Sunny Sixteen Question

[Steve Ricoh]

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This article on exposure latitude makes an interesting read: https://petapixel.com/2016/03/29/exposure-affects-film-photos/

It concludes saying colour film has a high tolerance to overexpose. B&W is similar I believe, but with lower margin (I'm sure I'll get corrected on the last statement if incorrect).

Edited September 6, 2017 by Steve Ricoh

[adan]

Not so much corrected as amended.

 

First, "colour" film does still include both color negatives and color positives (slides/chromes) - and those have rather different exposure dynamics.

 

The key thing with color films is to avoid so much or so little exposure that you end up with "empty" film that is nothing but detailess film base. Slides are more like digital - once you "blow the highlights" to pure detailess white, there is no way to recover detail that no longer exists.

 

With negatives, the bright areas of the picture are the densest part of the film - but usually not absolutely a solid density, so some highlight detail can usually be recovered - in those Petapixel examples of the guy with bright trees and sky in the background, even the 6-stops over has some tonal variation, which can be recovered with Photoshop. etc. With slide films, that would mostly be just blank white film at 6-stops over.

 

At the other end - the blacks in slides are much denser (higher DMax) than the "dark" highlights in any color negative, so much so that many scanners simply can't push enough light through the black to recover shadow detail.

 

Slide film has that extra contrast and density range because it has to be the final picture - what people see in a slide show. So it has to be able to produce pure blacks and whites somewhere. No one (normally) projects color negatives as the final picture, so color negs don't need to have an attractive density range all by themselves - they are just an imtermediate step in getting to a final positive image.

 

However, color negs are made up of dye clouds. The denser they are, the more the clouds expand and overlap and appear as a smooth tone, rather than "grain." The more color neg film is underexposed, the more grainy and patchy the shadows become, as each individual dye cloud against an empty background stands out as a color speckle.

 

Take those two things together, and - yes - color negative film handles overexposure better than underexposure. The only downside to overxposing color neg is that you may lose resolution in highlights as the dye clouds expand too much (smooth grainless highlights, but also fuzzier edges to objects/details).

 

B&W film has yet another dynamic. Empty shadows usually have NO grain, just pure black (uness one tries too hard to rescure the thin shadows, and ends up revealing the "film base + fog" - random "noise" grains in the shadows). But generally, the hard-edged silver clumps (unlike soft-edged overlapping dye clouds) produce more grain in the highlights with more exposure - very gritty with too much exposure - the exact opposite of color negs.

 

In short:

 

Color slide film - very intolerant of poor exposure either way, to the point that normal practice when possible is to "bracket" exposures to assure at least one slide with both decent highlights and shadows, or expose for the highlights like digital, and let dense shadows just work as creative negative (empty) space. Color slides are like "digital" - without as much room to rescue dense shadows.

 

B&W silver film - moderately tolerant of either overexposure or underexposure - provided the photographer knows what each will do. And with more flexible processing options than the rather inflexible C-41/E6/Kodachrome machine-driven color processes, in terms of time and temperature, which can correct a bit for exposure problems.

 

Color neg film - very tolerant of overxposure (at the risk of some loss of fine detail due to overgrown dye clouds in highlights). Not as tolerant of underexposure (excessive shadow noise/color speckles even with low-ISO films).

 

"B&W" films like Ilford XP2 or the late Kodak 400CN, that run through color neg chemicals, behave like color neg film. Dye images, just no color. Shadows get noisy with underexposure, highlights get less grainy with overexposure (but soften resolution).

Edited September 6, 2017 by adan

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[pico]

An associate friend of mine became a National Geographic (NG) photographer and was so for decades, and back then (way before digital), he had a channel to send his Kodachrome film to NG and receive feedback. He could adjust his exposure habits according to their recommendations. Eventually he stopped using a light meter, and he criticized Kodachrome exposures to 1/3rd of a stop.

.

Edited September 6, 2017 by pico

[Steve Ricoh]

Not so much corrected as amended.

 

First, "colour" film does still include both color negatives and color positives (slides/chromes) - and those have rather different exposure dynamics.

