Help with graininess and over exposure?

Question

I recently took some pictures in the mountains of Colorado. "Some" meaning 288. When I got them developed, most of them turned out crappy. They are under or overexposed, super grainy and a lot of them were really dark on one side before fading into the actual color.

I usually don't have a problem with this stuff! All I remember from what I did was this:
I have a Pentax K1000 SLR camera.
I was having problems with the light... The light meter was saying it was too bright out. I turned the shutter speed up notch by notch and by time it got to the fastest setting, it was still too bright. So I turned the ISO setting to a higher faster setting than the type of film I was actually using. I was using 200 ISO film, and I think I ended up after a while putting the ISO setting on 800 ISO. Thinking back, that probably wasn't the best idea...

I guess my main problem was the lighting... I have no clue why it was so much brighter up there, but I just was having a hard time getting the exposure right.


Which resulted in, as I said before, mostly under exposed pictures with a few over exposed. Dark, grainy, over all just crappy photos.

How can I keep my pictures from turning out grainy? And how can I compensate for extreme lighting?
Any help?!

Answer 1

I believe what you forgot to do was change the aperture. Remember the old "Sunny 16 Rule" that states: "On a sunny day set your aperture to f16 and your shutter speed to 1/ISO?"



ISO 200



f32 @ 1/60 sec.

f22 @ 1/125 sec.

f16 @ 1/250 sec. "Sunny 16"

f11 @ 1/500 sec.

f8 @ 1/1000 sec.



Because your K1000 has a mechanical shutter you have to use the shutter speed closest to the ISO of your film.



The lighting in the Rocky Mountains is no more "extreme" than the lighting here in Indiana or anywhere else.



You were definitely wrong to change the ISO since you were using film. Its a shame you ruined 8 rolls of film and wasted the money it cost you for processing and printing.

Answer 2

1. Don't touch the ISO setting on your camera once set to the film you are using, unless you absolutely need to do so.

2. You don't tell us what you were doing with your aperture setting. A day like you describe is easily handled using the "sunny 16" rule. Shutter speed set to the ISO speed (in this case, 1/200th, or as close as possible) at f/16 will give you a proper exposure on a sunny day.

3. Extremes of bright and dark areas will always give you trouble. Your best option here is bracketing the shot, in other words, taking 2 or 3 shots while adjusting the exposure between them. Say one shot at f/16 and 1/200th, one shot at f/16 and 1/100th, and one shot at f/16 and 1/400th. I understand the K1000 doesn't allow all those shutter speeds, but you get the idea. You could also adjust the aperture to accomplish the same thing, shooting all shots at 1/200th and using f/11, f/16, and f/22. Film has a wider range of bright to dark than most digital cameras, but there is still a limit.

4. Use a hand held meter, not the meter in the camera.

5. You can read about the zone exposure system, which is a way to determine the exposure by measuring those various light and dark areas in your shot, and finding the best compromise setting.

Answer 3

First of all, you never change the ISO in the middle of the roll. Then you will have half shot at one and half shot at the other. You cannot process one roll for two different ISO settings. If you had told the processor what you did they would have had to process for one and the photos shot at the other would end up improperly exposed. So, just for future reference, if you want to push or pull your film, do so for the entire roll.



Second, if it was already too bright, pushing your film 2 stops from 200 to 800 would only have increased your exposure.



What you should have done is left the ISO at 200 and once you had sped the shutter as much as you could, you should have opened the aperture until you had an acceptable exposure.



200 isn't very grainy but bad exposure will worsen the grain. You might consider going to a slower, finer grain film, but work on your exposure. It sounds like your exposures are all over the place.

Answer 4

If you were shooting ISO200 film, but had your camera set to ISO 800, all of your film is going to be under exposed 2 stops. Unless you push processed it, you might as well throw out the film, because you are not going to be able to recover the images.





You should have no problem getting your ISO 200 film to be properly exposed. f/16 @ 1/250th is the proper exposure for bright light even at altitude. That should be well within the range of your camera's ability.







The reason they look dark and grainy is not do to anything you did. It was because the lab tried to create neutral prints from under or over exposed negatives which makes the prints look grainy.





I live in Breckenridge, Colorado (9,600 feet,) and the lighting here is not anymore "extreme" than it is anywhere else. In fact, the thin dry air makes the skies much bluer than at lower elevations and therefore easier to expose.

Answer 5

If the aperture ring doen't work, that's the point. Anyhow, don't change iso setting but in the case you're using all the roll at this iso and develop at it