Hi!

I am pretty new at b/w photography, and the pictures that I took were underexposed. The shadows are obviously gone, but I still can see most details even though the negatives are thin. Please help me! I really really want to get some workable prints from these, and any help would be very much appreciated!

Thanks! Wei

-- Wei Chin (psyh@gurlmail.com), November 08, 1999

Answers

Are you going to print them yourself? If so, start by using higher contrast paper than normal, probably grade 4. Because the negatives are thin, the exposure time will be very short. Time them so you get the full 90 seconds (or more) in the developer. A common fault is to pull them from the developer too soon because they have been over exposed, and you will lose contrast and get foggy looking prints.

-- Bill Mitchell (bmitch@home.com), November 08, 1999.

Thanks Bill! Yeah, I will be developing them myself.

-- Wei Chin (psyh@gurlmail.com), November 09, 1999.

There are two other things you might consider. The first is to chemically intensify the negatives using Kodak Chromium Intensifier, which you should be able to get, or at least order, from any good photo shop. It's not hard, but take care to follow the directions carefully, especially with respect to having fully fixed the negatives first. The other thing you might look into is having the negatives digitally scanned. This opens the door to all kinds of manipulation. Good luck, njb

-- Nacio Brown (njb@limn.net), November 09, 1999.

Hard to say without actually looking at the negatives. Grossly underexposed negatives are usually not worth the trouble (is a reshoot out of question?). If there is some detail, intensification is one answer. You do have some control with the degree of intensification. Try masking. The last couple of issues of View Camera have articles by Alan Ross on this technique. You can use pencil to add deensity to the shadow areas on the mask. Might let you just hold any shadow detail on the edge. The success depends a great deal on just how much shadow density has been lost. DJ

-- N Dhananjay (ndhanu@umich.edu), November 10, 1999.

Thanks for the advice! Looking closely at the negatives, I can see the details pretty well, its just that the negatives are really light. I'm asking these questions because these photos were taken during a vacation and sad to say, it is not possible for me to retake them anytime soon. Also another technical question, what exactly is masking?

-- Wei (psyh@gurlmail.com), November 10, 1999.

Are you sure they are underexposed, and not just underdeveloped? One way to check for this is to look at the piece of leader which has been lightstruck (assuming, of course, that the negatives are 35mm). If the fogged end of the film is not totally opaque, you have underdeveloped the film. If it is opaque, you have underexposed the film. Bear in mind that if the film end is not opaque, you may have both underexposed AND underdeveloped the film. This isn't a fool-proof method, but it will serve to guide you.

-- Terrence Brennan (tbrennan13@hotmail.com), November 10, 1999.