What went wrong? Bad focus, wrong exposure...??

This is so disappointing. What did I do wrong? I noticed today that the

hills were covered with wildflowers. It was awesome! I had to get a picture

of it. I figured this was another chance to try out my Argus C-44. I was so

happy with the pictures I took last week up in the mountains. Unfortunately,

things didn't go nearly as well this time.   :( <p>

 

I used Kodak Gold 200 film. I did use my light meter (a Weston Master III),

which seemed to help last time. The Argus C-44 doesn't have a 200 shutter

speed (which is beginning to drive me nuts). It just has 10, 25, 50, 100,

and 300. This was at about 1:30pm. The light meter suggested shutter speed

300 at f11, or shutter speed 100 at f22. I used those settings most, except

for when I took pictures facing toward the west and more into the sun. I used

1/300 and f16 in that case.<p>

 

But the problem is that for some reason, most of the pictures had really dull

colors. I was so disappointed, because I was hoping the flowers would really

show up. What went wrong? Was the focus off? It was kind of hard to use the

rangefinder a few times because I didn't really have any distinct object to

use as a reference. I tried to use a rock or whatever I could find. So maybe

I didn't have it focused right. I don't know. Or was the exposure wrong?

I'm thinking maybe I underexposed, because it seems like things were in focus,

but just had dull colors. Can anyone help me figure out what I might have

done wrong? I'm just so sad and dissappointed about this because I know this

camera can do better.<p>

 

<img

src="http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f86/gatewaycityca/dull_picture_3308.jpg"

<p>

 

<img

src="http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f86/gatewaycityca/dull_picture_3308b.jpg

"><p>

 

Some of the other pictures came out better. This one was looking west, in

brighter sun. The colors seemed to be better here. By the way, the actual

picture is a little better than the scan. And I resized the scans to display

them here.

 

<img

src="http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f86/gatewaycityca/March_3_2008_b_small.j

pg"><p>

 

<img

src="http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f86/gatewaycityca/March_3_2008_c_small.j

pg"><p>

 

This next one is looking north. And by the way, that arrowhead mark on the

mountain is a natural formation! This is the famous Arrowhead on the slope of

the San Bernardino Mountains, in southern California.<p>

 

<img

src="http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f86/gatewaycityca/March_3_2008_d_small.j

pg">

 

And this one is an experiment I did, just to try something. I just wanted to

try a long exposure. This is a candle in a dark room. This was at f8, with

an exposure of about 3 seconds...<p>

 

<img

src="http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f86/gatewaycityca/March_2_2008_small.jpg

"><p>

 

I would think that if I was having problems with the rangefinder again, I

would have noticed it in that picture. But the actual picture seems pretty

sharp. I could read the lettering and numbers on the calendar that was

sitting on the table.<p>

 

So I'm wondering what I did wrong with the other pictures?   :(

Wrong time of day, in general, noon time is a terrible time to take color photographs. Great if you are shooting B&W film and using Sunny 16 as your bench mark, not so great if you are wanting bright colors. There are a few things you can try next time.... firstly, wait until the sun gets lower in the sky. As the sun drops lower in the sky, the natural filtering of the sky creates a more dramatic contrast between the orange sunlight and the deep blue shadow colors reflected by the sky. Secondly... slight underexposure causes more intense colors on film. If you underexpose too much you end up with grey mush, but slight underexposure keeps your colors saturated instead of blowing out. Another thing you can try is a Polarizing filter, but those are easier to use with SLR's where you can see the image. However, sunlight can be described as being polarized in a line going from the sun to you. If you are shooting with the sun directly in front or behind of you, you are more likely to get glares in the camera than when you are pointing your camera at an angle away from the sun... I believe this is evident in the 2nd and 3rd photos you posted. This is another reason that shooting close to noon sucks, with the sun beating down almost directly overhead, in almost every direction you look the sunlight is being reflected directly back into the camera.

I'd go with what Patrick said but also ask a question.

 

What are you showing us, are these scans of the prints or scans from the negatives?

 

The quality from the one hour processing places is all over the place, though generally low. They do tend to get the negatives correct so long as they handle them properly.

Fields of flowers (which are to beautiful to see) are notoriously difficult to photograph -- you can't just go out and point-and-click. The human eye/brain fills in lots of stuff that detracts from the actual scene, so careful composition is particularly important.<P>They also need to be prnted for maximum saturation, but these prints look overexposed. Ask the lab for a re-do.

I agree with Patrick. Wrong light for what you wanted.

