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Do you still photography guys actually under- and over-develop your film? AFAIK, in cinematography this is rarely done, usually only when the DP is going after a specific look. Often times the DP will intentionally overexpose a little and then develop normally, so that when they go to print (or do digital color grading) they have a nice, dense negative with lots of information on it to work with.OP posted:We do this for many reasons, say you only have ISO 800 film and it's getting dark, underexpose the film by one stop nad have the lab develop the film for longer and you have just pushed to EI 1600. To clarify, if your scene is too dark for the film you've got, pretend it's the next step up in ISO numbers (so if the film is rated as 800, pretend it's 1600), expose for the pretend ISO rating, then tell your lab you want the film pushed one stop. Pushing the film one stop adds the equivalent of one stop exposure, with the cost being increased grain and contrast. For instance, if the best exposure for your scene at ISO 800 would be f/2.4, but your lens only goes to f/4, just go ahead and shoot at f/4, then push development by one stop (or whatever the difference between your optimal aperture and your actual aperture is), effectively giving you ISO 1600 film. Better yet, instead just increase exposure time if you can. Then you don't have to deal with the increased grain and over-contrastiness of pushed film. quote:Conversely if you are trying to capture a scene with a very high dynamic range, you can underexpose and reduce the development for increased shadow detail. Remember this phrase: Expose for the shadows and print for the highlights. With negative film the longer you expose the film the more detail you have in your shadows. Thus by pulling the film you have given more exposure to your shadows and by cutting development (the standard is 20% of your time per stop pulled) you have reduced the highlights. Do you mean overexpose and then pull development? Of course, again, do still photographers actually pull their film on purpose? I can understand pulling it if you waaaay overexposed, or are shooting positive film, but can't see why you'd bother overexposing negatives a half stop or stop to fill in the shadows only to undo that by pulling the development. Printing for the highlights means just that: printing for the highlights. In other words, overexpose negative film a little, develop normally, and then when it comes time to make prints go for the highlights. Or am I just a stupid amateur cinematographer?
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Jun 3, 2008 13:44
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| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 09:52 |
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Ahh, I see. Most of my photography knowledge is cinematography rather than still photography. Even when doing still photos, though, I tend towards overexposing a half stop and then just developing normal. That way the shadows get filled in, but the highlights don't blow out either. I usually shoot T-Max 100, which in my experience handles this pretty well. And yes, of course I know who Ansel Adams was, and am aware of his zone system, though I thought it was mostly about making sure his lab assistants could do additional prints of his photos accurately. Doc Block fucked around with this message at 22:06 on Jun 3, 2008 |
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Jun 3, 2008 22:03
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OK. lovely scan from a print done on a lovely flatbed; the actual print has a lot more shadow detail.
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Jun 4, 2008 08:17
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As someone who works in a drugstore photo lab, I can verify that 99% of the photo employees know absolutely nothing about photography. They get told, "put this here, then push this button, then that button" and viola! prints come out. Machines get poorly maintained, negatives get mishandled, etc. I've been in situations where the film processor will fail its morning calibration tests, we'll call the number we're told to call when it fails, only to have the guy on the phone say (after telling him the numbers from the densitometer), "Go ahead and run film, it's not that out of calibration." I also noticed that the range of acceptable densitometer values kept getting expanded, so that older machines or older chemicals or whatever didn't need to be repaired or replaced. I've seen the head of our photo department roll up a roll of 35mm film by wrapping it around his bare hand. Hell, one time a young girl came in to get some additional 8x10s made of what she said was her first paid portrait shoot. The store manager was over in the photo department with me for some reason. The customer held up the negative sleeves and began to point out which ones she wanted, but couldn't read the frame numbers while they were in the sleeves. So, the store manager, eager to help, ripped them out of the customer's hand, took the film out with her bare hands (putting her fingers all over the frames), placed it on the counter, and slid it over to the customer, saying "Now just read off the frame numbers you want." And then she didn't understand why the customer threw a fit after seeing the negatives get scratched to hell  So, yeah, get your film developed at a pro lab. Edit: we've also had photography students drop off B&W film, not realizing that you can't process "real" B&W film in C-41 chemistry. Unfortunately, despite being repeatedly told otherwise, many of our photo employees don't seem to realize this either, so they throw it in the minilab and then wonder why the film comes out blank. The situation is made worse by the fact that there are some B&W films made so they can be developed in C-41 chemistry (but not in ordinary B&W chemistry). Doc Block fucked around with this message at 03:03 on Jun 10, 2008 |
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Jun 10, 2008 02:50
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