Dissatisfied with my summer pics taken using my M7, underexposed, vignetting, and artifacts

[stephan54]

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vor 4 Minuten schrieb WojtekS:

Yes, they did. Is there a way to avoid potential damage in case of travelling?

Yes, put the films in a separate bag and ask kindly if that bag can be hand searched. Often works, but not all airports will oblige.

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[Herr Barnack]

In #6, you have a high contrast lighting situation.  The light meter in your M7 may have been thrown off by the highlights on the top left half of the frame.  The darker areas in the lower right and bottom half of the frame are somewhat underexposed, but are recoverable in post processing or even in the darkroom if wet printing.

The dark streaks in #9 could be the result of poor agitation during development - that was my first thought.

As for the exposure vignetting, many lenses will produce vignetting when shot at maximum aperture, particularly f/1.4 - vignetting should be resolved by around f/4 or f/5.6, though.  I cannot understand why you would have vignetting at f/16, though. 

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...To wrap up, the colours are bland, not saturated...

That can happen with color film when shot in intense sunlight.  Flat light does no favors for color film.

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... In my opinion, the pictures are really grainy... and the colours usually look a lot better...

With color film, underexposed negatives or areas in negatives with high contrast lighting can result in grainy areas in the shadows when the film is developed.  If the underexposure is uniform in the negatives in a roll, that can be addressed in developing.  When you have a negative with very bright areas and very dark areas, it is very hard to address that in film developing.  That is something that must be addressed in post processing or in printing, if you are printing by traditional means.

When shooting outdoors in high contrast light, the only way I know of to address the underexposed areas in camera are by using fill flash or a light modifier like a reflector disc or panel.  Using fill flash will give much needed fill light to the shadow areas.  Of course, using a reflector panel is not practical or doable in some situations, but it is another method of addressing very deep shadow areas in your frame.

Hope some of this will help.

 

Edited September 10, 2022 by Herr Barnack

[250swb]

I think this is a photographer who doesn't know what subject area to take a meter reading from and also doesn't understand the characteristics of the lens they are using. I can't see anything that could be the fault of the camera itself.

Edited September 10, 2022 by 250swb

[250swb]

5 hours ago, WojtekS said:

Here there are some vertical lines or darker exposure running through the pic:

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OK, this is one of the basic facts of photography. The meter in your camera tries to make the average exposure a '18% 'grey', it doesn't read colour, meaning the default exposure is based around a set average of '18%' grey. So in a bright snow scene, or a bright beach scene the meter is being fooled into under exposing, it is trying to meter for the scene as 18% grey when in reality the brightness range higher. Which in everyday photography isn't a problem because the contrast range is in itself 'average'. But get to situations where the the contrast is predominantly bright the meter will be fooled, so you need to over expose the image, which in the case of an 'auto exposure' camera means using human intellect to override it, just as you would with a manual meter. 

Edited September 10, 2022 by 250swb

[andrew01]

4 hours ago, WojtekS said:

Yes, they did. Is there a way to avoid potential damage in case of travelling?

That explains the vertical banding.  The only way to avoid is to ask for a hand inspection, but I wouldn’t be surprised if that request is refused at most airports.  Modern airport scanners are a lot worse for film than the old ones.

[trisberg]

6 hours ago, TomB_tx said:

The exposure bands looks like the shutter may be dragging a bit and need service

It looks like that is the case. I had similar dark edges on my M7 and it is now at Leica for CLA. See the attached photos.

-Thomas

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[WojtekS]

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10 hours ago, 250swb said:

I think this is a photographer who doesn't know what subject area to take a meter reading from and also doesn't understand the characteristics of the lens they are using. I can't see anything that could be the fault of the camera itself.

Fair enough, I thought that myself first 😉

Would you care to elaborate about the lens, please? My doubt is the beach photos were taken while stopped down to f 16... Should there really be that much vignetting?

[WojtekS]

9 hours ago, andrew01 said:

That explains the vertical banding.  

Thank you, that sounds really interesting... If you don't mind, why do you see vertical banding only in some pics, notably the overexposed beach ones, and not in others/all of them?

Airport screening should affect the whole roll, shouldn't it?

[idusidusi]

14 hours ago, WojtekS said:

Yes, they did. Is there a way to avoid potential damage in case of travelling?

Used to be film packs with protection of some sort and then ask for physical inspection as sensitive film. Don't know whether one can still buy or where.

[CPA]

8 hours ago, trisberg said:

It looks like that is the case. I had similar dark edges on my M7 and it is now at Leica for CLA. See the attached photos.

-Thomas

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It was explained to me that many M cameras have uneven shutter travel problems after significant use/ or lack of use. Since the shutter travels from right to left, there seems to be a discrepancy in the shutter slit.

 

This problem usually happens with the highest speeds such as 1/1000 or 1/500 - probably the reason why the OP WojtekS associates it with hot (actually bright) days. 
 

I had exactly the same issue - showing vertical dark bands on the left side of the frame - with a M6 TTL some years ago and only solution was to increase the tension of the shutter role. This is something one can do at home with precision tools, but I preferred to have it properly served. 

[otto.f]

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Edited September 11, 2022 by otto.f

[250swb]

58 minutes ago, WojtekS said:

 

Would you care to elaborate about the lens, please? My doubt is the beach photos were taken while stopped down to f 16... Should there really be that much vignetting?