 

The key thing with color films is to avoid so much or so little exposure that you end up with "empty" film that is nothing but detailess film base. Slides are more like digital - once you "blow the highlights" to pure detailess white, there is no way to recover detail that no longer exists.

 

With negatives, the bright areas of the picture are the densest part of the film - but usually not absolutely a solid density, so some highlight detail can usually be recovered - in those Petapixel examples of the guy with bright trees and sky in the background, even the 6-stops over has some tonal variation, which can be recovered with Photoshop. etc. With slide films, that would mostly be just blank white film at 6-stops over.

 

At the other end - the blacks in slides are much denser (higher DMax) than the "dark" highlights in any color negative, so much so that many scanners simply can't push enough light through the black to recover shadow detail.

 

Slide film has that extra contrast and density range because it has to be the final picture - what people see in a slide show. So it has to be able to produce pure blacks and whites somewhere. No one (normally) projects color negatives as the final picture, so color negs don't need to have an attractive density range all by themselves - they are just an imtermediate step in getting to a final positive image.

 

However, color negs are made up of dye clouds. The denser they are, the more the clouds expand and overlap and appear as a smooth tone, rather than "grain." The more color neg film is underexposed, the more grainy and patchy the shadows become, as each individual dye cloud against an empty background stands out as a color speckle.

 

Take those two things together, and - yes - color negative film handles overexposure better than underexposure. The only downside to overxposing color neg is that you may lose resolution in highlights as the dye clouds expand too much (smooth grainless highlights, but also fuzzier edges to objects/details).

 

B&W film has yet another dynamic. Empty shadows usually have NO grain, just pure black (uness one tries too hard to rescure the thin shadows, and ends up revealing the "film base + fog" - random "noise" grains in the shadows). But generally, the hard-edged silver clumps (unlike soft-edged overlapping dye clouds) produce more grain in the highlights with more exposure - very gritty with too much exposure - the exact opposite of color negs.

 

In short:

 

Color slide film - very intolerant of poor exposure either way, to the point that normal practice when possible is to "bracket" exposures to assure at least one slide with both decent highlights and shadows, or expose for the highlights like digital, and let dense shadows just work as creative negative (empty) space. Color slides are like "digital" - without as much room to rescue dense shadows.

 

B&W silver film - moderately tolerant of either overexposure or underexposure - provided the photographer knows what each will do. And with more flexible processing options than the rather inflexible C-41/E6/Kodachrome machine-driven color processes, in terms of time and temperature, which can correct a bit for exposure problems.

 

Color neg film - very tolerant of overxposure (at the risk of some loss of fine detail due to overgrown dye clouds in highlights). Not as tolerant of underexposure (excessive shadow noise/color speckles even with low-ISO films).

 

"B&W" films like Ilford XP2 or the late Kodak 400CN, that run through color neg chemicals, behave like color neg film. Dye images, just no color. Shadows get noisy with underexposure, highlights get less grainy with overexposure (but soften resolution).

Very informative, like an encyclopaedia of film, thank you kindly. You certainly know your film!!

[adan]

Well - I lived through the transition of newspapers to color/colour photography in the 1980s, and there was quite a learning curve for photojournalists and editors, because the tricks and "cheats" and hacks we knew we could get away with with Tri-X and making our own darkroom prints no longer applied.

 

We (the industry) no longer made darkroom prints once slides (later, color negs) came in - the original negative/slide went directly to the "backshop" guys/gals who made the color separations, and they were technicians who simply reproduced what we gave them, so the originals had to be "press-ready" as shot.

 

As an editor and designer, I witnessed or took part in the education process of old-school photographers (and myself) - "No, you can't shoot color slides in backlight, without fill-flash to bring up the shadows. No, you can't underexpose a tad with color negs to get a higher shutter speed, and not get nasty shadow grain. Yes, you do have to shoot the correct film for tungsten or sunlight, or use color filters to get the right 'white balance.' " etc. etc.

 

Individual newspaper photo departments, if wealthy enough (and the national photographers' annual conferences) brought in magazine photographers from Nat. Geo, or the old LIFE/LOOK, who had been shooting color for decades, to lecture us on lighting and exposure and correct use of color film in general.

