Shot at 200 developed at 400?

[Don_ih]

When I've shot at night with over-exposed film (I always shoot CineStill 800T at night rated at 400), I've never even compensated for reciprocity

Rating the film speed 1 stop slower doubles the exposure time, which might be enough to compensate for reciprocity, in exposures that are not too long to begin with.

 

[gone]

So I shoot Portra 400 with ISO 200 at night and my meter says 10s, but I'm shooting 26s (according to the Portra 400 reciprocity failure source). But before shooting 26s, I overexpose it by one stop with either shutter speed or aperture? Which will then add even more time to the original 26 seconds. Am I right?

Thank you Don for your concise explanation.

 

[Sirius Glass]

Sure! Glad to offer up some insight. I'm no pro, but I have had really great luck shooting color film at at least one stop overexposed with normal developing. A couple of years ago, I had shot some Ektar 100 at ISO 50 and when I loaded my camera at the beach the next afternoon with Portra 400, I forgot to change it to 200 on my camera and shot that roll at ISO 50. I developed it as-normal since I didn't want to risk pulling it and messing it up. It came out fine and that was 3 stops over-exposed.

For color negatives and black & white negative film has a wide enough exposure latitude to handle using half the ISO speed.

• Pros: more shadow detail
• Cons: possible blowing out of the highlights especially the sky

 

[ymc226]

Sure! Glad to offer up some insight. I'm no pro, but I have had really great luck shooting color film at at least one stop overexposed with normal developing. A couple of years ago, I had shot some Ektar 100 at ISO 50 and when I loaded my camera at the beach the next afternoon with Portra 400, I forgot to change it to 200 on my camera and shot that roll at ISO 50. I developed it as-normal since I didn't want to risk pulling it and messing it up. It came out fine and that was 3 stops over-exposed.

Those are great examples of gross overexposure working well. Can I ask what is your digital method, scanner or digital camera capture to convert your negatives. For these over-exposed shots was significant additional manipulation of the scanned files necessary?

 

[ymc226]

Also... I'd argue that there's a bigger deal being made about reciprocity than is really necessary. I'm not saying it's not a thing. But at relatively short exposure times (like 10 seconds), I don't know that it's as much a concern as it would be at longer exposures (like 1-5 minutes). When I've shot at night with over-exposed film (I always shoot CineStill 800T at night rated at 400), I've never even compensated for reciprocity and my stuff turns out fine. For your night stuff, I'd shoot at one stop over-exposed (set your ISO in your camera or hand-held meter or phone meter or whatever to 200 if you're shooting Portra 400) and then shoot at whatever shutter speed it tells you. If it's more than like 30 seconds, maybe add a stop by opening up your aperture one click or throw in another 15 seconds or whatever, but since you're already over-exposing by a stop, you're kind of accounting for reciprocity in that adjusted exposure calculation.

Being away from film for so long (I was an APUG member before the name change), I just recently "discovered" CineStill 800T and very much like the now overused effect seen on light sources, especially neon lights. Still have not bought any CineStill film but got rid of my Pentax Spot Meters years ago. Now have several small and medium sized Seikonic incident/reflective meters but not spot. For my future night time shooting (live only a few miles from the Santa Monica Pier which will have many shooting opportunities in the Summer), which will have both darkness and light sources, I was just planning to reflective meter at the light/dark transition zone and add or subtract stops of exposure as per my preference and see how things turn out. How important is it to spot meter if most print films like Portra have good latitude for overexposure. Would CineStill 800T have similar wide over-exposure latitude as that would be my night film preference.