how to tell if color negatives are over/underexposed

I was wondering, if most labs correct under/over exposure, how can we

tell in the negatives? And another question, do the labs always

correctly correct under/overexposure?

 

Would it be good for a beginning photographer to request for them not

to be corrected?

 

Thanks,

Adam

Usually, color negative film can handle a little underexposure and a lot of overexposure. On the machine printing, the labs normally correct exposure in an averaging sense, so photos that have a lot of light or dark areas may get printed wrong. If you're concerned about checking exposures, you may want to try slide film- it'll be a lot more obvious how you're doing. With the color negative films, if the prints look good, figure the exposure was close enough.

I agree with Stephen's advice to use slide film when learning exposure. With slide film what you see is what you got. However, it is possible with experience to learn to read neg film. Areas of developed colur neg film that are a clear sickly orange colour did not receive any exposure to light so they will print black. Areas that are black on the film were over exposed and will print pure white.

 

There are of course areas of a scene that should print pure black or pure white, but mostly you want to see shades of colour (other than clear orange and black) on your negs.

 

The real problem here is the disconnect that has evolved since the introduction of colour neg film. Previously most (b+w) neg film photographers had at least some experience in the darkroom, so one had one's nose rubbed in what constituted a good exposure vs. a bad exposure. Printing colour neg film was too complex and costly so the present system of lab dev and printing created a whole generation of photographers who have never once gone through the complete cycle of expose, develop, print, evaluate.

 

Traditionalists may bemoan the digital darkroom but at least it completes the cycle for the colour neg photographer.

"<I>Subject: how to tell if color negatives are over/underexposed</I>"

 

<P>Simple. Learn to take correctly exposed negatives and then you can see and learn what they look like. I shot a roll of my son surfing. I used all manual exposures based on readings of an incident light meter, spot meter and "sunny 16" rule. Since it was a cloudless day, the light did not change. All the frames in the negative had the same density but the prints varied from those looking fine to those looking underexposed. If there was too much white water in a frame I got an underexposed looking print - the white "fooled" the printer analyzer. The negative was fine. The same thing would have happened to my negative if I relyed on the camera meter. It also would have been "fooled" by too much white water and I would then have gotten an underexposed negative. <B></b><BR>      If you intend to shoot relying solely on the camera meter and then want to check the negatives to learn about proper exposure, you are going about it backwards. Learn about proper exposure first and then you will know what a good negative looks like.

James, I assume the question could also be stated as "How do I know my meter is right?" or "How do I know I'm really reading it right or compensating right?" Shooting a single roll of slide film will pretty much tell you if you're hitting your exposures right most of the time.

 

It might be informative to try exposing a series of under/ overexposed shots on color negative film just to see what they look like when printed. Start at maybe 4 stops underexposed, go up to 5 or 6 stops overexposed, and print. Vary the camera angle a bit each time so you can match the prints with the negatives. What I've found is you can bracket by 2 stops or more, and not see a difference in the prints.