If you want to find out whether your camera and meter are working properly, shoot reversal (color slide) film. It is much more sensitive to exposure errors than color negative film. And it is completely insensitive to incompetent printers.

 

By the way, we have no way of telling whether your negatives were properly exposed. Competent labs do the best they can to rescue badly exposed shops.

 

Good luck, go shoot a roll of slides and report back,

I would also check that the print is perfectly flat in the scanner. Pic #1 is driving me nuts. The foreground is uniformly sharp and the right hand portion of the rock wall in the distance is sharp but the left portion is not. If these issues are evident on the negative, I would suspect a dirty lens, the degree of sharpness is so inconsistent.

Remember when shooting distant landscapes, (Anything over about 25 feet) just set the focus to infinity and stop down to at least f/8. Someone brought up a very good point about the human brain intensifying the colors and magnifying the distance of what we see. Any textbook on perceptual psychology will bear this out as empirical fact.

Often what you get back from the lab is just a starting point. Slides are a much better indicator of what light and color was there at the time of exposure. (not the ridiculous "capture" endemic to digiots vocab.)

Now that I've slammed digital I will make some offerings at the Photoshop altar. It's a wonderful tool to quickly and cheaply make simple adjustments to your photo to match what you saw. I humbly submit your photo with some simple Photoshop alterations. Does it look a bit closer to what you saw? You can do these with just about any version of Photoshop. If you want the specifics email me offlist and I'll send them to you.<div></div>

I was out yesterday loved the look of the sky which I found yesterday due to being over cast, but had to remove my glasses and never gave it a thought ,that My eye glasses are the 80% tint glasses so to me though everything looks great , but take them off and you see what the camera is seeing , since it does not have a tinting filter glass on it :talk about a rude awake-ing ! Live and learn!

I also agree with Patrick. Midday in bright shunshine is a very difficult light. Looking at the histograms the exposure looks theoretically correct though in these conditions I would slightly underexpose to get more saturated colours. Next time in these conditions try the correct exposure and another a half a stop underexposed.

Thanks everyone for the replies! So there seems to be a consensus that it was the wrong time of day, and next I should try to underexpose a little to get brighter colors? I did notice that in the last pictures I took, in the mountains, colors did seem to be much brighter. That was near sunset. It was the same kind of film, Kodak Gold 200.

 

By the way, here is one of the pictures I took then. I posted a thread about this earlier, but here is one of the pictures...

http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f86/gatewaycityca/sky_forest_feb28_2008_b_small.jpg

 

I got these pictures developed at a 1 hour lab, and I just scanned the prints on my computer.

 

Russ, thanks for "fixing" the picture! It definitely looks a lot closer to what I actually saw.

Chris, I've told you once, I'll tell you again. You can't learn much about system (in your case, lens/shutter/exposure meter) performance with negative film. Test with slides.

For shooting midday, ND filters are your friends, just don't forget to compensate for it if your meter is not measuring through the lens.

And I'll agree with Will about neutral density filters, which I used for photographing in the brilliant sunlight of the high desert and mountains.

I see some overexposure. One of the things that can create overexposure presuming your meter is accurate is slow shutter speed. I have never measured a mechanical shutter that was marked at 1/300 to be over 1/200th. Fot instance, I have a Kodak Pony from the same era as your c-44 where the 1/300 measures out at 1/175. That is pretty typical of 1/300 marked speeds. If you reduced your exposure by about a stop I think your colors would be richer.

 

Tom

Thanks, Tom. I still have a bunch of film left...about 7 rolls! So I'll try it again maybe later this week. I can definitely see how I would be overexposing with 1/300 and f11 if I wasn't really getting an accurate shutter speed. I'll go down to f16 or maybe even f22 and see how that works. When I took those pictures, I just trusted what the meter showed, and the shutter speed on the camera. I probably got away with it last time because it was near sunset and the light was so low.

 

Also, does anyone know of a neutral density filter that would fit on the Argus C-44? Last time I tried to find a filter for the C-3, I had trouble finding one that would fit the lens. I was looking at those Cokin filters. Has anyone used those?

For outdoors under sunny skies, no meter will improve on the old "Sunnny 16" rule (in Florida and the high mountains in summer, it's "Sunny 22").<div></div>

I've got to disagree with the "wrong time of day" theorists. That's an old wives tale (old photographer's wives, anyway). This time of year the sun is still low at midday. Depending on where you're at, midday is the only time you're going to get useable light.

