Washed out pictures : Shooting issue ? development problem or scanning

Hi everyone !

I am coming to you for advice regarding scans I have just received from a professional lab. All the scans are really washed out.

I shot different film stocks on different cameras, which brings me to think the issue is probably on the lab side (+ I have never experienced issues with badly exposing film, let alone 8 entire rolls...) : Kodak Colorplus 200 shot on an automatic point & shoot, a Nikon FM2 and Kodak Gold 200 on Rolleiflex




What do you think? Is there a way to "save" my pictures? Any advice as to whether there's a problem with exposure or development, or even scanning?

Many thanks for your help and advice

Lucy

If you could post a pic or two of the negs it would help. Needs to be backlit, maybe tape the film strip to a window (I use a piece of wax paper between the window and neg, it can be done w/o). After making a one step, auto levels adjustment in Photoshop the contrast came back up.

LucyJoanP2975 said:

Hi everyone !

I am coming to you for advice regarding scans I have just received from a professional lab. All the scans are really washed out.

I shot different film stocks on different cameras, which brings me to think the issue is probably on the lab side (+ I have never experienced issues with badly exposing film, let alone 8 entire rolls...) : Kodak Colorplus 200 shot on an automatic point & shoot, a Nikon FM2 and Kodak Gold 200 on Rolleiflex

What do you think? Is there a way to "save" my pictures? Any advice as to whether there's a problem with exposure or development, or even scanning?

Many thanks for your help and advice

Lucy

Click to expand...

Without seeing the negatives, #1 foreground looks a bit underexposed, but the background is right on, #2 is underexposed and #3 looks on the exposure but color is way off. Something is definitely wrong with the scans of all 3.

P&S cameras can be difficult to control exposure when you have large areas of bright sky like #2. It sees the brightness and make the exposure 1-2 stops less. Some have a "backlight" switch that will bump the exposure, for example, if you have a person in shadow with a bright background.

Thank you so much for your answers and for sharing your thoughts.

momus said:

After making a one step, auto levels adjustment in Photoshop the contrast came back up.

Click to expand...

Thank you for this, it does look much better



I do not have my negatives back yet, as my lab is now shut for the summer but I will post them as soon as I do. The fact that the lab shut right after sending my scans is actually what makes me wonder if they haven't rushed the development... I am hoping the issue is related to the scanning, which would enable me to solve this issue. Is there a possibility something went wrong in development?

cramej said:

P&S cameras can be difficult to control exposure when you have large areas of bright sky like #2. It sees the brightness and make the exposure 1-2 stops less. Some have a "backlight" switch that will bump the exposure, for example, if you have a person in shadow with a bright background.

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Actually, the #2 road picture was shot on my Nikon FM2, not the P&S

What I haven't mentionned is that all 142 pictures from my 8 rolls have this weird color (not one is decent...) Here are a couple more

LucyJoanP2975 said:

Thank you so much for your answers and for sharing your thoughts.



Thank you for this, it does look much better



I do not have my negatives back yet, as my lab is now shut for the summer but I will post them as soon as I do. The fact that the lab shut right after sending my scans is actually what makes me wonder if they haven't rushed the development... I am hoping the issue is related to the scanning, which would enable me to solve this issue. Is there a possibility something went wrong in development?


Actually, the #2 road picture was shot on my Nikon FM2, not the P&S

What I haven't mentionned is that all 142 pictures from my 8 rolls have this weird color (not one is decent...) Here are a couple more


View attachment 313188 View attachment 313189 View attachment 313190

Click to expand...

#2 looks like it has some vertical banding, but all three look underexposed. As mentioned above please post the negatives when you get them.

I really hope what we are seeing here is a scanning problem, but I'm afraid it's poor development...

Sirius Glass said:

#2 looks like it has some vertical banding

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And there's dirt and scratches on at least 2 images that aren't likely to be caused by the photographer.

Scanning c41 can be tricky in terms of getting the right color rendition and contrast, partly because of the orange mask and partly because these are artistic decisions rather than absolutes. Having said that, these are pretty abysmal scans. It's hard to tell if the negatives are also wonky.

Are these people running a mini lab or are they doing color processing by hand in something like a Jobo? I'm suspecting the latter given the nature of the dust & scratches. I also wouldn't be surprised if these are flatbed scans from consumer level equipment.

All this doesn't bode too well for the quality of this lab, but it's very possible that additional problems are also present, such as poor exposure/metering and perhaps a camera light leak.

Again, thank you for your answers.

They are not a mini lab but a quite famous lab in Paris. However, I am unsure of their work flow process. I think they rushed the development of my film before closing off for the summer...

I will definitely post the pictures of the negatives as soon as I get them.

I'd like to add, and I hope I am not sounding presumptuous (!!), that I really don't think I did not expose them properly. I know my cameras, I've attached some of my older shots, to show you what my film camera pictures usually look like...

LucyJoanP2975 said:

I think they rushed the development of my film before closing off for the summer...

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Welcome to Photrio.
There is a very good chance that if the lab rushed anything, it would have been the scanning process, not the development process.
Lab scanning takes a lot more time and handling than film development in any automated workflow.

LucyJoanP2975 said:

They are not a mini lab but a quite famous lab in Paris. However, I am unsure of their work flow process.

Click to expand...

