Scanned negatives are black at 1/4000. Is my light meter off?

<p>I took what I thought were really nice snaps of wildlife using Kodak Ektar 100 on a Nikon FE2 body, 85 mm Nikkor lens with f-stop at approx 2 for a shallow depth of field effect. This bumped my shutter speed to 1/4000 (or maybe towards 1/2000 in some cases) which I thought would be OK since the FE2 is capable of that speed shutter. My batteries were replaced only days before so I know that my shuttering wouldn't be affected by a dead battery (also my light meter/needle worked fine).<br>

After development, those images were completely black. What went wrong here? Does my light meter need calibration? All my other images taken at shutter speeds less than 1/1000 were fine with good exposures. </p>

<p>Any help will would be greatly appreciated.</p>

<p>Your shutter or whole shutter box may be faulty.</p>

<p>Check by looking through the shutter blades without film in the camera, back open and no lens on the body. You should see light coming through the shutter by way of a travelling slit.</p>

<p>By the sounds of your initial post you should only need to check speeds faster than 1/1000s.</p>

<p>I'm guessing your shot was probably in or near full sunlight, given your parameters for exposure. It sounds to me like one of two things may be happening, either the shutter wasn't working properly or a rare case of reciprocity failure due to the high shutter speed. We usually think of reciprocity for long exposures, but it also happens on the high end of the scale. Sorry I can't explain it better, but if you do a search, you will get a good scientific explanation of why and when theis occasionally happens. The solution here would have been using an ND filter if that was the case.</p>

<p>Thank you for your suggestion Ian, I will check this. <br>

Stephen, I never consider reciprocity failure at faster shutter speeds. I forgot to mention that my 85mm nikkor lens had a UV filter fitted. Could this bias my exposure toward reciprocity failure?</p>

<p>The UV filter would have virtually no effect on your outcome.</p>

It's a shutter fault almost definitely. That FE2 must

be around 30 years old by now, and cameras don't

last forever. It's also possible that you drove the shutter above its rated top speed in aperture priority AE, thereby closing the shutter slit completely. The timing circuit shouldn't really allow that, but with an old camera who knows?

<p>

Short exposure (or more correctly, high intensity) Reciprocity Failure doesn't kick in

suddenly above 1/1000th s. It's a gradual process

and works such that contrast is reduced. In other words the highlights are affected more than the shadows, resulting in a flat-looking exposure, but not a completely blank frame.

<p>

BTW, wildlife at f/2 with an 85mm lens!?

<blockquote>

<p>Short exposure (or more correctly, high intensity) Reciprocity Failure doesn't kick in suddenly above 1/1000th s. It's a gradual process and works such that contrast is reduced. In other words the highlights are affected more than the shadows, resulting in a flat-looking exposure, but not a completely blank frame.</p>

</blockquote>

<p> <br>

That ^</p>