Film Photography: what has been done wrong here?

Savage_Henry

http://tinyurl.com/o6wsrwl all the gear is good but the pictures ar just meh, no color, no depth. What has been done wrong here? Id say some sort of setting is set too much or too little. Is it just too little light? especially in the first picture and "blurry beef | brooklyn beefsteak"

it says that gear is
fujipro 400h
pentax spotmatic
super takumar 50mm f/1.4

Pictures are not mine, but on the rare occasion when ive shot on film, some pics have been similar- like a haze of unsharpness and desaturation is on top of the pic.



For example, same gear, different person, beautiful picture http://tinyurl.com/ku2yyvl

Thank you for your time

pete4130

So many factors to be considered.

The ones you mention specifically are shot indoors, under what looks to be tungsten lighting. Film is generally designed to be shot in natural light. Light has different colour temperatures (meaning under tungsten the colours will look orange instead of natural, under flourescent/strip lighting they can have a cold blue or green colour cast across them etc...). Even direct sunlight, shade and cloud will give variations.

The images indoors also look underexposed somewhat. This leads to the soft, grainy nature. Artificial lighting is also quite flat, lacks contrast and generally isn't flattering. This can be seen in the images. They could be underexposed due to a fading battery in the camera or the colours could be off due to fungus inside the lens or even the shutter timing might not be calibrated properly with the light meter.

It could be the processing they are using when they get their film developed. Old/heavily used chemicals won't give good results. They might be getting dev and print from a photo shop/lab and then scanning them in off the hard copies and losing quality/control at every stage. The photo shop/lab might be scanning them onto disc and using a poor scanner and low res files. Underexposed negs tend to scan poorly too.

They might not be a great photographer either.

So many variables to consider when shooting film.


The last image of the oatmeal is properly exposed for, where it matters, leaving the background in the shadows and its looking like it was shot next to a window, with lots of natural light coming through. So you've got good day light for the film and well exposed. It makes a huge difference.

telecinesk

Hi,
they look underexposed or under developed, but yes as above poster its a mix of something.
They look very flat, are they scans from neg,or fromprints.I assume negs? The contrast range is way too low,you could probably pull them up a notch and crush the blacks a bit for punch. Shame,the composition is nice all round.
Can you rescan them?
(just read fujipro400) dunno, 400iso colour film is not the most contrasty,but again whoever scanned them could pull a lot more out of the images)..

chisel

Underexposed and then trying to compensate during scanning I'd guess.....