ruben leal Posted December 28, 2003 Share Posted December 28, 2003 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 More sharing options...
carl smith Posted December 28, 2003 Share Posted December 28, 2003 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 More sharing options...
dan_sapper Posted December 28, 2003 Share Posted December 28, 2003 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 More sharing options...
ruben leal Posted December 29, 2003 Author Share Posted December 29, 2003 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 More sharing options...
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