 

The one exception being the Milwaukee Journal, which had pioneered color pictures in newspapers in the 1960s, and whose photographers themselves became the backbone of Nat. Geo's staff in the 1970's, because they already knew how color film worked.

___________

 

As an aside on the inventiveness of the Journal: In 1963 they had a deadline problem. President John F. Kennedy was going to make a morning arrival at the Milwaukee airport, and the Journal wanted a color photograph in time to make the noon press run. So they sent a photographer out to the airport with - a 4x5 press camera; the recently introduced Polaroid Polacolor instant peel-apart film in 4x5 size (first link below); a B&W wirephoto analog scanner/transmitter (second link below) and a set of gelatin color separation filters (deep red/green/blue - third link below).

 

The photographer snapped his color Polaroid, peeled his instant film apart after the required two minutes, and then ran to the terminal, where the wirephoto scanner was hooked up to a telephone line. He taped the print onto the drum of the wirephoto transmitter, and put a bit of his red gel filter over the scanner's lens. And transmitted the "red channel" as a B&W image (2-3 minutes) to the newspaper. Then sent transmissions made through the green and blue filters. The pictures came out as three monochrome images from the newsroom receiver (fourth link below), which were rushed to the backshop to be made into cyan, magenta, yellow and black printing plates.

 

The Journal ran a color picture - the other papers ran B&W.

 

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-h33EEk9oYIE/UQW91VtNhcI/AAAAAAAABDY/QGL5O8GHCPc/s1600/1004_polaroid_630x420.jpg

 

https://petapixel.com/assets/uploads/2015/07/NB_06PHOTOdeskUPIb.jpg

 

https://www.edmundoptics.com/globalassets/commerce/products/1006376.jpg?w=225

 

http://www.downhold.org/lowry/upi-82769.jpg

 

Do enough of that kind of thing - and some of the knowledge rubs off....

Edited September 8, 2017 by adan

[semi-ambivalent]

Well - I lived through the transition of newspapers to color/colour photography in the 1980s, and there was quite a learning curve for photojournalists and editors, because the tricks and "cheats" and hacks we knew we could get away with with Tri-X and making our own darkroom prints no longer applied.

 

We (the industry) no longer made darkroom prints once slides (later, color negs) came in - the original negative/slide went directly to the "backshop" guys/gals who made the color separations, and they were technicians who simply reproduced what we gave them, so the originals had to be "press-ready" as shot.

 

As an editor and designer, I witnessed or took part in the education process of old-school photographers (and myself) - "No, you can't shoot color slides in backlight, without fill-flash to bring up the shadows. No, you can't underexpose a tad with color negs to get a higher shutter speed, and not get nasty shadow grain. Yes, you do have to shoot the correct film for tungsten or sunlight, or use color filters to get the right 'white balance.' " etc. etc.

 

Individual newspaper photo departments, if wealthy enough (and the national photographers' annual conferences) brought in magazine photographers from Nat. Geo, or the old LIFE/LOOK, who had been shooting color for decades, to lecture us on lighting and exposure and correct use of color film in general.

 

The one exception being the Milwaukee Journal, which had pioneered color pictures in newspapers in the 1960s, and whose photographers themselves became the backbone of Nat. Geo's staff in the 1970's, because they already knew how color film worked.

___________

 

As an aside on the inventiveness of the Journal: In 1963 they had a deadline problem. President John F. Kennedy was going to make a morning arrival at the Milwaukee airport, and the Journal wanted a color photograph in time to make the noon press run. So they sent a photographer out to the airport with - a 4x5 press camera; the recently introduced Polaroid Polacolor instant peel-apart film in 4x5 size (first link below); a B&W wirephoto analog scanner/transmitter (second link below) and a set of gelatin color separation filters (deep red/green/blue - third link below).

 

The photographer snapped his color Polaroid, peeled his instant film apart after the required two minutes, and then ran to the terminal, where the wirephoto scanner was hooked up to a telephone line. He taped the print onto the drum of the wirephoto transmitter, and put a bit of his red gel filter over the scanner's lens. And transmitted the "red channel" as a B&W image (2-3 minutes) to the newspaper. Then sent transmissions made through the green and blue filters. The pictures came out as three monochrome images from the newsroom receiver (fourth link below), which were rushed to the backshop to be made into cyan, magenta, yellow and black printing plates.

