over-exposing to reduce saturation, pull proccess or not?

gongman5000 · Jan 18, 2011

I'm interested in finding out definitively how to expose and develop color negative film to lower the saturation (would also be interested to know how the contrast may be effected for a given method.) I've been searching around various forums and seem to be reading a lot of conflicting information. It seems like neutral color-balanced film is sadly getting phased out by kodak and fujifilm. And with the discontinuation of portra 400nc there is now no more 8x10 400 speed neutral sheet film, discouraging especially since I am about to move into large format.

I've read in one post (forgot where) that, regarding pro 160s (also discontinued) if you over expose by up to 1 stop it will actually get more saturated and then the saturation will decrease if you over expose by 1 1/2 - 2 stops. This sounds a bit fishy/counter-intuitive to me. I've read both that if you over expose you should under develop and also that you should develop normally. etc. etc.

So, I know this is all somewhat dependent on what film you're shooting but in general:

1) at how many stops of over exposure do you start seeing saturation reduction in color negative films?

2) should the processing of the film be pulled or not? (note this would be a request I would put to the lab as I don't do my own processing)

Also, any specific information on portra 800, pro 800z, new portra 400 would be very welcomed.

2F/2F · Jan 18, 2011

I wouldn't pull more than 1/2 stop if you want 100 percent correctable color. You can get away with a stop if you just need acceptable color (which is good enough for pretty much anyone but a product photographer). Any more than that and the film goes wonky and uncorrectable IME.

I very commonly pull my color neg film 1/2 to 1 stop when I have shot in contrasty light. I very rarely want to make a perfectly neutral color print, so the 1 stop pull never causes any problems for me. It just makes things a teeny tiny tad warmer; it's kind of like using a skylight filter.

Brian Legge · Jan 18, 2011

From what I've seen [shooting in 120], the new Portra 400 is more similar to the old 400NC... which is great for me. You might want to give it a shot with regular development to see if it meets your needs.

thegman · Jan 18, 2011

I find over exposing Portra will make it go a bit pastel, that's with development for the box speed. Shoot at 200, develop at 400. Can't speak for the new Portra though, never tried it.

perkeleellinen · Jan 18, 2011

I normally shoot 400H and 800z 1/2 stop overexposed and they get developed normally. During the summer I loaded a roll of 800 thinking in was 400 and so it got overexposed by 1.5 stops, exactly the sort of thing which I've read online will create these pastel-like conditions. Well, when I printed those negs they didn't look too much different from what I normally get from 800Z. Nothing like the stuff which people like Jose Villa get from overexposing 800Z, so I wonder if this is more about the nature of scanning than anything else.

gongman5000 · Jan 18, 2011

Ok good information so far. Thanks guys.

2F, you are just talking about overexposing the negative and developing regularly right? Or are you also saying that you pull process the negative too during development?

@brian: that's good to know about the new portra. I'll def have to shoot a roll. Unfortunately I'm pretty damn broke right now and shooting film is really a luxury for me and I have to make the most of every frame right now (which is actually a very nice way to shoot!) so I'm unable to do a bunch of tests with different films. Just trying to wrap my head around the basics here so I can proceed with my photography in a productive and efficient manner.

Just to stir some more discussion what do you guys think about what Mr. Eaton says here:
http://photo.net/medium-format-photography-forum/001x3Q
He suggests that overexposure can actually cause an increase in saturation, albeit only in "some cases". Any idea what those might be?

"Increasing exposure with print film results in increasing saturation of the dye-clouds in the emulsion, and the net result is a "smoother", and in some cases more saturated color. The drawback is that you'll start to lose detail and sharpness because of halation effects, dye-coupler crossover, and other strange things that happen with more over-exposure. NHG I and Agfa Ultra 50 are two films that could not be safely over-exposed without some obvious loss of image quality."

Does anybody have experience shooting vivid balanced films like 800z or portra vc and over exposing to reduce saturation? Is it possible to achieve the reduced levels of saturation found in the neutral balanced films by shooting these vivid balanced ones overexposed by 2 or 3 stops? Or is that just wishful thinking?

markbarendt · Jan 18, 2011

Okay, gotta ask, what's the rest of your process? (Film doesn't live and work in a vacuum.)

When printing using a standard enlarger exposure, a thicker negative (a frame with more exposure) will give you a lighter/more pastel/less saturated print than a "normal" negative.

Enlarger exposure changes can "fix" that difference too.

If a lab is doing your prints then their tools, process defaults, and choices drive the result.

I find that underexposure just messes things up because one of the three colors starts falling off the curve before the others and color casts rear their ugly head.

gongman5000 · Jan 18, 2011

I just have the lab do all the processing and printing as I don't have access to a dark room.

Mainecoonmaniac · Jan 18, 2011

How about pre-flashing your film?

