various questions about exposure

anorphirith · Jul 20, 2017

I'll keep it short (shots were mostly taken with tri-x 400@400, leica M4, and 35mm lens)
why does my black and white film comes out in such various colors?

in the frames below it appears that there are some bleeding happening. what could be causing that ? (see frame 29, 30 and 35)

finally, does low contrast means the frame is underexposed ? does this apply for indoor and outdoor photography ?

thanks

Sirius Glass · Jul 20, 2017

Welcome to APUG

The colors come from the combination of a particular paper developer and a particular paper. It has the effect of looking like toned prints. Keep track of the combinations for later use when you want to reproduce those tones for the right mood.

pentaxuser · Jul 20, 2017

That's an amazing range of colours from what looks like normally developed film. As the film looks to have been developed normally and has the trad B&W neg look, can I ask what paper developer you used to produce this range of colours. How you were able to do this is a new one on me. On the other hand if these are scans of normal B&W negs then we are into a whole "new ball game" as you say in the U.S. and the colours will therefore have nothing to do with trad film and print developing.

Perhaps you can tell us more

pentaxuser

Jacob Weiss · Jul 20, 2017

From the looks of it those are scans of negatives not prints correct?

If so... double check your scanning software that you are set up to scan black and white negative (with film holder presumably).

If you are using the Epson scan software, the professional mode with the best options is the best way to navigate scans

anorphirith · Jul 20, 2017

Jacob Weiss said:
From the looks of it those are scans of negatives not prints correct?

If so... double check your scanning software that you are set up to scan black and white negative (with film holder presumably).

If you are using the Epson scan software, the professional mode with the best options is the best way to navigate scans

Awesome thanks, so the color isn't coming from my film it's coming from the software? I set it as color negative because it's the only way to get 48bit out of it. so would think it's adds more greyscale depth to the scans once I convert them to BW. But I still wonder why the software sees all these different colors out of the same roll.
any ideas on the "bleeding" happening on the negatives ?
thanks

ntenny · Jul 20, 2017

The bleeding just looks to me like bright spots where the light bled through the edge of the film gate a little bit. It happens sometimes, depending on the camera and the scene. Were those spots all pretty extreme highlights in the original scene?

I agree with others, the colours look like a sc*n artifact.

-NT

jimjm · Jul 20, 2017

If that screenshot is scans of your negatives (not prints), you need to set your scanner preferences to B/W film. Your output file should also be in greyscale, not color.

Sometimes you'll get bleeding outside of the frame from having extremely intense light sources in your image. You'll also see this if you have the sun near the edge of a shot. It's just a reflection of that intense light off the pressure plate, or the shiny back side of the film itself. Nothing to worry about. Most films have an anti-halation layer that helps to minimize this.

Low contrast doesn't necessarily mean underexposure, if the range of tones in your scene are fairly close together with no bright highlights or deep shadows. Underexposure usually results in thin, faint negatives with little detail in the shadow areas. When you make a print, the shadow areas will look muddy and grey and it's difficult to achieve any true blacks without overexposing the print or jacking up the contrast. Here's something helpful that was posted on another thread here on APUG, showing how the negative and print will look in different situations:

jimjm · Jul 20, 2017

anorphirith said:
Awesome thanks, so the color isn't coming from my film it's coming from the software? I set it as color negative because it's the only way to get 48bit out of it. so would think it's adds more greyscale depth to the scans once I convert them to BW. But I still wonder why the software sees all these different colors out of the same roll.
any ideas on the "bleeding" happening on the negatives ?
thanks

Nope, B/W film has less information to capture than color, so there's no need for 48-bit. The color you're seeing is just arbitrary interpretation of the color of the film material by the scanner. It's looking to capture something that's not there.

pentaxuser · Jul 21, 2017

That is an excellent set of neg/prints, jimjm, to illustrate the combos of over/under exposure and development. Every other set of examples I have seen do not show this 50/50 split which really demonstrates each combo. Is there an articles section in which this can be placed?

Best reference I have seen. Well done

pentaxuser

MattKing · Jul 21, 2017

It comes from the following site, and I've referenced it regularly :
https://www.ephotozine.com/article/assessing-negatives-4682

pentaxuser · Jul 22, 2017

MattKing said:
It comes from the following site, and I've referenced it regularly :
https://www.ephotozine.com/article/assessing-negatives-4682

Thanks for that. I have bookmarked the site. However we see a lot questions on such matters and unless this is a copyright matter i.e. it cannot be legally imported into a specific articles section on APUG then it might be easier for the newbies to be referred to that article within APUG. It saves giving a specific link each time

Just a thought

pentaxuser

LAG · Aug 3, 2017

and I strongly hope that newbies (or not) will make their own inquiries (exp / dev) with their own material, without having to take any d*g*t*l article with particular results as a reference at all.

All the best!

Mainecoonmaniac · Aug 3, 2017

anorphirith said:
I'll keep it short (shots were mostly taken with tri-x 400@400, leica M4, and 35mm lens)
why does my black and white film comes out in such various colors?

in the frames below it appears that there are some bleeding happening. what could be causing that ? (see frame 29, 30 and 35)

finally, does low contrast means the frame is underexposed ? does this apply for indoor and outdoor photography ?

thanks

Your scans are various colors because you made a color scans. Scan grayscale and the color cast should go away. I would scan more than just 8 bits grayscale scan. Also when you under expose you film, the shadows will usually look clear, empty on the negative.

various questions about exposure

Moderator

Privacy & Transparency

Privacy & Transparency