First lot of photos came back - where did I go wrong?

eeellieee · Jul 4, 2022

Hello!

First of all, i'm very new to shooting on film and wondering if anyone could help with this. I got my first lot of photo's back from development and pretty much all of them look underexposed like in the attached photos.

I'm shooting on a Chinon CE-5, Kodak Gold 200 35mm. As far as i'm aware, I should have the correct exposure. ISO was on 200, and I was using the cameras built in light meter, and checking it against a light meter app I have on my phone - all seemed to match up.

Does anyone know why my photos still looked like this? Two of these photos were taken in bright daylight so can't think of why they'd be this underexposed.

Sirius Glass · Jul 4, 2022

First check that the batteries are fresh and that the battery contacts are clean. Then compare to Sunny 16 [Bright Sun light check the meter at f/16 and the shutter speed should be approximately 1/[film ISO]. If not then the meter needs to be adjusted.

MattKing · Jul 4, 2022

Welcome to Photrio.
Can you supply us with a backlit digital photo of the negatives themselves, with the edges and the space between the frames clearly visible.
Something like this, please.

(thanks to foc - I borrowed this from one of his posts).
Your negatives will, of course, be orange coloured colour negatives.
For the backlight, a window or a blank tablet/computer/cel phone screen works well, and the digital cameras in cel phones can usually do this too.
Be mindful of the file size limits when you upload,

eeellieee · Jul 4, 2022

MattKing said:
Welcome to Photrio.
Can you supply us with a backlit digital photo of the negatives themselves, with the edges and the space between the frames clearly visible.
Something like this, please.

(thanks to foc - I borrowed this from one of his posts).
Your negatives will, of course, be orange coloured colour negatives.
For the backlight, a window or a blank tablet/computer/cel phone screen works well, and the digital cameras in cel phones can usually do this too.
Be mindful of the file size limits when you upload,

Hi Matt,

I don't have the negatives unfortunately as I didn't opt to have them sent back to me from the development lab - will do so next time.

eeellieee · Jul 4, 2022

Sirius Glass said:
First check that the batteries are fresh and that the battery contacts are clean. Then compare to Sunny 16 [Bright Sun light check the meter at f/16 and the shutter speed should be approximately 1/[film ISO]. If not then the meter needs to be adjusted.

Thank you. have checked batteries -all good, and downloaded Sunny 16.

MattKing · Jul 4, 2022

eeellieee said:
Hi Matt,

I don't have the negatives unfortunately as I didn't opt to have them sent back to me from the development lab - will do so next time.

Fair warning - many of us here are absolutely aghast that labs are even offering not to return the negatives.
Negatives will always be the most complete record of your results. And the scanning process that is the most common way today to turn them into positives can be done very well, or very poorly, so not having the negatives can leave you with poor results from good photography, and with no way to fix the problem.
It is really, really hard to diagnose many problems from scans.
All of which is to say, it is important for you to have the negatives.
There are a few people here who have the knowledge, experience and equipment to do their own very high quality scans, and do elect to discard their negatives afterwards. Some of us consider that heresy .
We are happy here to help you as best we can, but those scans don't give us a lot to work with!

eeellieee · Jul 4, 2022

MattKing said:
Fair warning - many of us here are absolutely aghast that labs are even offering not to return the negatives.
Negatives will always be the most complete record of your results. And the scanning process that is the most common way today to turn them into positives can be done very well, or very poorly, so not having the negatives can leave you with poor results from good photography, and with no way to fix the problem.
It is really, really hard to diagnose many problems from scans.
All of which is to say, it is important for you to have the negatives.
There are a few people here who have the knowledge, experience and equipment to do their own very high quality scans, and do elect to discard their negatives afterwards. Some of us consider that heresy .
We are happy here to help you as best we can, but those scans don't give us a lot to work with!

Thanks Matt, that makes a lot of sense, i'll make sure to get the negatives back next time - I can see how it'd be difficult to diagnose the issue from the scans but thought i'd ask just incase it was something glaringly obvious to people with more experience than me

BobD · Jul 4, 2022

Forgive me for asking, but when you say you were using the camera's meter plus another meter, did you set the camera's shutter speed and aperture according to the meters' recommendations?

xkaes · Jul 4, 2022

Along the same lines, what metering method were you using -- metered-manual, aperture-priority, shutter-priority, programmed???? We need more details about what you did. Otherwise we have to guess.

eeellieee · Jul 4, 2022

BobD said:
Forgive me for asking, but when you say you were using the camera's meter plus another meter, did you set the camera's shutter speed and aperture according to the meters' recommendations?

Hi, yes i set the shutter speed and aperture according to the recommendations. Metering method was aperture-priority

snusmumriken · Jul 4, 2022

Are the images you posted from prints, or are they scans done by the lab? If the latter, I'm just wondering whether it really is underexposure as you suggest. I have very little experience with colour, but I would have guessed that a scanner might produce murky images like that if faced with very dense (i.e. over-exposed) negatives. I hope other forum members with greater expertise will put us right on this.

BobD · Jul 4, 2022

Now you've got me confused. Aperture Priority isn't a metering method. It's an exposure mode. You set the aperture and the camera selects the shutter speed.

Is that what you were doing? You had the camera set on "Auto" and you selected an aperture on the lens and let the camera select a shutter speed?

