Shot Portra 400NC at EI 250. Did I mess up?

Hello everyone,

I just finished a portrait session for a friend of mine and his girlfriend and I accidentally over exposed a few rolls (3) of Portra 400NC. Now, the light was pretty nice early this morning in Washington, DC (at least for a while), she was wearing a white dress and he was wearing a black suit. I totally forgot to change the ISO setting on my camera and I shot the entire session at ISO 250. Any advice on how to rescue some potentially nice photographs?

Thanks!

PS: It's my first experience with Portra 400NC.

No you'll be totally fine. A lot of people shoot at 250 by choice. Negative film handles overexposure nicely. Just develop normally and enjoy!

What nickabean said. There's little you can do about it anyway; pulling C-41 development isn't going to do much, and none of that good.

My normal speed. Works much better than box speed.

From what I've read, overexposure results in a denser negative, which is good

Most of us down rate slightly so perfect, as others have said

Ian

I think you're OK!

Jeff

Maybe be a little more on the contrasty side but you'll like the color saturation. It's worth the time to try it.

Overexposing lowers contrast (and color saturation).

hrst said:

Overexposing lowers contrast (and color saturation).

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Are you sure that's not underexposing? Denser color negatives really up the contrast, I use overexposure because it works well with my fashion work...

fiducio said:

Are you sure that's not underexposing? Denser color negatives really up the contrast, I use overexposure because it works well with my fashion work...

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Please learn the very basics. As you overexpose negative, the image goes towards the shoulder area in the curve, and, that is lower in contrast.

You will be alright because there is enough latitude in the exposure. Just check the light meter setting the next time you load your camera.

Steve

In fact, many people consider that choosing between normal exposure and overexposure is the contrast control knob for C-41 & analog printing, as you cannot alter contrast in printing as easily as in B/W printing. Of course, overexposure results in denser negative, but when this is compensated in printing by exposing the paper longer, the result is an image lower in contrast than with normal neg. Some people may overexpose even 3 stops just for extreme contrast reduction, still with very high image quality (if you like low contrast). Of course it reduces sharpness a little because of reflections inside the film.

Of course, there is a limit even with color neg overexposure latitude; here's a scan of neg overexposed 9 stops (that was 1 second in bright sunlight, 1/500 metered!) , scanned and altered digitally to reveal the data: Dead Link Removed . This kind of extreme overexposure cannot be printed traditionally and it isn't of good quality at all, but as you can see, negative film somehow performs even very extreme overexposures; --- one stop, even two stops over is just normal usage, and you could say that it never loses any information.

On the other hand, underexposure (when there is enough light to shoot normally) is seldom used by choice, unless a blocked-shadows look is desired. Then, highlights such as sky can be placed in the middle of the curve producing high contrast and saturation. But underexposure starts to cut down image details from the shadows very quickly. Image underexposed three stops may be almost unusable but image overexposed three stops can be completely ok.