Hello everyone,
I am posting this to understand whether the issue in these photos are my own doing, environmental or even a technical lack of knowledge I should learn.
Last weekend I went out camping, packed all my camera gear - mostly digital, but I always have a case of film in this bag and I bring my analogue camera: Nikonos V (for water shooting)
What I didn't realize is that the only film I had in my bag was a roll of Cinestill 800T. I have never shot with this before (I'm newbie-ish for analogue photography in general) but I did get a roll because I was keen to try some night shooting in the city, just never got around it.
That being said, I had seen some alright shots from others in bright days so I thought it could be fun to experiment this weekend.
Well, I just got the scans back from the lab and the result is incredibly noisy. The lab did warn me about underexposure (some blank frames)... So maybe that's just it, but I'd be curious to know what people think in case there are things I could be doing to improve the result in similar situations in the future.
These are a small sample of the pictures but they all suffer from similar issues.
- Extreme Noise. While I'm a fan of the film grain, I find this level of noise really hard to salvage the pictures.
- There's a "wave-like" dark shape around most of the pictures. Not the exact same shape on every of them, but wave-like on all. Most clear on the surf picture. Like if I had something in front of my lense.
I have some thoughts worth sharing:
First, I quite like the Lab, I have been using them for a year and I had no problem with their work for pretty much any of my scans so far. A lot of Portra development, Black & White, etc... This was probably the most unconventional film processing I've done with them, but I trust they did the best they could with the film I provided. Though I will try to check in with them to share their thoughts.
Follow up... Regarding the film itself. It's nearly a year old, I bought it for a trip last year and never ended up using it. It's travelled with me multiple times "in case I use it", meaning it went through multiple airport security scanners. Also, I have never stored it in a fridge. It's been either in my bag or my shelf (in Sydney, Australia, which can get hot).
Not sure if any of this would be the issue, but thought I'd clarify.
And finally, I didn't push or pull the film. I thought that if I set my camera's ISO to 800, the meter will let me know how to properly expose the picture (at the right shutter speed and aperture) and was shooting what seemed "within correct exposure range". The problem, is that for many of these pictures it meant setting the F-Stop to the maximum it could (f/22) or else it would overexpose.
Maybe that is the problem, I understand that smaller apertures introduce more noise, this much though? Also, why are they coming out so dark if they were technically "properly exposed"? If anything I was expecting overexposure it was at the limit of the shutter speed too in some shots...
Regarding the wave-like dark patterns. Originally I thought it could be droplets in the lense, being at f/22 maybe it they were focusing too... But the issue persists even when dry (as seen above). So can't say for sure, I can only assume that maybe the film got spoiled?
Anyway, I think you get the picture.
Keen to hear everyone's thoughts so I can learn from this experience.
Thanks!