Rollei 80S shot at 400? How to figure this out?

[kerrpanda]

I put a roll of Rollei 80S in my Canon Rebel and it read the ISO as 400. I knew there was a Rollei 400S as well, so I just shot the roll as the camera read it. Now, I am trying to figure out 1:why the camera read it as 400 ISO, and 2: what's the best guess as to how to develop this?? Is the camera correct or is the label correct? I use Rodinal or T-max developer, but am not sure what to trust about this situation. Can anyone shed any light on this, as the images are pretty important? Thank you!
Cynthia

 

[Gerald C Koch]

First check so see if the DX code contacts in the camera are clean. If possible use an old cassette to see if the camera is reading the codes correctly. However looking at the encoding makes it difficult see how ISO 80 could be confused as ISO 400. There is also the possibility of poor quality control at Rollei.

Check that the batteries in the camera are not getting weak.

 

[Ricardo Miranda]

The "Rollei Retro" branded films are Agfa Aviphot emulsions slit and packed by Maco in Germany. The cassette isn't DX coded.
The Canon EOS Rebel G (EOS 300 elsewhere) uses DX memory. That is, the camera defaults to whatever ISO was set previously on the last roll when a non-DX coded cassette is load. That is true for most of the Rebel range.
I bet you had an ISO 400 film there previously or you have set the ISO manually to ISO 400 previously.
Next time, check what ISO has been set.

 

[pentaxuser]

There is also the possibility of poor quality control at Rollei.

I appreciate that you cited other possible causes as well, Gerald but I wonder if you'd have cited poor QC had it been Ilford or even Fuji and Kodak. Is there any reason for us to believe that in terms of QC as it affects film speed labelling, Rollei has poor QC?

pentaxuser

 

[kerrpanda]

Well, actually, I had 400 ISO loaded in the camera previous to this roll, and I did not manually set the ISO. Tomorrow I will develop as 80 ISO shot as 400, in Xtol for 20 min at 75C, acc. to Massive Dev Chart. I will report my findings and see if it was QC or Canon inability to read the film. Either way, lesson learned, hopefully not in a really hard way. Thanks for the replies! Get back to you with results.
Cynthia

 

[theart]

In my experience, qc on the Rollei films is impeccable. But there are no DX codes on the cans, so speed has to be set manually. I don't know why Canons default to last iso instead of throwing an error with a user prompt. They probably saved about $0.10 pet unit that way.

20 minutes in xtol will salvage something, but I wouldn't expect any shadow detail at all.

 

[Peltigera]

I appreciate that you cited other possible causes as well, Gerald but I wonder if you'd have cited poor QC had it been Ilford or even Fuji and Kodak. Is there any reason for us to believe that in terms of QC as it affects film speed labelling, Rollei has poor QC?

pentaxuser

Even the best controlled factories have hiccups. On a technical note, modern factories use QA rather than QC - controlling the process not the product. If the line service chap brings the wrong empty cassettes to the line it could take a few hundred finished cassettes before the operator notices. Then it is a matter of quarantining recent production and hoping you have caught all the defective production.

Sent from my A1-840 using Tapatalk

 

[blockend]

In the absence of a DX code some cameras default to 100 ISO (Nikon consumer DSLRs), others to the previously set film speed. I loaded a Canon Rebel with DX coded 100 ISO film this morning, but wanted to rate it at 400. The Canon allows the user to override the set speed for the duration of the roll. My Nikons have to be set at minus 2 stops via exposure compensation to achieve the same effect.

If you expose a film incorrectly, stand development in Rodinal is a good way of recovering as much information as possible and keeping contrast low.