Calgary Plus 15 Film Black and Whites

[Marko]

My pleasure - I lived in the darkroom for years.

Quite often there are overexposed shadows which I can't recover, even in Camera Raw. As you can see in the attached copy, I could recover some, but there is a lot of noise in the shadow area on the right. I like the noise, (aka grain) but I still brought it down a little bit using the Details noise reduction. Maybe a little better. Certainly less underexposed.



You mean UNDEREXPOSED shadows, right?

Just in case you don't know this, film is the opposite of digital - when it comes to protecting the extreme tones.
In film...we protect the shadows from being 'clipped', because once they're gone ...gone forever. (In digital we protect highlights...because of clipping)
Because of this...when I shot film, if the film was rated for 400 - I'd set it to 200. MANY photographers still do this. In general, Meter for the shadow detail...expose for the highlights ...it's likely still the mantra.
When you do this, your tones will sing much more EASILY. Underexposure in film like digital, will also accentuate noise. Hope that may help.

[Lorey]

very nice set mbrager. #2 and #3 are more appealing to my eyes.

[mbrager]

Ah, yes, I meant underexposed. Marko, you're a natural teacher of photography and I really appreciate your teachings. I never had the experience of living in a darkroom until my adult life (past 3 or 4 years). We sent all our film out to labs. So I'm still learning. In fact, I do (or did) know the wisdom you shared about film being opposite of digital. But once I've loaded up a roll of film, it all seems to fly out the window in my excitement to shoot. In digital it's so easy to forget about exposure, while I'm clearly not paying enough attention to exposure while shooting film. Your tip about setting the ISO at 200 instead of 400 makes a lot of sense and I will give it a go my next roll. Thanks.