Home

Please support mflenses.com if you need any graphic related work order it from us, click on above banner to order!

SearchSearch MemberlistMemberlist RegisterRegister ProfileProfile Log in to check your private messagesLog in to check your private messages Log inLog in

overexposing increases grain?
View previous topic :: View next topic  


PostPosted: Thu Sep 29, 2016 6:40 am    Post subject: overexposing increases grain? Reply with quote

Hi there,
I just got a superia 200 film developed and I can see a lot of grain.
I was shootign the film at iso 100 and then it was developed normally.

Can the overexposure be the cause?
Alex


PostPosted: Thu Sep 29, 2016 8:08 am    Post subject: Re: overexposing increases grain? Reply with quote

alaios wrote:
Hi there,
I just got a superia 200 film developed and I can see a lot of grain.
I was shootign the film at iso 100 and then it was developed normally.

Can the overexposure be the cause?
Alex


H'mm could be pixels (artifacts) showing because of a bad scan? Under exposed shadows can show this (because of scanning).
If you look on the net there are example of taking shots of the same subject, with the same film @ 5 stops over and 3 stops under with no problems...well except for less quality for the most underexposed ones. I've done a test 8 stops over and you do get a problem then...h'mm well what would you expect Smile


PostPosted: Thu Sep 29, 2016 8:26 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

so how do you improve your scans then?? I have a plustek 8200i scanner which is considered a very good device anyway.
So what do you think I should change in my process?

see also my post here: (these are the same bunch of film)
http://forum.mflenses.com/viewtopic,p,1482372.html#1482372


PostPosted: Thu Sep 29, 2016 9:29 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

alaios wrote:
so how do you improve your scans then?? I have a plustek 8200i scanner which is considered a very good device anyway.
So what do you think I should change in my process?

see also my post here: (these are the same bunch of film)
http://forum.mflenses.com/viewtopic,p,1482372.html#1482372


Huh! If you are getting scratches like that then complain to whoever developed the film, spots and hair marks etc (assuming these are not stuck on the neg due to bad handling by the lab) are caused by not ensuring the neg is clean before scanning.....use a blower to clean the neg and glass.
What you could do is send your next film to a good lab for dev and scan as an example for what you should get with Superia 200...it's a very good film although old compared to the latest and you will always see a slight grain with 35mm...well I haven't done colour printing the old way in the darkroom to by pass scanning to see how good the grain is.


PostPosted: Thu Sep 29, 2016 3:31 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I've never shot Superia 200 before, but I have shot Superia 400 and really didn't care for it because it was way too grainy for my tastes. I've shot just regular old Fujicolor 200 and found it to be somewhat grainy.

The only other ISO 200 C-41 film I've used has been Kodak Gold 200 and I got similar amounts of grain with it. I think it's just the "nature of the beast" if you will, with ISO 200 film. This image is a good example of what I mean. There's a fair amount of graininess in the clouds.



PostPosted: Thu Sep 29, 2016 6:52 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

There is only one way to tell if a film is grainy and is to do it the old way in the darkroom.....these two snaps using superia 200 were a low scan 1800 X 1200 px by a supermarket with a very good scanner (Fuji frontier) the higher the scan the less the pixels\grain will show, and in fact a good lab can do a 30cm X 38cm print from 35mm with hardly any pixels\grain showing if viewed from the correct viewing distance for the size. i.e. not using a magnifying glass close up Smile
The shots look better if you click on them.
Hex 50mm


Fuji 100mm


PostPosted: Fri Sep 30, 2016 7:52 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I am going to shoot during the next days a superia 200 and then send it to a good lab.
And see what I get


PostPosted: Fri Sep 30, 2016 8:48 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

alaios wrote:
I am going to shoot during the next days a superia 200 and then send it to a good lab.
And see what I get


A guy here from Poland or Hungary (or wherever) posted some shots using Superia 400 and there was hardly any pixel\grain showing..well posting from the UK to mainland Europe is expensive but maybe it would be a lot cheaper for you overland if you can find where he had his shots dev and scanned. It would mean going through all the shots posted and then emailing him.


PostPosted: Wed Oct 05, 2016 10:39 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Interesting about the latitude of film:-

http://petapixel.com/2015/08/10/how-much-can-you-overexpose-negative-film-have-a-look/


PostPosted: Thu Oct 06, 2016 12:43 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

It makes sense. Recently, I was going through some old Kodachromes that my father had taken while he was stationed in Korea during the conflict. Some of them were rather severely underexposed. I was shooting dupes of them, using my DSLR, and I was surprised by the amount of detail I was able to pull out of these slides during the conversion process. So, given that a negative is the reverse of a slide, where the more overexposed the image, the darker the negative, it makes perfect sense. Dark emulsions carry much more exposure information than light emulsions do.

Here's one of the underexposed slides. The scene was a Christmas pageant put on by an orphanage that was close to my dad's base. First is the image as recorded when I made the duplicate. Next is the converted image.




Dad also shot a lot of B&W images while over there. Looking through them, I was able to find a few that were substantially overexposed. Here's one. First is the duplicate as shot, then the dupe as processed, and finally the dupe shown inverted, to which a bit of contrast was added.





PostPosted: Thu Oct 06, 2016 7:13 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Great result for you. I've gone 8 times over in exposure in a test but the result was erm better than nothing and as mentioned.....the problem of the scanner trying to get throught the dense neg.
The old adage is still true with neg film i.e. expose for the shadows and let the highlights take care of themselves Wink
But I suppose it depends on how important are the dark areas in your shot Question


PostPosted: Sat Oct 08, 2016 3:43 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I can't really say that I give a lot of thought to best areas to evaluate for exposure when shooting negatives. Mostly I just try to stay away from underexposure. Almost all of my color film experience is with slides, where exposure is critical. For years, I've always said the same thing about slides -- expose for the shadows and let the highlights fall where they may. I would say this because too often I'd wind up with unusable slides because exposure of the subject was way under because there may have been bright light sources intruding somewhere in the frame. But more recently I've thought more about this and I realize that I don't just expose for the shadows. I expose for the subject, and if the subject is in the shadows -- which is often true if there are extraneous bright light sources in the frame -- then that's what I expose for. But if the subject is in a brighter area, then I must adjust exposure accordingly.

Now as for your negatives being too dense for your scanner, I can understand this because I've scanned probably thousands of negatives with my scanner. But these days I'm trying my hand at duplicating them with my Sony NEX 7 (before with my old Canon DSLR). With the really underexposed slides (or overexposed negs), I move the dupe rig very close to the off-camera flash I'm using to make sure the image is getting plenty of light. But, the really great thing about duping images with my NEX is that it produces raw images, which I can then load into Photoshop's raw image converter. That piece of software is incredible. It's almost as easy as one click to convert a piece of emulsion that is way off to almost or some times exactly a perfectly exposed looking image. It's really that good. The images I show above, most of the work was done with one click using Photoshop's raw image converter. So you might try duping your negs and slides, and see how things work out for you. I've posted images here before showing my dupe rig, but I've also seen a number of different rigs that folks have come up with to achieve the same results, so all I can say is, give it a try. If you have a copy of PHotoshop, then you already have a great utility that makes owning PS worthwhile.


PostPosted: Sat Oct 08, 2016 7:51 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

erm well cooltouch I don't have a decent digi camera only a half working compact given to me Wink
And agree slide (pos) film has much less latitude, although in the past have made cock-ups with exposure and still got a reasonable shot....well better than nothing Smile