Earlier today, Aaron Reynolds wrote:
>This is a very common misconception. The Ns do not represent pure,
>unaltered exposure; rather they indicate that no correction has been
>made to the machine's automatic reading of the neg. Thus, getting a
>roll printed all Ns means that the machine will do auto exposure on your
>negs and no one will fix it if the machine can't tell that your image is
>perhaps mostly dark or mostly light. A perfectly exposed night scene,
>for instance, when printed on N becomes a wishy-washy grey-brown too
>light mess.
>
>Think of those + and - as exposure compensation on your camera when
>you're in program mode...that's how these printers all work. Same for
>colour, too...a picture of mostly blue sky, printed all Ns on the colour
>channels, will probably come out on the yellowy side. Some printers
>have more sophisticated exposure programs, particularly the newer ones,
>making deviation from the N less and less neccessary, but that still
>does not make N the "correct" or "normal" exposure.
>
>Be happy that you have a lab that DOES deviate from the Ns...that means
>they have a printer who knows something who's trying to make your prints
>look good!
First of all, thanks for pointing this misconception.
If leaving the "N" alone will not do the trick for that situation I
described in my original post ("When I take my films
to the lab I usually end up with a grainny photo and the subject in the
foreground is not as dark as I wanted it to be. I assume they are using the
negative film's greater latitude than slide's to compensate for the
darker --- but on purpose --- exposure."), what can I do? Make sure that I
shoot at least three stops under the values indicated by the cameras
centerweight meter, so the machine won't be able to "compensate" and the
printer will probably know that I want the scene to be darker?
Something on your explanations is puzzling me: Most minilabs have a machine
that has a built in software that sets automatic compensation figures for
each kind of print film, right? the minute you start working with the
negatives, it will select those default values indicated by the software,
regardless of how precise or not the photographer was when pressing the
shutter? If that's the case, what's the point of all that discussion about
learning to precise "read" light with the zone system or even a spotmeter?
You won't get what you read, anyway... ;-) Or am I just getting more
confused?
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