honcho

Painful viewing.

The Fuji X100F is my favourite digital camera for travel, backpacking and general use. I also use it a lot for wedding and portrait photography. I would say it is my favourite digital camera of all that I have owned and used in the past 19 years for both my work and my personal photography.

The VW, being white and dominating the frame, has influenced the meter reading. If your camera has ttl centre weighted metering or you have used a reflected reading with a hand held meter, then you have placed the VW perfectly well to fool the camera or meter into underexposing. The meter pattern has seen a large area of highlight in the frame (the VW) and reacted accordingly, resulting in the 1.5 stops under exposure you have here. Under exposing transparency film will result in often high contrast and always very dense shadows that contain no detail, as you see here. No desktop scanner has the ability to punch through those blocked shadows even if they hold slight detail. Transparency film has a very narrow margin either side of correct exposure, as a basic rule of thumb you need to meter for the highlights and bracket your exposures. A spot meter that allows you to store and compare shadow, midtone and highlight readings is useful and then bracketing around your calculations is the usual method of obtaining correctly exposed transparencies. Hope this helps you to understand why your VW image is underexposed and why your scanner has lost it’s battle with the shadows.

When it comes to 'professional' labs there are very few I trust here and the number that can reliably handle my films, I count on the fingers of one hand. The rest got one finger a long time ago! That said, there is always a risk as we all know, whether it be film and processing problems, damaged and lost negs and transparencies, corrupt cards, dead hard drives, cyber attacks or whatever. Let's hope you don't have any more problems with that lab!

Only one roll of film out of sixteen would indicate a possible processing equipment problem or mishandling, assuming this wasn't the 16th roll when the camera could have developed a light leak or not been closed correctly after loading. If it was the last roll of 16, expose another roll and have it processed by someone/place other than whoever processed the faulty one. If it comes back faulty, it would indicate a camera light leak and possibly the seals or shutter might need attention. If it comes out ok, then the lab or whoever processed the faulty film are probably to blame.

Gary, I took the image on my Outer Hebrides workshop in September. North Atlantic weather can change from sunny and balmy to storms and back again within minutes! The image below was taken within an hour of the previous one! Hasselblad 503CW Zeiss 50mm f4 distagon cfi Fuji Velvia 50

Approaching weather front, Outer Hebrides September 2017. Hasselblad 503CW Zeiss 50mm f4 distagon cfi Fuji Velvia 50

Calm sunrise at Callanish, Isle of Lewis. Fuji GSW690iii Kodak Ektar 100

Not sure if I've exceeded my quota of 'Thanks' and it isn't showing, but these images of Bradford are compelling. I might have a wander around there myself at some point.

Callanish, Isle of Lewis. Agfa Isolette iii Solinar f3.5 Fuji Acros 100 in RO9

Thanks, Charles. That particular stone has a similar effect 'face to face'. It's immediate neighbour to it's right is equally fascinating, they seem to be locked in conversation!

Standing stone, Isle of Lewis. A couple of things come into play here: the gentle contrast of the Solinar lens and the gritty bite of RO9. I like this combination with the kind of benign, diffuse light so often found in the Outer Hebrides in autumn. Good for strong textures. Agfa Isolette iii Solinar f3.5 Fuji Acros 100 in RO9

Langdale Pikes, Lake District. Fuji GX617 Fujinon SWD 90mm Fuji Velvia 50

The only 'flat' part of the C2C is across the Vale of Mowbray, a swathe of farmland that seperates the Yorkshire Dales from the North Yorks Moors. If you think the C2C through The Lakes is tough, try the Pennine Way or the Southwest Coast Path!

Neil, the tree is ok but not bitingly sharp or has anything like the tonal range I would expect from 10x8" The water image is completely out of focus, the tones are mashed and the highlights are blown. Are you using a flatbed scanner to scan these negatives? Do the scans really resemble the negatives for tonal range and sharpness? Not trying to rain on your parade here, just trying to help, but you are doing something wrong and 10x8" needs to be done right or there is no point.