I meant the term 'minilab' not as the size of their business, but the equipment used for development. A minilab is a highly automated film (and sometimes, paper) processing machine where you basically feed the film in on one end and it comes out fully processed from the other end. This is in contrast with e.g. drum processing where an operator has to manually load film onto a reel and depending on the machine has to perform other duties such as timing each process step, exchanging processing fluids etc. There's also dip and dunk processing, which I think is rather unlikely to have been used here, as it's only used by the handful of remaining truly high-volume labs. These are the kinds of labs that won't typically shut down for holidays either.

Your photos certainly are nice, but as such, they do not prove that your exposures are consistent; there is still a possibility that some of your frames were underexposed. Your first and second image of this thread do suggest significant underexposure, even if additional problems were present in development and scanning. Don't beat yourself up over it; we all miss a beat sometimes!

PS: the first image of your set of three 'known good' images looks like it also might have been underexposed, but salvaged in digital post processing, possibly without you being aware of it.

In any case, I would strongly recommend finding a way to scan or digitize your negatives yourself, or even start printing optically onto RA4 paper. For one, it effectively closes the feedback loop between exposure and end result, which enables you to learn and improve more efficiently. It might save you some money in the long run, and being better in control of the end result might enable you to surpass the quality you're used to even from a decent lab. More importantly, it's lots of fun!

cramej said:

Without seeing the negatives, #1 foreground looks a bit underexposed, but the background is right on, #2 is underexposed and #3 looks on the exposure but color is way off. Something is definitely wrong with the scans of all 3.

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I see what you mean for 1. I like the desaturated look of 2 but I accept that is only my opinion and others may prefer the increased saturation. What makes the colours way off for 3? Again it has a desaturated look but other than that why are the colours off?

I may have misunderstood what you mean by colours being way off

Thanks

pentaxuser

LucyJoanP2975 said:

Again, thank you for your answers.

They are not a mini lab but a quite famous lab in Paris. However, I am unsure of their work flow process. I think they rushed the development of my film before closing off for the summer...

I will definitely post the pictures of the negatives as soon as I get them.

I'd like to add, and I hope I am not sounding presumptuous (!!), that I really don't think I did not expose them properly. I know my cameras, I've attached some of my older shots, to show you what my film camera pictures usually look like...

View attachment 313196

View attachment 313195

View attachment 313194

Click to expand...

Those are what I would expect from the film.

pentaxuser said:

What makes the colours way off for 3?

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Magenta cast in the center, lighter part of the image, blue cast along the darker edges. So different color casts depending on density, and a gradient density varying across the image surface. And as you noted, saturation issues. If you analyze those images closely, it's really a litany of defects and major problems.

Thanks, koraks I'd better stick to b&w

pentaxuser

MattKing said:

There is a very good chance that if the lab rushed anything, it would have been the scanning process, not the development process.

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But if the lab was shutting down for a while, they might have overworked their developing chemistry.

I haven't had my coffee yet, so please forgive me. Could any of this be due to fogging by airport security x-ray? Back before 9/11 we used to be able to get a hand search at the security check point, but I haven't flown with film since then.

Don Heisz said:

....if the lab was shutting down for a while, they might have overworked their developing chemistry.

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This seems like a very likely culprit and could explain most if not all of the defects shown by the OP.
Minilabs require fastidious routine maintenance service and QC checks.

martinola said:

I haven't had my coffee yet, so please forgive me. Could any of this be due to fogging by airport security x-ray?

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Most probably not.

The pictures that appear exposed OK are just under-saturated as far as color. Can you get under-saturated film that is exposed correctly from devlopment or scanning?

Alan Edward Klein said:

The pictures that appear exposed OK are just under-saturated as far as color. Can you get under-saturated film that is exposed correctly from devlopment or scanning?

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A good question, Alan. The OP's pictures vary a lot, for instance pic 1 doesn't look de-saturated to me. It's only fault that I can see is that the shadows lack a bit of detail but as the bright background may have influenced the meter then that be why there is a lack of detail in the foreground shadows. The second pic of the road may be underexposed but from my perspective and I may be unusual in my tastes for colour saturation, it looks better than the change that someone made in PS so can we be sure that this is definitely underexposure? In neither of those can I see any colour crossover and yet in the third pic of Denny's others can see colour crossover. In this one most of the colours that are there do look washed out, especially the windows' awning but could this be the real colours of a weathered diner or whatever Denny's is

I presume that pic 2 for instance doesn't belong to the same film as pic 3 which is Denny's or if it does, can crossover arise in one frame but not in another from the same film and processing?

If I have understood the OP's original post we are looking at selection of pics from 8 rolls, 2 different film types and 3 different film cameras. Yes a lot of the second set of pics do look worse than the first three but quite where that gets us in establishing "culprits"/ causes, I don't know

I fail to see how we identify the problem or problems with such a variety of variables. We haven't seen pics of the negs yet

Narrowing down a possible cause or causes will not be easy or quick even armed with a lot more information than we have now but we certainly need more information on my opinion

pentaxuser

With some (admittedly smaller) labs in the UK and in Germany I have noticed erratic quality of C41 negative development during hot Summers and Summer holidays.

I do not have proof for this, but I have been hypothesizing that particularly during spells of really hot weather and heat waves, C41 chemistry temperature control might be difficult to maintain for a poorly equipped lab or for, say, a photography studio/retail outlet whose core business is not film development.

Another factor might be staff overwork due to larger numbers of rolls dropped post- Summer holidays.

I've since taken the habit of piling up all of my summer C41 rolls at home only to drop them in early September.