Leica R4 Program mode slight overexposure battery / film question (XP2)

GregY · 2026-01-24T13:21:57-0500

koraks said:
Well, then you'll have to accept that you'll never know whether your photos were correctly exposed to begin with. All that's left is to make the best of it with the scans the lab hands to you.

Btw, I find this decision utterly incomprehensible for any serious photographer. You spend loads of time fussing over cameras, lenses etc. - and then when push comes to shove, you don't even get to see the negatives? You lost me there.

Thank you K...... i find it incomprehensible too.

MattKing · 2026-01-24T14:08:22-0500

FWIW, your decision to have the negatives destroyed is up to you.
It just removes any reliable ability to evaluate whether or not your camera is exposing correctly.
If you want to be able to do that, you need to have access to the negatives.
Lab employees are human. Errors happen. As scanning involves all sorts of judgment calls, what you may be seeing is the result of those very human judgment calls, and not your camera's performance at all. Only a review of the negatives, in the context of considering the metering choices you made, would help determine that.
If you don't want to save your negatives - which many of us find incomprehensible - you could always discard them yourself after evaluating them yourself for the technical quality.

RezaLoghme · 2026-01-24T14:08:46-0500

As mentioned, I have been using that lab for a while now and all was fine. Unfortunately I could not reach them on a Saturday, but I hope the person who did the scanning remembers my batch, as the negatives are gone by now.

@runswithsizzers Do you own a Leica Rß

miha said:
It could be wonky, but we really can’t tell for the reasons koraks explained. At that point we’d just be guessing ad infinitum and wouldn’t be any wiser.

For what it’s worth, my R4s Mod 2, if anything, tends to underexpose. After all, these cameras were designed and put on the market at a time when slide film was the film of choice for advanced amateurs.

@miha thank you so much.

runswithsizzers · 2026-01-24T16:33:17-0500

RezaLoghme said:
@runswithsizzers Do you own a Leica Rß

No I have never owned any Leica camera, and I know nothing about Leica cameras, specifically.

I do have enough experience digitizing negatives from my Rolleicord, Pentax and Konica cameras to have a pretty good idea about how all of that works for the person who is scanning their own film at home.

But I am much less knowledgeable about how labs scan film for their customers. Is that a hands-off automated process? -- or does a skilled operator take the time to make frame-by-frame or roll-by-roll adjustments to fine tune the results for each customer? I don't know.

As far as learning anything about exposure, I think your last roll of film is probably water under the bridge by now. The next opportunity for learning will come with your next roll. Ask the lab to have an experienced tech look at the negatives from your next roll and give an opinion about your exposures. If they can't do that, ask to get your negatives back and photograph them with some kind of back light for posting here. Something like this:

RezaLoghme · 2026-01-24T16:51:59-0500

runswithsizzers said:
No I have never owned any Leica camera, and I know nothing about Leica cameras, specifically.

I do have enough experience digitizing negatives from my Rolleicord, Pentax and Konica cameras to have a pretty good idea about how all of that works for the person who is scanning their own film at home.

But I am much less knowledgeable about how labs scan film for their customers. Is that a hands-off automated process? -- or does a skilled operator take the time to make frame-by-frame or roll-by-roll adjustments to fine tune the results for each customer? I don't know.

As far as learning anything about exposure, I think your last roll of film is probably water under the bridge by now. The next opportunity for learning will come with your next roll. Ask the lab to have an experienced tech look at the negatives from your next roll and give an opinion about your exposures. If they can't do that, ask to get your negatives back and photograph them with some kind of back light for posting here. Something like this:

View attachment 416464

ok

Leica R4 Program mode slight overexposure battery / film question (XP2)

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