I am curious - Yellow

[andykowalczyk]

I just got back my prints from a roll of XP2 (Ilford C-41 400 B+W)

on my "new" SRT 101. The camera came with a medium yellow filter,

which I left on - since most of my shots were in bright sun and I

could play like I was back in the olden days.

 

I have shot some rolls of Fuji Press 400 before (without the filter)

and everything seemed fine.

 

But on the XP2 everything was underexposed (the negatives are very

light). Most shots were in full sun. The only shots that looked OK

were at dusk when I was eeking out the last bit of light.

 

So before I go down the list of obvious things - beginning with

operator error, weak battery, and meter calibration (but I just had

a CLA). I was wondering about one thing. The yellow filter is

usually described as taking one-stop of brightness. But I didn't do

anything to compensate since I assumed that the Through The Lens

metering would take this all into account. But what if the film and

the meter sensor respond differently to different colors of light?

Maybe the sensor never "sees" blue light - so the Yellow filter

didn't have any effect to the sensor - but if the film expects a lot

of blue then it didn't get enough light??

 

Any body ever heard of such a thing?

[j._bradley_deal]

Hi Andrew,

I had a similar experience a Pentax Me and filters -they just did not look right to me with the filters. I was using an orange filter at the time. I have read on this forum that XP-2 likes more exposure. Some suggest setting the meter for 200 speed film and just let the lab process normally. Shoot a roll of slide film that will diffently test the meter. Cheers & Good Luck.

-Brad

[josphy]

Well, it's definitely possible that your meter could be sensitive to a different spectrum of light than your film is. However, I agree with the previous post that XP2 likes plenty of exposure. It always looks like it's verging on underexposure at 400. I shoot it always at 200.

[andykowalczyk]

Verifying comments above here is note from the XP2 Super Data Sheet:

 

"Cameras with through-the-lens metering will usually

adjust the exposure automatically when using

filters. With some automatic exposure cameras, the

correction given for deep red and orange filters

can produce negatives under exposed by as much

as 11/2 stops."

 

http://www.ilfordphoto.com