Mike Wilde · Jan 18, 2011

I do my own printing, and adding a (very) small amount of cirtrazinic acid to the RA -4 developer does as, advertised, cut contrast. Not for everyone I am aware but just to put my 2 cents in.

2F/2F · Jan 18, 2011

Hi,

By "pull," I am referring to development only, not exposure. You don't have to overexpose to pull process.

markbarendt · Jan 18, 2011

gongman5000 said:
I just have the lab do all the processing and printing as I don't have access to a dark room.

Just ask them to tone it down a little.

Easy for them to do.

Athiril · Jan 18, 2011

I've pulled down to 2 minutes processing time to use an old dodgy brand of ISO 400 film, has worked very well so far.

gongman5000 · Jan 19, 2011

Thanks, for clearing that up 2F, but don't people also overexpose and process regularly to desaturate the negative?

hi mainecoon, yeah I actually have thought about preflashing. I started a thread about it here,

(there was a url link here which no longer exists)

which I totally forgot about until you reminded me. I shoot a lot of street photography so preflashing every frame isn't always practical, but is definitely an option in some cases. though i think this would mostly only affect the saturation in the low tones unless I'm thinking about this wrong. And could cause color shift in the shadows or highlights depending on where I expose the gray card, however I'm not really sure how much of a problem this would be.

hrst · Jan 20, 2011

It's true that different people give very conflicting guidelines or rules of thumb how exposure affects color saturation. This is a same kind of problem as using color filters with BW film to affect "contrast" of final image -- it all depends mostly on situation and you must understand the whole concept.

First, you can assume that lower contrast means lower perceived color saturation. Then, start by plotting a characteristic curve of a film. You will quickly notice that increasing exposure will increase contrast IN SHADOWS, but adding more exposure will quickly decrease contrast IN HIGHLIGHTS. So, adding exposure will usually increase saturation in dark to almost middle gray areas of image, whereas the highlight areas will get more pastel. Many people like this interesting combination "look" which is typical to overexposed color negative material and cannot be achieved by any other means. So, if you find that it's conflicting that some say overexposure reduces saturation and some say it increases it, they are both right at the same time.

But, the best way to understand the concept is to bracket many test shots and evaluate them.

Then, the development time is a completely separate beast. Pull processing definitely reduces contrast, color saturation and grain whereas push processing increases all of them.

markbarendt · Jan 20, 2011

hrst said:
It's true that different people give very conflicting guidelines or rules of thumb how exposure affects color saturation. This is a same kind of problem as using color filters with BW film to affect "contrast" of final image -- it all depends mostly on situation and you must understand the whole concept.

Exactly, even changing the direction the camera is pointed will change the perceived saturation.

Jose Villa's work was what first caught my eye with regard to "over" exposing on purpose.

One of his "tricks" is back-lighting, bride and groom posed in front of the sun.

This gives a halo effect and lens flare, not to the point of creating geometrics, but enough to soften the colors and edges. Essentially he creates a soft focus situation for a normal lens.

Turn the camera 90 degrees with no other change and the perceived contrast change is going to be dramatic.

The other thing I see in the work of Jose Villa and others that use that style of shooting is a preference for brighter exposure placement.

I fall into this category too now.

I want the important parts of the shot to be "on the bright side". I'll happily settle for just a hint of detail in a cloud to get a nice bright face exposure.

Brighter colors also look more pastel, i wouldn't call that less saturated but some might.

gongman5000 · Jan 21, 2011

ok this all makes much more sense now, especially about the shifts in shadow/highlight contrast--that is much more intuitive to me.

srmcnamara · Jan 21, 2011

I once over-exposed 160s at 25 (by accident) and I quite liked the result which you can see Dead Link Removed

of course I was standing there wondering why I was getting exposures of 1/15 on a bright-cloudy day.

markbarendt · Jan 22, 2011

gongman5000 said:
ok this all makes much more sense now, especially about the shifts in shadow/highlight contrast--that is much more intuitive to me.

I think it's important to understand that part of what hrst is describing is driven by how the film and the paper curves interact.

Color negative films have an incredibly long straight line on their curve http://www.kodak.com/global/en/professional/support/techPubs/e4040/e4040.pdf see page 8. They just don't shoulder (over expose) easily, in fact that tech pub shows no shoulder at all. The highlight detail is really hard to hurt with C41 films.

The RA paper curve though is short. The straight line is steep and the toe and shoulder flatten quickly. http://www.kodak.com/global/plugins/acrobat/en/business/retailPhoto/products/papers/e7020.pdf see page 3.

What this means is that the paper is the limit; normal prints only show a portion of the detail available on the film's curve.

Shadows from a film that gets more exposure can show more contrast/better detail and color in print because the film is "thicker-than-normal" in those areas and they can block more light.