Helge · Jul 4, 2022

Sure looks like plain underexposure.
You need to double check that you are doing everything right. ISO setting of the film, be sure you are using auto metering, no compensation etc.
In fact best to get a quick lookover from a photo shop, to see that everything is working right.

eeellieee · Jul 4, 2022

BobD said:
Now you've got me confused. Aperture Priority isn't a metering method. It's an exposure mode. You set the aperture and the camera selects the shutter speed.

Is that what you were doing? You had the camera set on "Auto" and you selected an aperture on the lens and let the camera select a shutter speed?

Hi, yeah i'm confused myself. As I said it's my first time using a film camera so I'm learning from scratch/stuff I am reading online!

Basically (and apologies if i'm not explaining this in the right terms), I set my ISO to 200 as I was using Kodak Gold 200. I selected my aperture myself and the meter inside my camera indicated the shutter speed I need to set and tells me whether i'm over/underexposed. Or at least that's how I'm understanding it.

Helge · Jul 4, 2022

eeellieee said:
Hi, yeah i'm confused myself. As I said it's my first time using a film camera so I'm learning from scratch/stuff I am reading online!

Basically (and apologies if i'm not explaining this in the right terms), I set my ISO to 200 as I was using Kodak Gold 200. I selected my aperture myself and the meter inside my camera indicated the shutter speed I need to set and tells me whether i'm over/underexposed. Or at least that's how I'm understanding it.

That might be the problem.
You let the camera set the shutter in aperture priority.
You want to leave it on auto.
The shutter indication is just to let you know which speed has been chosen.
Out of auto you are in manual which should in theory be the same speed, so it should be the same...

xkaes · Jul 4, 2022

Sounds like you need to do a search for "BUTKUS CHINON CE-5", and read the manual. Don't bother to take it to a "shop". You can't use a camera correctly unless you know how to use it. That's what BUTKUS if for.

READ it and let us know if you still have problems.

https://www.butkus.org/chinon/chinon/ce-5/ce-5.htm

MattKing · Jul 5, 2022

I would have said what xkaes said in a slightly more welcoming way.
Mike Butkus' site has a huge quantity and variety of instruction manuals on it, is a valuable resource, and his requested donation is excellent value.
And it is always an excellent idea to have and learn what is in the instruction manual - xkaes has provided the link.

Sirius Glass · Jul 5, 2022

xkaes said:
Sounds like you need to do a search for "BUTKUS CHINON CE-5", and read the manual. Don't bother to take it to a "shop". You can't use a camera correctly unless you know how to use it. That's what BUTKUS if for.

READ it and let us know if you still have problems.

https://www.butkus.org/chinon/chinon/ce-5/ce-5.htm

MattKing said:
I would have said what xkaes said in a slightly more welcoming way.
Mike Butkus' site has a huge quantity and variety of instruction manuals on it, is a valuable resource, and his requested donation is excellent value.
And it is always an excellent idea to have and learn what is in the instruction manual - xkaes has provided the link.

Mike Butkus does this at no charge while others charge a lot of money. If you find a download is useful to you, please donate $3.00US to him, as he requests, so that he can continue to provide this free service.

Chuck1 · Jul 5, 2022

check the exposure compensation (could have been to -3 not 0)

pbromaghin · Jul 5, 2022

eeellieee said:
Hi Matt,

I don't have the negatives unfortunately as I didn't opt to have them sent back to me from the development lab - will do so next time.

About the negatives - it might be the case that you had perfect exposures and the lab completely screwed up the scans. The only way to know for sure is to have the negs yourself. But hey, it's just your first roll.

Helge · Jul 5, 2022

pbromaghin said:
About the negatives - it might be the case that you had perfect exposures and the lab completely screwed up the scans. The only way to know for sure is to have the negs yourself. But hey, it's just your first roll.

Looks like a lab scanner trying to boost underexposed frames.
Best bet for now is that it’s compensation that has been set without OP knowing what it is.
Or the camera could simply be broken.

AnselMortensen · Jul 5, 2022

Hey, don't feel discouraged.
There's a fairly steep learning curve to film photography....a lot of folks think film photography is 'easy'.
Well, not so...and it's not cheap, either.
There are hundreds of ways for things to go wrong.
There are a lot of details that need to be attended to....proper exposure and development are Chapter 2...after making sure that equipment is operating properly. (Chapter 1).
Don't sweat it, it's part of the learning process. Gotta walk before you can run.

Andrew O'Neill · Jul 5, 2022

Good God always always always keep the negatives!

Sirius Glass · Jul 5, 2022

eeellieee said:
Hi, yeah i'm confused myself. As I said it's my first time using a film camera so I'm learning from scratch/stuff I am reading online!

Basically (and apologies if i'm not explaining this in the right terms), I set my ISO to 200 as I was using Kodak Gold 200. I selected my aperture myself and the meter inside my camera indicated the shutter speed I need to set and tells me whether i'm over/underexposed. Or at least that's how I'm understanding it.

Do not feel badly, none of us were born with this knowledge. Someone had to teach us.

madNbad · Jul 5, 2022

Sirius Glass said:
Mike Butkus does this at no charge while others charge a lot of money. If you find a download is useful to you, please donate $3.00US to him, as he requests, so that he can continue to provide this free service.

I’ve sent him money just because. Someone will mention a camera that looks interesting so I’ll take a look at the manual. Then I feel bad and send him three dollars.

First lot of photos came back - where did I go wrong?

eeellieee

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