High contrast film images coming out totally different from digital test shots

[peterB1966]

I hope you aren't saying you will point your incident meter at the subject, but that you will hold the meter very close to the subject while pointing at the camera.

Oh ye of little faith... Yes, I was going to use it in the correct way!

 

[peterB1966]

Are they shot with flash or continuous light?

They look.like flash with catchlights in pupils but my flash game is very weak so that could be garbage.

The shutter speeds are too fast for a lot of film cameras + flash

Yes, it is flash, and as it's a Mayima lens with built-in leaf shutter, there is no problem with synching up to the Mayima's max speed of 1/400th.
The one very slight chance of an issue is the aged PC socket - wasted quite a few exposures initially getting the cable to fire the flash, so out of an abundance of caution I will do some comparison shots at different speeds.

 

[LolaColor]

Are you sure the scanner (driver) isn't trying to protect the highlights you wanted blown out, in the process darkening everything else?

This is the answer to OP's question. Minilab scanners make a digital auto exposure of a piece of film, effectively a digital photograph on full auto, and will be thrown awry by the same sort of scenes that would throw off a camera's auto metering. If the background had been black you'd see that the film scans were brighter than the digital versions.

 

[peterB1966]

This is the answer to OP's question. Minilab scanners make a digital auto exposure of a piece of film, effectively a digital photograph on full auto, and will be thrown awry by the same sort of scenes that would throw off a camera's auto metering. If the background had been black you'd see that the film scans were brighter than the digital versions.

Spot on! They called me this morning to confirm that that is indeed what happens

 

[pbromaghin]

Oh ye of little faith... Yes, I was going to use it in the correct way!

Sorry, because of the wording I just had to make sure.

 

[wiltw]

The RB67 has a bellows focus. The closer the subject, the more the bellows extends, the darker the exposure will be. This needs to be compensated for compared to your digital exposure..

The bellows extension factor only comes into play at macro scale...it would NEVER come into play focused on a subject 10' away an 1:20 scale.

 

[peterB1966]

Sorry, because of the wording I just had to make sure.

All good

The bellows extension factor only comes into play at macro scale...it would NEVER come into play focused on a subject 10' away an 1:20 scale.

How about a subject 1.5' away with a 90mm? Nah, the compensation diagram on the side made it clear I was far from having to worry about that at all.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

If a person is using a SLR film camera to shoot color negative film or color positive slides or BW negative, the built-in meter does not change it's setting depending on which of the three films you loaded other than setting the ISO. How is that?

So why would it matter of you were using a digital camera internal meter to meter for a film camera that may be using one of the three types of film?

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

I used my digital camera to get an exposure setting (1/50 at f22) and shot Tmax 100 with a polarizer adjusted for stop loss to 1/15 at f22. Digital on the left and Tmax on the right. The clipping outline in red is just the white border that was scanned so ignore that as it would be cropped out during editing. Film was scanned adjusted so white and black points were at the limits of the image. You can see that histogram on the right. Then digital histogram is on the left.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

Here's a cropped file of the film image on the right above so it matches the digital image. Notice how the histogram matches very closely to the digital on the above left.

 

[cramej]

I did some test shots of a high contrast scene (I wanted the background blown out) on my Nikon D610 and once happy, converted the settings to equivalents on my Mayima RB67. To my surprise the shadow areas in two of the photos are way darker on film than on digital (the two photos of the white woman. Strangely the portrait of the black woman came out quite similar). Is this normal with film (I shot with TMY2 ISO400)?

The attached images will show the digital image (with exposure info) on the left, unprocessed but converted to mono in order to simplify comparison), and the right hand side is an unprocessed scan of the same same shots from film, with the keyword block showing the settings I used (as best as I/my notes can recall). You will see though that there appears to be no clipping in the shadow areas (sorry, the same histogram appears to have been posted in both of the first images, but nonetheless neither of them are clipped).

Disclaimer: I am new to using an MF camera, so I am not sure if I made mistakes in my my conversions from digital test shots to film (the discipline of note-taking is new to me as a digital user).

Check your D-Lighting settings on the D610. Just because you shot raw doesn't mean Capture or Lightroom shows you an untouched file. AFAIK it still applies camera settings for the preview. If D-Lighting was set to normal or high, you can't really judge the accuracy of the shadow exposure. In addition, since you're using a DSLR to 'meter', you should really be setting the proper exposure on the subject first (either with BG lights off, or BG cropped out of the frame), then adjusting the background lights to suit. Best solution is an inexpensive handheld flash meter. You will have consistency between mediums without regard to a digital camera's settings. Others have expressed an problem with the scans as well, and I agree. There is still a long way to go to blow out the background on the first shot and the scanner tried to compensate for it. The last frame has more of the subject in the frame, therefore the scanner was able to set exposure correctly and, as you can see, the background looks just right.

 

[peterB1966]

I used my digital camera to get an exposure setting (1/50 at f22) and shot Tmax 100 with a polarizer adjusted for stop loss to 1/15 at f22. Digital on the left and Tmax on the right. The clipping outline in red is just the white border that was scanned so ignore that as it would be cropped out during editing. Film was scanned adjusted so white and black points were at the limits of the image. You can see that histogram on the right. Then digital histogram is on the left.

Thanks for taking the trouble - yes, I believe the main difference was caused not by the toe and shoulder of the film (which does of course affect things) nor by the difference between film and digital necessarily, but by the auto-settings used by the commercial scanners who processed my film. I have spoken to them and confirmed as much; they said next time I should just tell them about special conditions within the shots.

 

[peterB1966]

Check your D-Lighting settings on the D610. Just because you shot raw doesn't mean Capture or Lightroom shows you an untouched file. AFAIK it still applies camera settings for the preview. If D-Lighting was set to normal or high, you can't really judge the accuracy of the shadow exposure. In addition, since you're using a DSLR to 'meter', you should really be setting the proper exposure on the subject first (either with BG lights off, or BG cropped out of the frame), then adjusting the background lights to suit. Best solution is an inexpensive handheld flash meter. You will have consistency between mediums without regard to a digital camera's settings. Others have expressed an problem with the scans as well, and I agree. There is still a long way to go to blow out the background on the first shot and the scanner tried to compensate for it. The last frame has more of the subject in the frame, therefore the scanner was able to set exposure correctly and, as you can see, the background looks just right.

Agreed, there are certain profile settings loaded with the RAW file. However, in order to minimise this and also have greater control I don't use D-lighting.