Help me troubleshooting this film

zehner21 · Jan 13, 2015

[Thread's title], please.

Don't want to sound rude.

Hi,
my only medium-format camera is a Lubitel 2.
When I had the Rollei kit for developing C41 films, before throwing away the exhausted dev/bleach/fix liquids, I decided to shoot a 120 Ektar 100 and see if the camera was working.
I was right, the camera was in perfect (meh) state. (1)

Fast forward to January 2015.
Two weeks ago I finished a roll of Fuji Provia 400X. The film expired in 2012 (2), but it has been always kept in the refrigerator.
As a lighmeter I usually use a Gossen Lunasix, but since it's bulky I switched to an iPhone Lightmeter application. (3)
At the time of shooting, I thought that the f-stops/time combinations suggested by the phone were right, or at least logical. (4)

Last week I brought the roll to a laboratory for having it developed. It wasn't my ordinary lab (the latter is 15km far from me while the other is 4-500 meter away from my house). (5)

Usually, with the other lab (the one furthest) I had to wait two-three weeks because they develop and print only C41, so E6 film has to be sent to the mainland.
Today I received a text from the lab in my village saying that my film was ready.
When I got there, I was welcomed with "There are no images here, except one". (6)
At first I was "" then I payed and got home.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The developed film is BLACK.
I suspect that it has been X-processed (7) because if I scan it a slide film the resulting image has a heavy blue cast but, if I scan it as a negative then invert the colours, I see "more natural" colours.
Samples attached to this message.

What do you think? Please, refers to numbers for pointing out possible mistakes made by me.

First photo ----> scan as a slide film
Second photo ----> scan a negative film then inverted in Mac's Preview app.

Daire Quinlan · Jan 13, 2015

If it had been cross processed there would be negatives on the roll instead of positives. It just sounds as though you underexposed. I've played around a bit with various phone apps as light meters, both using the camera and the incident phone light sensor, and they've all been hopelessly inaccurate. So much so that I wouldn't use them for print film, let alone slide.

Rudeofus · Jan 13, 2015

A few things come to mind:

That dog appears darker than the wall behind him in both scans. That's very odd if one is a negative scan and the other one a positive scan. Please explain how this could happen ...
An easy way to determine whether your film was cross processed is the rebate. Whatever your camera did, the frame edges were (hopefully) unexposed except for the imprints done by the film manufacturer. Can you see these imprints?
You can calibrate your iPhone/Lubitel combo with a short roll of B&W film. Take a series of images of some scenery with varying exposure settings, determine the minimum exposure needed to get decent scans, and compare these settings to what your iPhone tells you. If may not be overly accurate, but it should always err by the same amount.
Some cameras are suitable for slide film, and a Lubitel may not be one of them. Slide film has less than a stop of latitude, whereas you can overexpose negative film by four stops without any problems.

zehner21 · Jan 13, 2015

Rudeofus said:
A few things come to mind:

That dog appears darker than the wall behind him in both scans. That's very odd if one is a negative scan and the other one a positive scan. Please explain how this could happen ...

An easy way to determine whether your film was cross processed is the rebate. Whatever your camera did, the frame edges were (hopefully) unexposed except for the imprints done by the film manufacturer. Can you see these imprints?

You can calibrate your iPhone/Lubitel combo with a short roll of B&W film. Take a series of images of some scenery with varying exposure settings, determine the minimum exposure needed to get decent scans, and compare these settings to what your iPhone tells you. If may not be overly accurate, but it should always err by the same amount.

Some cameras are suitable for slide film, and a Lubitel may not be one of them. Slide film has less than a stop of latitude, whereas you can overexpose negative film by four stops without any problems.

1) ? The dog is darker than the wall. The negative scan has been tweaked in OS X's Preview by switching the white and black sliders.

2) I can clearly see the imprints. They are dark-orange.

3) From now on, I will always use an "official" lightmeter

4) Well, I do realize that shooting slide film with a Lubitel sounds silly. I just wanted to see a medium format transparency... :/

Rudolf Karachun · Jan 13, 2015

Lubitel dont feel is it a slide film inside or b&w. If camera working correctly, it is only film or meter.

zehner21 · Jan 13, 2015

Rudolf Karachun said:
Lubitel dont feel is it a slide film inside or b&w. If camera working correctly, it is only film or meter.

But, you have to keep in mind that URSS Quality Control wasn't the best

Sirius Glass · Jan 13, 2015

Side film must have the exposure bang on, so stick to the Gossen Lunasix.

zehner21 · Jan 13, 2015

Sirius Glass said:
Side film must have the exposure bang on, so stick to the Gossen Lunasix.

Well, I guess I have just discovered Lomography

Rudeofus · Jan 13, 2015

zehner21 said:
1) ? The dog is darker than the wall. The negative scan has been tweaked in OS X's Preview by switching the white and black sliders.

If the dog is darker than the wall, why does the slide scan show a black dog in front of a blue/purple wall?

zehner21 said:
2) I can clearly see the imprints. They are dark-orange.

