"Eduardo Carone Costa Jr." wrote:
> 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?
In this case, the lab should be printing "+" more on those specific
images. Most labs print to give you the most detail, so rich blacks
are, as a rule, printed up grey and wishy washy to show those
details...they are assuming that your flash didn't go off, or that you
want to see the detail in the face of the person that's silhouetted or
something like this, because there are people out there who will
complain about it. Trust me. All you can do is develop a relationship
with your lab, particularly the person printing: let them know that you
like those images printed "right", and let them know what your
intentions were. And if you don't like the first print, most places
(most good places, anyways) will make the print over for you at no extra charge.
> 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?
Nope, it'll still compensate. Your image will be worse: you'll lose
more detail.
> 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?
It's not a default from the software, completely. There is a default
starting point for each film, programmed by the lab based on setup negs
(or guesswork, depending on how cheap the lab is ;) ). From this, the
machine makes a judgement on how long to expose the neg for based on an
exposure reading of light coming through the neg. You can't have an
absolute reading for a number of reasons, one of the biggest of which is
that the amount of light and colour of the light coming from the lamp
will change to a certain extent every day and even during the day: the
bulb changes colour as it gets hotter and colder, and emits more light
or less depending on age, temperature, how long it's been on already
today, and even minor fluctuations in voltage coming from the wall. In
a high-speed situation, which a minilab is, minor changes can cause
massive differences in the results. One one-hundredth of a second isn't
much exposure time...unless your exposure is only a tenth of a second
long, in which case it's ten percent.
Anyhow, as to the second part: if your exposure is precise, a good,
precise, perfect print can be made from it. If it's not, you might be
able to get a pretty good print, maybe even an excellent one, but never
a perfect one.
I sometimes gloss over important facts that I take for granted, so
please keep askin' questions if my explanation is still befuddling
you...it's probably because of the way I'm explaining. :)
-Aaron
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