 

The Journal ran a color picture - the other papers ran B&W.

 

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-h33EEk9oYIE/UQW91VtNhcI/AAAAAAAABDY/QGL5O8GHCPc/s1600/1004_polaroid_630x420.jpg

 

https://petapixel.com/assets/uploads/2015/07/NB_06PHOTOdeskUPIb.jpg

 

https://www.edmundoptics.com/globalassets/commerce/products/1006376.jpg?w=225

 

http://www.downhold.org/lowry/upi-82769.jpg

 

Do enough of that kind of thing - and some of the knowledge rubs off....

Those alligator clips  inside the handset are nonpareil...

 

s-a

[david strachan]

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Not so much corrected as amended.

 

First, "colour" film does still include both color negatives and color positives (slides/chromes) - and those have rather different exposure dynamics.

 

The key thing with color films is to avoid so much or so little exposure that you end up with "empty" film that is nothing but detailess film base. Slides are more like digital - once you "blow the highlights" to pure detailess white, there is no way to recover detail that no longer exists.

 

With negatives, the bright areas of the picture are the densest part of the film - but usually not absolutely a solid density, so some highlight detail can usually be recovered - in those Petapixel examples of the guy with bright trees and sky in the background, even the 6-stops over has some tonal variation, which can be recovered with Photoshop. etc. With slide films, that would mostly be just blank white film at 6-stops over.

 

At the other end - the blacks in slides are much denser (higher DMax) than the "dark" highlights in any color negative, so much so that many scanners simply can't push enough light through the black to recover shadow detail.

 

Slide film has that extra contrast and density range because it has to be the final picture - what people see in a slide show. So it has to be able to produce pure blacks and whites somewhere. No one (normally) projects color negatives as the final picture, so color negs don't need to have an attractive density range all by themselves - they are just an imtermediate step in getting to a final positive image.

 

However, color negs are made up of dye clouds. The denser they are, the more the clouds expand and overlap and appear as a smooth tone, rather than "grain." The more color neg film is underexposed, the more grainy and patchy the shadows become, as each individual dye cloud against an empty background stands out as a color speckle.

 

Take those two things together, and - yes - color negative film handles overexposure better than underexposure. The only downside to overxposing color neg is that you may lose resolution in highlights as the dye clouds expand too much (smooth grainless highlights, but also fuzzier edges to objects/details).

 

B&W film has yet another dynamic. Empty shadows usually have NO grain, just pure black (uness one tries too hard to rescure the thin shadows, and ends up revealing the "film base + fog" - random "noise" grains in the shadows). But generally, the hard-edged silver clumps (unlike soft-edged overlapping dye clouds) produce more grain in the highlights with more exposure - very gritty with too much exposure - the exact opposite of color negs.

 

In short:

 

Color slide film - very intolerant of poor exposure either way, to the point that normal practice when possible is to "bracket" exposures to assure at least one slide with both decent highlights and shadows, or expose for the highlights like digital, and let dense shadows just work as creative negative (empty) space. Color slides are like "digital" - without as much room to rescue dense shadows.

 

B&W silver film - moderately tolerant of either overexposure or underexposure - provided the photographer knows what each will do. And with more flexible processing options than the rather inflexible C-41/E6/Kodachrome machine-driven color processes, in terms of time and temperature, which can correct a bit for exposure problems.

 

Color neg film - very tolerant of overxposure (at the risk of some loss of fine detail due to overgrown dye clouds in highlights). Not as tolerant of underexposure (excessive shadow noise/color speckles even with low-ISO films).

 

"B&W" films like Ilford XP2 or the late Kodak 400CN, that run through color neg chemicals, behave like color neg film. Dye images, just no color. Shadows get noisy with underexposure, highlights get less grainy with overexposure (but soften resolution).

 

Great post Adan. Very interesting. I've always thought the Photojournalists are the best photographers...I suppose they got the subjects.

 

The history and difficulties were fascinating.

 

cheers...

Edited September 9, 2017 by david strachan

[Steve Ricoh]

Yes, fascinating insight Adan.