I just checked one of my medium format Provia 400X slide strips, and the imprints are dark orange on black background. It appears you have properly E6 developed strips that have been way underexposed for whatever reason.

zehner21 said:
3) From now on, I will always use an "official" lightmeter

This won't help you if the shutter or aperture of your camera is out of spec, and with some bad luck randomly so. Invest a roll of some cheapo black&white negative film to find out if you can't measure shutter times by other means.

zehner21 said:
4) Well, I do realize that shooting slide film with a Lubitel sounds silly. I just wanted to see a medium format transparency... :/

Medium format slides are way cool, but just like 35mm slides they require careful exposure and reliable equipment.

zehner21 · Jan 13, 2015

Rudeofus said:
If the dog is darker than the wall, why does the slide scan show a black dog in front of a blue/purple wall?

I can't give you a logical answer. I guess that colours are messed up because of a huge underexposure...
I'll do some tests for measuring the shutter speeds.

removedacct1 · Jan 13, 2015

There's nothing wrong with shooting E6 in your Lubitel, but its almost certainly the case that you underexposed the film by at least 2 stops - probably more. You can blame either your light meter app (probably user error: you set the ASA wrong or something) or the Lubitel shutter is misbehaving - a problem they are known for. (Usually the shutter sticks OPEN during an exposure, which would not account for your problem) I strongly suspect you underexposed your film through user error. However, if you need to verify the camera functionality, just shoot and process a test roll of your favorite B&W film. Test as many of the shutter speeds as you can, or at least a couple. (Yes - I know - it only have five shutter speeds! I have one too) Be very careful to meter the scene accurately!

The Lubitel is perfectly capable of producing nice images on any film as long as you use it properly and expose your film right! Lubitel 2 + Ilford Pan F @32 ASA, in Rodinal 1:50

Rudeofus · Jan 14, 2015

There is an app that helps with measuring shutter speeds (assuming you have the right version of iPhone and IOS, not all seem to work).

Meyer Trioplan · Jan 14, 2015

I use a phone app sometimes, but I found out the hard way that it needed to be calibrated prior to use.

Admittedly, I did this by doing an exposure measurement using a digital camera (I know, heresy) and then using the EV adjustment on the settings of the light meter app to match that exposure setting. Then, I took the digital camera out along with the phone and did measurements on both in a number of different settings until I was confident that they matched within 1/3 of a stop.

removed account4 · Jan 14, 2015

since this is a guess the problem game ...
to be honest, i have no-idea what happened, looks like user / equipment error to me
but that's a guess, obviously ...

(slide film and a new lab aren't usually the best way to test equipment
for functionality, but that is just me ... )

i second rudeofus suggestion ...get a roll of b/w film
bracket your exposures with whatever light meter you are using
and see what is going on. the shutter tester app would be helpful because
it would at least let you know if your shutter is close enough to not worry about it.
as you know with slide film there is s small window of opportunity for a perfect exposure
so it should be kind of close, instead of far-off ...

i wish i still had my lubitel, it was a fun camera !

MartinP · Jan 16, 2015

Just use the exposure guide in/on the packet of film with a roll of black-and-white, to confirm to yourself that the camera is 'working'. Prior to that, open the aperture up all the way, so you can clearly see what the shutter is doing, and run through the shutter-speeds with no film and the camera-back open (to let some light through the lens). It should be fairly clear whether the shutter is opening for more-or-less the right amount of time, relative to the adjacent shutter-speeds on the dial.

When you are happy with this, go through each shutter speed ten times or so, to make sure nothing ever hangs up or sticks. After all that, try your slide film while comparing what your meter says with the film-box suggestion as a sanity-check.

zehner21 · May 21, 2015

This is incredible. I've shot another roll with a hasselblad 500cm and metered with a Lunasix Pro. Again, positives are almost black, which isn't black but blue.. How is it possible? Is it because the film expired a couple of years ago?

Rudeofus · May 21, 2015

Can you confirm again that the edge numbers look correct? Do you see anything in these images at all? Do they look like weak images behind high density? Are there any point light sources in these slides which show through the density? If you look at the slides from their matte side under an angle, can you see an image?

Slide film, expired by no more than a few years shouldn't behave like that, and if it goes bad, the results are brighter slides, not darker ones.

Daire Quinlan · May 21, 2015

Yeah it's unlikely (though not impossible) to be the film itself. This is astia expired about 10 years, put through XTOL as a first dev and then C-41, and DESPITE all that abuse manages to produce a perfectly fine image

As said above, what are the edge markings like? Have you put a roll of B&W through the same camera and developed it yourself as a sanity check that it's not the camera? Did you get this roll developed in the same lab?

zehner21 · May 21, 2015

Daire Quinlan said:
[...]

Rudeofus said:
[...]

Its' frustrating because I developed a roll of Delta 3200 and it came out good.
Edge numbers are very bright; if you look carefully, pictures do not seem weak. They are high in contrast but very dark. Highlights are rendered quite good, but there is an overall blue tint.
The entire roll is useless. I do know how to expose a positive film, because I've alredy done that so I don't know what to think.

Help me troubleshooting this film

zehner21

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