On 1/26/2012 6:45 PM, Jim Nichols wrote:
> Thanks, again, Moose. You have given me a lot of food for thought.
>
> This camera has an electronic shutter, and I am shooting in what they term
> "AE Mode", or aperture-preferred. In looking at the negatives, they all
> seem to be properly exposed and of similar density, though they cover a wide
> variety of subjects and lighting conditions. The negatives for "friends" and
> "self-portrait" seem to be very similar.
As the comments of a couple of others have confirmed my thought that
underexposure, including dark parts of overall
properly exposed images, brings up the grain, I would still experiment with
greater exposure in situations without
direct sunlight.
> I see what you call "grain" in the reflection of the blade, but I had not
> even noticed it.
LOL! What would you call it?
> In fact, I dusted off my light box and got out my loupe, and I can find no
> problem with the negatives. My judgement on the exposure compensation was
> based on the images on the CD, which appear lighter than normal. So, do I
> decrease the exposure, in order to get a darker CD? After all, that is what
> I work from in the long term, since I gave my old scanner to my son.
As you have chosen a crippled scanning process, with which I am unfamiliar, I
really don't know. As the scanner is part
of the scan=>print cycle of an automated processor, it is almost certain that
the brightness of the scans, and prints,
If you were to order them, is automated.
If so, greater exposure won't affect scan brightness at all. You aren't dealing
with a black box with output
proportional to input. But because the film is exposed differently, and
possibly because the light through it is
amplified less, the grain/noise may be different. Since long before digital,
drug store film processing has had as a
primary goal producing bright, colorful prints from film mis-exposed, both over
and under, in simple cameras. I very
much doubt if that has changed, other than getting 'smarter'.
As an experiment, I once took the same film, exposed in the same camera in the
same place, to two different places to be
processed. At the drug store, I got Kodak processing that gave almost painfully
bright colorful prints. Highlights and
shadows were just gone. At the serious camera store, I got Kodak Royal
processing, with far subtler, truer colors and
contrast, and far more shadow and highlight detail. It was just an experiment,
as I was going to scan any good frames
myself anyway.
You are still dealing with the same issues.
There must be a competent, reasonably priced lab you could send the film to?
Send a strip of film to AG, to run through his Nikon and one to me, for my
Canon scanner. Then you can get some
references to how the film actually performs and what scans should look like.
Even if you don't do that, do try
bracketed 'over exposures' on the Walgreen's machine. Hey, double up; shoot a
test roll, run it through Walgreen's, then
send a bit to each of us. :-)
"There they stood, on the dusty main street of Deadwood, facing each other
warily, the solid Midwesterner, the flake
from the edge of the Continent, scanners at the ready ..."
> ...
>
> Anyway, I'm trying to get my arms around all this. And, I may try to locate
> a source of Portra 400, which everyone seems to rave about.
You still may have a less than ideal experience with the Walgreen's
process/scans, but a better film may help. If you
order form a smart place like B&H, etc. they will be sure to ship by some means
other than USPS, to avoid ionizing
radiation.
Radiant Moose
--
What if the Hokey Pokey *IS* what it's all about?
--
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