Weird Coloring on my pictures

Hello,

I recently started shooting film on my Pentax K1000. After shooting a few rolls, I noticed that the coloring on about half of the pictures had a brownish tint to them. I exposed most of them the same way and can't figure out what I'm doing wrong. On these I shot with Kodak Gold 200 and had them developed through Walgreens. You can see the brownish one as opposed to the normal looking one. Please help.

 

 

It looks like their chemicals hadn't been refreshed. I'd take your roll back and ask for a free reprint.

The film was developed and then printed. The film yields a negative image (colors reversed). The printing step outputs positive pints. Photogrpahy uses the negative / postive process becasue during the printing process color reproduction errors are normally well handled. In this case the machine that did the printing step was not operating at optimum and some of the negatives were printed with an unnatural color bias. Your recouse is to take the film and prints back to the drugstore, show them to the photolab clerk, they should then reprint those biased prints, applying a manual correction. They should make these repirnts as necessay untill you are pleased with the outcome.

It looks like their chemicals hadn't been refreshed. I'd take your roll back and ask for a free reprint.

Do you recommend going through a different company next time?

Not necessarily. In-house minilabs are becoming quite scarce to non-existent where I live - aLL the drug stores, grocery stores, and Walmart stopped in-house film work a couple of years ago. There are alternatives such as sending off your films via the mail to specialty labs for processing, or finding a photography shop which does pro-level work (sometimes photography shops run their own in-house minilabs - which are usually run by knowledgible people rather than untrained staff). I'd give your current provider another chance...perhaps get to know the operator/s or when you take things in, at least speak with the operators (not cashiers) to make sure they understand your expectations.

This is unlikley to be contamined or exhusted chemicals. Morelikey this is improper calibration of the printer. Walgreens will reprint them for free if you take back the film and the off-color prints.

I'm no expert, but it looks to me as if the machinery 'over-corrected' for the blue water, expecting the only blue to be the sky.

I'm no expert, but it looks to me as if the machinery 'over-corrected' for the blue water, expecting the only blue to be the sky.

@ Tony Parsons - You are on the right track! This error is called "subject failure". The printer scans the negative and the result is an over-abundant expanse of blue. The logic of the printer software attempted to remove some of the blue. The complement of blue is yellow (opposite of blue). The machine added a yellow bias. The printing machine has a computer monitor which displayed a preview of how the finished print might look. The machine operator was not viewing or asleep at the switch.. Had the operator been alert he/she could have inputted override color correction. Each negative is thus custom corrected. Odd results are possible because this type of scanner only looks at small random areas of the negative.

Unless you pay extra for 'hand correction' that's what you can expect of cheap machine prints from colour negative film.

 

The 'brownish tint' is actually a red cast and is fairly easily corrected - if the processor could be bothered.

This was achieved by a simple alteration to the Red 'curve' using the image-editor on my smartphone. Took about 20 seconds.

 

FWIW, the 'good' example has a slight red cast too. It's just not as strong as the one I took the liberty of correcting.

 

Just out of interest: What do you expect to get out of shooting film that you can't get with a digital camera? Apart from grief like the above?

Edited April 13, 2020 by rodeo_joe|1