Jump to content

Yea, it's underexposed... but why? (Problems with Kodak Supra 400 and Elan7E combination?)


Recommended Posts

I just had a problem with a couple of Kodak Supra 400 rolls. I

recently buyed some Supra 400 for test pourposes and tryed them with

awfull results: almost all the pics are very grainy.

 

Obviouslly the film is underexpsed, but now I want to know why. As I

let the camera do the exposure settings (manually set the speed upon

the lens length and let the camera do the rest, in a Canon Elan 7e

with a EF 28-135mm f/3.5-5.6 USM IS lens and a 420EX Speedlight), and

always got the flash "all OK" green light, I believed the camera was

exposing wrong, so I took a roll of ProImage 100 and took a third of

the film one step over, a third in normal and a third one step

underexposed. The results where all fine (as I sadly expected), being

negative film, a step over/under shouldn't gave problems on 4x6

prints. Comparing the negatives I found the ProImage 100 one step

underexposed to be darker than the "normally" exposed with Supra 400,

so it seems to be more than one step underexposed.

 

Does anybody haves an idea on what's wrong?

 

May the E-TTL be causing problems? (I don't believe this may be the

problem, as I didn't found reflections which may fool the sensor and,

even in worst conditions, the matrix exposition on the 7E gives

consistent results.)

 

I normally use Kodak Portra (160 and 400 in the NC and VC flavors)

for "important" pics and never had this grain in the 400s, so may be

the Supra 400 wrongly rated as a 400 film?

 

Thanks for your help.

Ruben

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It's hard to follow what all you've done, but yet many times films are rated higher than they should be by the manufacturer. I find fujis color negatives are more pronounced in this respect, however Kodaks consumer film can benefit from as much as 2/3s of a stop more exposure! When I used supra I often gave it an extra 1/3 of a stop, so you may want to try that as well.

 

The best thing to do however is test it out and see what it needs, you may find you need to rate it differently than I did. There may be nothing wrong with the metering however, I'd suggets setting up a static scene that's very easy to meter because if you're out running around and taking pictures it's hard to tell whether you've metered properly every time. Especially if you're trying to test the film out.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I once made the mistake of having flash-sync speed on my Canon EOS-5 set to 1/200. The pictures turned out exactly as you described...very grainy. Once I set the flash sync back to the normal setting, the problem went away, even using the same film (Kodak Portra 400NC, if I remember correctly).
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thanks both of you for your answers. I'll do some testings to find out how this film performs. Reading some other threads I found that Kodak Professional Supra 400 was discontinued in the US, so I will also find out if the stock down here in Mexico is from an old batch or if even if the tests worth it, as the prices for this film and for Portra are the same and maybe the Supra are just old remainings.

 

Thanks again,

Ruben

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...