 

You used the wrong film, from every aspect. Kodak Gold is a portait film. It is made to give muted, pastel colors and soft detail. It is not a landscape film at all. 200 speed film is also notorious for its poor image quality. Try Fuji Reala or Kodak UC if you insist on using print film.

 

If you really want to learn what you're doing and want vivid, realistic colors get Kodak VS. If you want to learn what you're doing and want vivid, unrealistic colors get Fuji Velvia. If you want to learn what your doing and want all the colors tinted blue get Fuji Provia.

 

But for heaven's sake loose the Kodak Gold 200!!!!

What others said, it's your lighting. Not your film.

Look at the shadows in the photos that you posted. There are hardly any at all. Then look at the shadows of the photo in the link you posted, (the snow scene). Nice long shadows in that shot mean the sun is not high in the sky, and you get nice side lighting like you see in the link of the snow scene. This light adds some texture or sculpturing to the shot and makes it look more natural.

 

Your shots of the wild flowers are shot when the sun is high, and thus the lighting is hard on your subject. Plenty of light, but the scene lacks some depth and texture. Kind of hard on colors, too.

 

For what it's worth, Kodak Gold 200 is not Kodak's portrait film. It's their general purpose film, like you find at Wal Mart. A good film, too. Kodak's portrait film is called Portra.

It is the light. I've just spent 5 years in the southwest desert. One of my projects was capturing the brilliance of the light at midday. I've used UC, Gold, Reala, Portra VC, NC, Kodachrome, Velvia, and digital. It's the light.

DOH! I just read this at http://www.photography.com/topics/how-to-take-pictures-of-flowers/<p>

 

<b>"Flower Pictures and Light

 

Sunlight is not your friend when taking pictures of flowers. Sunlight shining off leaves and petals obscures the details of flower photos and causes problems with over exposure. The first rule of how to take pictures of flowers is to avoid direct sunlight.<p>

 

Overcast days are ideal for taking pictures of flowers: The softer, more diffuse light lets the petals of the flower stand out and become the focus of the picture. If you can?t avoid sunlight, opt for the warm light of early morning or evening, rather than the harsh light of noon." </b><p>

 

That's exactly what I did, try to take pictures of flowers at noon...or close enough anyway, at around 1:30. I also read somewhere else that yellow flowers are particularly sensitive to overexposure and can get washed out. Great. That's exactly what this was, a field of yellow and orange wildflowers on the hills.<p>

 

I also remembered that most of the other pictures I've taken that I was really happy with, were later in the day, around 3 or 4pm. So I'm going to try again early tomorrow morning. And maybe again at sunset. But at least now I know what I apparently did wrong, and the light was just too harsh.<p>

 

Thanks again everyone for the help. I'm not giving up yet!

Tim, I'm betting that in Southern Cali, there isn't that much difference between Summer and Winter... noon is still bright bright bright. This fall I drove from Asheville NC to Columbia SC during the day and was shocked at how much higher in the sky the sun was... it was noticeably hotter and brighter... and that was only a 2 hour drive! I also lived in Savannah GA for many years and I recall that the sun never really got all that low in the sky in the winter.... not compared to here in Asheville, where at noon the sun looks like it should at 4:00 PM! As far as Gold 200 goes... it's a personal favorite. MUCH brighter colors than Kodak's actual portrait films. The only Kodak print film's I've seen with better color rendition and brighter colors are the Portra VC series, Portra 800, and 400HD. Kodak Gold 200 sits comfortably between Portra NC (actual portrait film) and Portra VC in color intensity. It's a reliable cheap film. As far as the argument that 200 films are terrible... then please tell me what makes 125 and 160 speed films so incredibly superior to 200 speed films? The fact that they cost twice as much? The bulk of the 35mm color shots on my website port and my p.net port are shot on Gold 200. Granted I do alot of portaits, but I also do alot of environmental portraits and landscapes. I'm not buying it. It's not Velvia but what is? It's almost as cheap as B&W film and is available everywhere, with stunning results when the light is right.

"Flower Pictures and Light Sunlight is not your friend when taking pictures of flowers. Sunlight shining off leaves and petals obscures the details of flower photos and causes problems with over exposure. The first rule of how to take pictures of flowers is to avoid direct sunlight.<P>"Overcast days are ideal for taking pictures of flowers: The softer, more diffuse light lets the petals of the flower stand out and become the focus of the picture. If you can?t avoid sunlight, opt for the warm light of early morning or evening, rather than the harsh light of noon." <P>I think this advise only applies to taking "flower pictures," not of landscapes which include flowers as part (most) of the composition.