I wouldn't rule anything out. Some lenses do vignette. Some things photographers do can make lenses vignette, like if the lens hood is mounted on top of a filter on a wide angle lens. The idea of shutter drag has been advanced, but would a shutter slowing down cause dark bands on negative film? If it is slowing wouldn't that cause more exposure, so dark bands on the actual negative but lighter bands in the print? Dark bands seem to suggest the shutter is speeding up at the beginning and end of its travel, does that make sense? I don't think it does make sense but it would be useful to see the actual negative. I wouldn't rule out the lab that scanned the images, particularly as they managed to get what looks like a water mark on one of your negatives. I'm not at all convinced it's the camera at fault.

[otto.f]

2 hours ago, 250swb said:

useful to see the actual negative. I wouldn't rule out the lab that scanned the images, particularly as they managed to get what looks like a water mark on one of your negatives

Agree. Lab quality in developing and scanning is not at all the same between and within various labs. Especially grain is quite dependent on how you scan.  And even vertical banding can come from the lab development. Send two films with the same light situations to your lab and to Mori: https://morifilmlab.com

But: at the moment color films are hard to get in 35mm

[trisberg]

7 hours ago, CPA said:

I had exactly the same issue - showing vertical dark bands on the left side of the frame - with a M6 TTL some years ago and only solution was to increase the tension of the shutter role. This is something one can do at home with precision tools, but I preferred to have it properly served. 

Yep, with the M7 though, it's an electronically controlled shutter, so IMO safer to send it to Leica or someone who can work on M7s.

-Thomas

[oldwino]

It would be good to see the negatives. 
It looks like a shutter issue that shows up at 1/500 and 1/1000. But I have to ask, what film are you using that that you would need to shoot at f16 and 1/1000?

[grahamc]

I have a M6 TTL that showed a vertical band on very left side of the frame. Only at Shutter Speed 1/1000 so yours is probably happening at fast shutter speeds only also.  My band was more inward from the left edge than yours so it was easier to see a prominent 'band'.  But yours is there, too... just concealed a bit by the lens vignetting (probably normal btw, IMO).

For the banding on mine, it was related to a braking adjustment for the shutter - which a service tech adjusted and fixed.

My 2 cents on your other queries:  

The shots you were were happy with were taken on an over-cast /cloudy day ... meaning that light was much more diffused (no very bright or very dark parts of the image to confuse the light meter). So the light meter performed much better under these conditions and you got a nicely exposed shot.  

On the other hand, in the shots you are unhappy with the sky is clear and very bright, or you were facing the window, or near sand.  As Steve and others mentioned, manual adjustment or exposure compensation is needed here. The light meter is tricked by the reflection off the sand (or the bright light coming in the window and thinks the whole scene is extremely bright) so selects a faster shutter speed than the actual scene needs.   

The  resultant underexposure creates more grain also (or at least a scan quality that you are finding unpleasing).  Additionally, it is in some of these (fast shutter speed) shots where the banding issue presents itself.  A very good example of all of the above logic is the beach shot.   For that kind of environment, setting exposure compensation of about +1 as a start would be good rule of thumb - to force more exposure than the camera thinks it needs (remember, it's been tricked by the bright light or sand).

The good news would be that probably only the shutter braking needs adjusting and once done, exposure techniques just takes a little learning and practicing.  

Apologies if you already knew this stuff.

 

Edited September 12, 2022 by grahamc

[andrew01]

On 9/11/2022 at 7:14 AM, WojtekS said:

Thank you, that sounds really interesting... If you don't mind, why do you see vertical banding only in some pics, notably the overexposed beach ones, and not in others/all of them?

Airport screening should affect the whole roll, shouldn't it?

 

This would require some experiments to test but one hypothesis could be that the frames in the centre of the cassette would be covered by many extra layers of film and therefore get less fogging.

Edited September 13, 2022 by andrew01

[nitroplait]

No type of airport X-ray will cause vignetting.

The effect of modern CT scanners will also be very visible on film edges and between frames.

Most airports still use the old X-ray scanners.

Edited September 13, 2022 by nitroplait

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[Doc Henry]

On 9/10/2022 at 10:03 PM, 250swb said:

I think this is a photographer who doesn't know what subject area to take a meter reading from and also doesn't understand the characteristics of the lens they are using. I can't see anything that could be the fault of the camera itself.

I agree with Steve , the photos have beautiful colors and  thanks to your M7 .... the vignetting on one or two photos can come from your lens

What is your film used here  ? Kodak Portra ?

The M7 is the "fastest camera of all cameras"  as said Raymond Depardon  Magnum Agency  and in Automatic mode it's fabulous.

I have one M7 for more than 10 years , I develop myself color and black and white films ...  and I also scan myself .

You scan yourself ... and in TIFF or Jpeg  for your pictures posted above  ?

 

The photos you see in this thread come partly from the M7 , others from the MP

Best  Henry

 

Edited September 13, 2022 by Doc Henry

[andrew01]

7 hours ago, nitroplait said:

No type of airport X-ray will cause vignetting.

The effect of modern CT scanners will also be very visible on film edges and between frames.

Most airports still use the old X-ray scanners.

Agreed. I think we have two separate issues here. Vignetting caused by a lens problem (misaligned element, incorrect lens accessory). The second issue is the vertical banding caused by shutter curtain timing, processing mishandling or xray exposure.

It should be possible to test these hypotheses by elimination.  For example try a different lens, shoot a film that hasn’t been exposed to xray, send to a different lab.