I accidentally put a roll of 200 ASA 35 mm film in my fully manual 33 mm camera awhile back thinking that the roll was 400 ASA. I made all of all the settings at 400 ASA and shot the roll as if it were 400 ASA . Imagine my surprise yesterday, then, when I pulled out the roll and it was 200 ASA.
I don’t think that this is necessarily an inevitable disaster at this point. At the college newspaper we routinely “push processed” 400 ASA black and white film as if it were 1600 ASA and got nice, thick negatives.
Color is probably different. Anyway, if I take this roll to a run-of-the-mill corner drugstore to have the roll developed and the negatives printed, what should I expect? If I told them that I had shot it at 400, would they know what to do with it or possibly make it worse?
Or would I necessarily be better off sending the roll to a more sophisticated lab? These pictures are irreplaceable to me and very valuable.
Normal negative C-41 film has a latitude of +4 / -1
This means you can overexpose it by up to 4 stops or underexpose it by 1, and still have results that look normal. This is the claimed limit by the manufacturer, often actual limits are even better (especially on the +4 side).
As you’ve underexposed by 1, I think your photos will be fine, even if you get them done at the corner drugstore.
If you’re really worried, you could get them pushed by 1 stop (the corner drugstore should be able to do this, as it’s just a matter of developing the film as if it were 400 ISO film rather than 200 ISO)
I don’t really see how they could fuck it up, especially if its all done via a computerized machine.
Prints is another matter though, usually I just get my film developed at the corner shop but have prints of the nice ones made in an actual lab.
You could take or send the roll to a real photo lab (not like Walmart), depending on the importance of the pix, and explain what happened.
If the pix are that important and you go in person, make sure the clerk or lab worker makes it clear on the processing order that the film has to be pushed. This might mean the film will be processed manually, so expect a price bump.
Kodak says “most color negative films can not be usefully push-processed” - I’d probably have the film processed normally and try to bring the most out of the prints.
I agree that you should probably be okay, unless you accidentally underexposed those shots. You may lose a bit of deep shadow detail, though (of course.)
For this, I’d say good luck. It’s doubtful that most corner store employees are going to know what push processing is. A real photo lab, though, sure, won’t be a problem. It’s a typical request. (And it’s not developing the film as if it were 400 instead of 200. All C-41 color films, regardless of ISO, have the same processing time. You can develop 200 speed film with 1600 speed film in the same batch. If you’re push processing, though, you have to add time. [And, thus, do the batch separately from any others that have normal processing. This is a reason why some/a lot of places may not want to deal with it, but I think it’s more that your typical drug store employee has never heard of pushing film.)
I’m surprised that they’d say that. Back in the film days, I pushed slide and color neg film quite a lot. Typically, it was the Fuji emulsions, but that shouldn’t make that much a difference. (ETA: Actually, I do remember push processing Ektrapress, as well, but typically it was Fuji Super G 800 to 1600 or even a little more, if necessary.) If I had the option to push the film in question, I personally would, to be safe. If the film was overexposed by one stop, I wouldn’t bother with “pulling” it or otherwise adjusting the development. It would be fine. One stop under should also be fine, but there’s a bit more risk of losing information there than in an overexposed neg, so I’d push it the stop if I could, if it was really important photos. Otherwise, I’d probably just develop as-is.
This is what I came into the thread to say. Most modern color film is(was?) pretty accommodating to overexposure, and somewhat less so to underexposure. I doubt you’ll have to push process it since you’re only one stop off for underexposure. It’ll probably be fine.
Just to reiterate what pulykamell said, this is untrue. I worked at a 1-hour consumer photo lab for several years. There is absolutely no change in processing of C41 film based on the film speed. You just put the roll in the machine and it comes out the other end processed. No adjustments available, and no problem mixing batches of speeds. I could run ISO 50 and ISO 1600 in the same batch (I don’t think the term “ASA” has been used since the 80s). Back then for my own personal projects (never for customers), I’d sometimes push process my film by manually stopping the machine when the film was in the developer. This required some skill, because you had to time it just right. If you did it too early or too late, not all of the film would be in the developer and only part of the roll would be pushed. Also the timing was imprecise, so the results were kind of hit and miss. It was not what the machine was intended to do. But for the most part it worked. Pushing by too much can cause color shifts and the grain is definitely enhanced, but it’s better than massive underexposure (usually). Anyway, I think the odds of you getting a drugstore employee who even knows what “push processing” is are extremely low. And if you did happen to find such an employee, the likelihood of them being able to successfully do it with their equipment is also very low.
I’ve had C41 film push processed by pro labs, where they presumably do it more correctly than I used to, and it worked well. I’ve also done some push processing of C41 at home in canisters, with mixed results, primarily because of difficulties in precise temperature control, which makes a huge difference with C41. I haven’t done any of that kind of stuff for at least ten years, so my memory of the exact details might be slightly rusty, but I’m confident in the big picture (no pun intended).
All that said, I agree that a single stop of underexposure should not be a major problem with most C41 film. If you’re pretty confident in your exposures (you don’t tend to underexpose in general), I think your chances of success are much higher by having it processed normally than trying any kind of push processing.
I’ll third this. I worked at a lab from the mid-80s to the early 90s on both Fuji and Noritsu equipment. The C-41 processor was fixed time/temp, and I could only modify these parameters by going into the configuration and changing them at the risk of throwing the DMax and colour curves out of whack.
On the other hand, our E-6 equipment for developing slide film had a knob right on the front that changed the drive speed to push or pull by up to 2.5 stops. As long as the film before was out of the developer, we could change the speed and feed in the film to pushed.