That's a choice not a given.

The "printer" is simply "placing" the print exposure to keep those shadows off the shoulder of the paper curve (the black/upper end). It makes no difference if that is somebody with an enlarger or a lab using a Lambda.

With a straight print, once the "printer" makes a choice with regard to placement of one point the rest of the image just falls wherever it falls.

If the "printer" makes a choice to have better shadow detail or brighter faces then that choice pushes some of the highlight detail out onto (or even off) the toe of the paper curve (white end). That progressively reduces contrast and detail at the white end as the placement of the zones from the film move farther into the curved and flat areas of the paper's curve.

The film's highlight detail and contrast is still strong and available it just requires some work like "burning in", to get it onto the paper.

frotog · Jan 22, 2011

Did you say you're doing your own ra4 printing? If yes then you're really up against the sensitometry of what's still available in ra4 paper - all of which is getting a lot hotter than it used to be. Pre-flashing the paper before exposure can tone down highlights up to a 1/3 of a stop. I find myself relying on this technique more and more in order to deal with today's over saturated and contrasty papers. While difficult to master, pre-flashing color media can open up a broad range of both exposure and color-cast control. However, if the brightness range is too much, making a hi-res scan and printing with laser light to ra4 media sure beats screwing around with masks and chemical additives.

2F/2F · Jan 22, 2011

One can use masks and chemical additives with color negative materials to excellent effect as well. It ain't rocket science, and ought not be dismissed so easily IMHO. If you decide to go with digital methods, there is a great place to talk about it at www.HybridPhoto.com. And RA paper is not necessarily hotter than it used to be as a rule. It is just that a lot of the different varieties that were otherwise have been given the axe.

hrst · Jan 22, 2011

Indeed C-41 films have a very long straight line, and shoulder is not usually plotted in data sheets, but it's really still there and starts usually just after the curve plot ends (usually around 10-11 stops from the beginning of toe). By overexposing e.g. three stops, you usually place some parts of the image on the shoulder already. Of course depending on scene. It's just a technical approximation or "design goal" that toe and shoulder are discarded in the whole process. In practice toe is almost always used, and the shoulder also becomes important when doing large overexposures for artistic reasons.

Shoulder is also very important in normally exposed frames to get the film look; thanks to it, bright overexposed highlights such as street lights at night or reflections from the sun do not look "clipped" in the same way as in d******, even if they are 10 stops over. In optical printing, they need careful burning however.

The paper point Mark mentioned is important. By overexposing just a stop or so, you usually end up with more total contrast because the shadows are not on the toe anymore, but highlights still are on the linear part. This way your shadows won't be "(film) toe on (paper) shoulder" anymore, giving higher perceived saturation on them. But, this higher contrast and the fact that you are now placing shadows on a longer scale on paper, moves your highlights on paper more on toe (nearer to Dmin) -- and this lowers highlight contrast! So, for the whole process, overexposure really increases shadow contrast and decreases highlight contrast, unless you do selective exposure by dodging and burning. Overall, an overexposed frame gives you more freedom in dodging and burning.

Indeed you have many many interesting choices you can do with optical printing either optically or by modifying chemistry. It would be nice to see more people do traditional optical printing also in color, not just B/W. Some good materials are discontinued but there are new ones that need a bit of experimentation. This could actually be easier for people who are new to color printing and not tied to old products, expecting to get the exactly same look.

markbarendt · Jan 23, 2011

hrst said:
It would be nice to see more people do traditional optical printing also in color, not just B/W.

I agree.

--------

With regard to the OP's question and knowing that the OP is using a lab what I think hrst and I are trying to get across is that it's not just a matter of overexposing the film, the shooter needs to have some understanding of and control over the printing process.

If I print it myself, the challenges are technical and practical.

If I have someone else do print work for me, the challenges are managerial. It's a relationship where both photographer and lab need to learn about what the other needs in order to get the desired result.

Both models require work and understanding, neither is automatically good or predicable.

frotog · Jan 23, 2011

2F/2F said:
And RA paper is not necessarily hotter than it used to be as a rule. It is just that a lot of the different varieties that were otherwise have been given the axe.

IMHO, you are wrong.

frotog · Jan 23, 2011

Hmm...let's see here... The OP is planning to shoot 8x10. His lab is souping the film and making prints for him since he does not have access to a color drkrm. He wants desaturated color and more powerful contrast control. Yes, he'll try overexposing and underdeveloping and that'll work to some extent. Should he try to make contrast reduction masks? Perhaps convince his lab to pour some Hydrogen Peroxide or citronic acid in their Colenta processor 20 gallon developing bath to reduce the contrast in his print? Or should he scan his 8x10 neg. and have at it in photoshop, and then have his lab print to ra4 laser light jet?

over-exposing to reduce saturation, pull proccess or not?

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