...

Consider that the issue represented by the link is the ability of the scanner illumination and sensor to see thru the overly dense film...not quite the same as lost detail because the neg has lost the detail. Just maybe a long enough enlarger exposure time might be able to get something that a scanner could not.

Many years ago a photo magazine did a text of exposure latitude, with enlarger prints. I'm trying to locate those result, in which digital plays no role.
 

Craig75

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might still be a bit early in year for f16 in northern europe? a bright sunny day might still only be f11?
 

removed account4

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Keep a notebook or make a mental notes and see how they look. Seeing you used 250instead or 125 ( usually its best to always shoot with more light / round down with sunny 16 ) it helped you were only 2-3 stops over exposed since sunny 16 is really sunny 11 too . so that’s 2 stops better than you thought... glass is always half full.
 
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