So those cloud/partial sun/sun settings should be good for about 100 ISO film. I’d probably err a little bit on the side of caution and go with 200 ISO film, but it’s going to take experimenting anyway to get it just right and get a feel for it. It looks like the Diana is a bit better engineered than the Holga, but with the Holga, everything was a ballpark approxmation. My Holga had two f-stops, supposedly f/8 and f/11, but upon close inspection, there was absolutely no difference in the aperture: both were exactly the same size.
Reverse what I said !! That’s why they call it “negative”. :D:D:D:D:D
Is it possible the Holga’s different f stops were in fact different shutter speeds? Altering the pull on a spring may be cheaper than iris leaves, and that is one cheap-assed camera…
ETA: I cannot remember the name either. It isn’t bleach-bypass, that alters the contrast. Hmmm.
No, I think the Holga also had two shutter speeds: 1/100 (or 1/125, depending on who you asked or possibly it differed by when it was made) and a bulb mode.
This is bugging me. I found an article here that talks about various negative reduction techniques and contains formulas for negative reducers. My memory’s a bit hazy, but I think potassium ferricyanide was what I used or part of what I used to reduce severely overexposed negs. this says:
That one is ringing a bell, and I’m pretty sure it’s something like that that I’ve used, but apparently there are various formulations to bleach/reduce a negative.
At any rate, I wasn’t a big experimenter in the darkroom when it came to the chemistry: we pretty much exclusively used T-Max developer, or occasionally D-76, for black and white, and for color (when I developed for the wire service), it was some Kodak two-step formulation that was even easier than black-and-white processing that just included a developer and a blix (combination bleach and fix). (And, of course, you had to wash it, too.) I seem to recall develop times of 3.5 minutes for non-push processing (we’d never pull, only push when need be) no matter the C-41 stock (so we didn’t need charts for all the different films and emulsions to look up develop time), and then something like 6 minutes or so in the blix.
With those settings, it would be almost impossible to drastically underexpose the film to the point of being blank, especially if you’re using the Partly Sunny, f/16 setting (unless you’re using a really slow film, like 25 ISO, or shooting indoors or at night).
Exellent idea. Also, take note of the ISO rating of the film. Very important.
No, not at all. Try shooting indoors with those settings.
We just don’t have a lot of useful info from the OP at this point. We don’t even know if it’s an underexposure or overexposure (although the money would be on under at this point.) Some questions that would help lead us to an answer (plus there are some more upthread):
What ISO was the film
These five savable pictures–what were they of? What lighting situation were they taken in. When you say “savable” what exactly do you mean? Were they really dark but had just enough information to print? Or very bright?
On the roll of film with the five savable pictures, what happened to the other ones? How did they turn out? Don’t look at the print, look at the negative and tell us what you see. Is it blank? Is it black? Is it almost blank with just the faintest trace of an image? What lighting situation were those taken in?
Yeah, I’m assuming a lot of info that the OP hasn’t provided (like not shooting indoors if the aperture is set to “Partly Sunny”). More information would be helpful if he bothers to come back.
Lomography (basically, shooting with toy cameras like Lomos, Holgas, Dianas, etc.) has been around and somewhat hip for at least ten years or so. The esteemed David Burnett had an award-winning photo he took of Al Gore with his Holga back in 2001, during the whole White House run.
I guess I found the problem! I realized I was using a way too low ISO: 200. One of the negatives came out without any marks from the manufacturer. It is a brown piece of plastic. The other one has the markins. Imgur: The magic of the Internet This is what I got. I will send to the shop two rolls of black and whites. Maybe they will look better.
That’s kind of odd. That sounds to me like it may have been exposed to light. It should have had markings on it if it was underexposed. I’m not entirely sure what to make of this. I’d have to see an actual scan of the neg, along with one of the other negs to offer a more educated opinion. If it’s clear and light brown, that usually indicates the bleaching step was missed in developing. Like this is what an unexposed color neg looks like. Note the markings are there. A completely overexposed one would be dark brown or nearly black, and then the edge markings would not be visible.
Yeah, those look fine. You were just shooting into deep shadow, and the film speed you were using couldn’t hold any shadow detail. (Although there is probably more shadow detail in your neg than is visible on the print, I would wager.) If you shot into something that was lit by the sunlight you had there, you would be fine (as you can see by the dappled sunlight that is visible on the buildings.)
Huh. That is odd. Do you remember what kind of film that was? For the moment, im a bit stumped. Can you upload a pic of one of the other rolls of film, too? Just like that would be fine.
I mean, that is clearly an unexposed image. There must have been some developing, as the edges are black, looking like they were exposed to light and developed. A developed and unbkeached neg would be completely the same light brown/orange throughout, in my experience. I don’t know why the edges would be darker, but there not be any film manufacturer markings on it when developed.
100% agreed. This is unexposed negative. Perhaps a smidgen of fogging along the edges due to the roll being loaded into the body in brighter light? Edge fogging, not so rare.
Weird. It makes me think about the camera body, shutter defects, etc. Shooting a roll of film means one of several things.
The shutter never opened.
When you THOUGHT you’d threaded the film onto the take-up spool, it had not fully captured. This would mean that you shot a frame, advanced the roll, and the film never advanced because in rolling the take-up roller after the first shot, the film/paper backing disengaged from the spool. You can shoot 36 frames of nothing because you thought you were advancing, when the take-up spool wasn’t really taking up the film at all. Depending on the camera design, you can turn the take-up wheel and not have a clear visual indicator that the film is NOT advancing. ( This is how my Dad shot several rolls on the day of my Bar Miztvah and got back rolls of blank film. The Leica he used - bottom loader - never properly took up the film ).
I cannot think of another cause. This is quite clearly NOT a case of negative being partially or fully exposed and then somehow damaged or stripped during the processing bath. It surely appears to have zero information aside from edge fogging.
Curious. Love to lay hands on that body and examine the take-up mechanism.
What surprises me is the lack of manufacturer’s marking upon development. But that’s partly why I wanted to see a properly exposed roll–to see if they might be in the area where the edge fogging occurred. Now that I look at it more closely, it seems like it’s not impossible that it could very well have been along the very bottom edge and the exposure to light eliminated it.
