"Blown reds"

ChrisR

ChrisR

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I didn't post many shots from Remembrance Day, as I was saving them up as candidates for the November POTY entry. In the end my terrific idea (a bull on a footpath) turned out to be naff (I'd too much respect to go close enough!), so I submitted one from just after the Edinburgh Remembrance Sunday ceremony (see http://www.talkphotography.co.uk/threads/poty2013-round-11-respect-results.521452/#post-5994217). The judges were nicer about it than I expected, but commented that it was over-exposed and the reds were blown. Here it is, uncropped so you can see the dynamic range:



My question is: any suggestions on how I could have exposed this better?

It was taken on my "new" Pentax MX with the Pentax-M 85mm lens, I suspect pretty close to f/2 and 1/1000, on Agfa Vista (I went to the ceremony loaded with Portra 400, but ran out of film taking shots of the backs of people's heads, and Vista was the only backup I had).

Most of the reds I'm getting from Vista have been fine, but another shot on the same roll (taken for the 52 theme "left") also had problems with the red (there appears to be a focus/depth of field problem here too):



Has anyone else noticed problems with reds on Vista? Is it just me? Can I blame the Scottish autumnal light?
 
hi chris a definite case of over exposure your camera has metered for the 18% grey of the granite in shot 1 and this has completely blown the poppys in the sunlight i would have under exposed this by 1 f stop then pulled back the light on the top of the stone in pp. hth, mike.
 
Thanks Mike. Still getting the hang of this "when to trust the meter" lark!
 
ChrisR said:
I didn't post many shots from Remembrance Day, as I was saving them up as candidates for the November POTY entry. In the end my terrific idea (a bull on a footpath) turned out to be naff (I'd too much respect to go close enough!), so I submitted one from just after the Edinburgh Remembrance Sunday ceremony (see http://www.talkphotography.co.uk/threads/poty2013-round-11-respect-results.521452/#post-5994217). The judges were nicer about it than I expected, but commented that it was over-exposed and the reds were blown. Here it is, uncropped so you can see the dynamic range:



My question is: any suggestions on how I could have exposed this better?

It was taken on my "new" Pentax MX with the Pentax-M 85mm lens, I suspect pretty close to f/2 and 1/1000, on Agfa Vista (I went to the ceremony loaded with Portra 400, but ran out of film taking shots of the backs of people's heads, and Vista was the only backup I had).

Most of the reds I'm getting from Vista have been fine, but another shot on the same roll (taken for the 52 theme "left") also had problems with the red (there appears to be a focus/depth of field problem here too):



Has anyone else noticed problems with reds on Vista? Is it just me? Can I blame the Scottish autumnal light?
Click to expand...

Chris, I am really glad you posted about this issue. I am a real fan of Vista and shot it by the furlong but I have experienced some real problems with reds in very bright conditions. I thought it was just me even though it has been a problem on number of rolls, mainly in very bright conditions.

I partially agree with Dinorock about under exposing by a stop but I do think there is more to this and that there is an issue with vivid reds and Vista in very bright sunlight I am not able to post from my image file but will when I get a moment to illustrate what I mean. It would be interesting to hear from other Vista shooters.
 
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Look forward to seeing your examples, Adrian. I don't know if that judge was one of the digerati; I understand that blown reds can be an issue for these new-fangled cameras, and I can sort of understand how it might happen with the colour filter layers (but only sort-of... most of my understanding is like that!). I haven't formed any kind of mental explanation of why it might particularly happen with film, though!
 
I'm not sure where I'm looking for the blown red, the poppies on the tomb look okay.

I've had a flick through my library but can't find anything in such an extreme situation.
 
Is this not a scanning issue? It would seem more likely to me that the reds were clipped in the scanning stage than they were overexposed in the camera, especially if you were shooting at box speed.

I've overexposed the heck out of Fuji and Kodak colour negative films and rarely, if ever, see anything actually blow out.

I know that some of my photos scanned by UK Film Lab taken with Pro 160NS, another of Fuji's films, have some very vivid reds that are far to the right in the histogram according to Lightroom, but fall just short of blowing out. I could see how it might be easy to clip the reds if I were doing the scanning myself, especially in photos with a wide subject brightness range.
 
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Well IMO Fuji film is not the best for light reds to maroon. Anyway there must be something about the wavelength of red light that causes more problems for film and digital users.....compared to say greens.
 
excalibur2 said:
Well IMO Fuji film is not the best for light reds to maroon. Anyway there must be something about the wavelength of red light that causes more problems for film and digital users.....compared to say greens.
Click to expand...

With the exception of Fuji Pro 160NS, which I actually like for reds, I do think that there is some truth to this for Fuji's colour negative emulsions. Fuji generally has the better greens and Kodak the better reds, I feel.
 
Thanks for the comments, folks. This was scanned by Photo Express in Hull, who usually do a much better job than me. I might have a go at scanning myself, but it'll take some time as the Plustek is packed at the moment, and the Epson is in another country!
 
One of the most difficult shots is a red rose.....could be an idea for a challenge next May. ;)
 
Morning Chris,

I've just had a quick nosy at the first image in PS, the histogram shows the reds are indeed a little clipped but there isn't much (if any) actual 'digital' overexposure.

0jE3K0r.jpg


It does look like the highlights have been blown in scanning and then pulled back though, a bit like trying to correct an overexposed digital image but that's a very odd look for an image scanned from neg film. I don't know what scanning process Photo Express use but it probably wasn't an actual human being treating each individual image to get the best out of it, hence why things have been pushed a bit too much here. Personally I'm not convinced this is an issue with overexposing the film (which is pretty damned difficult to do with neg film anyway), I think it's much more of a poor scan issue. A much more accurate/balanced scan can probably be pulled from that frame if a little time is spent on it. :)
 
Wow thanks for that, Paul. I did have to pull the highlights back in Aperture, there was definitely some over-exposure (I could have got more from the shadows too but thought they were best left alone, specially in the crop). I'll maybe have another go at scanning this myself, but it'll have to wait as the negs are in Edinburgh and I'm currently away south again!
 
No worries Chris! Overexposure on an 8 bit JPEG only happens when all three colour channels output 255, apart from very tiny bits of the frame (which in my book at least aren't enough to count) that isn't the case here. As negative film has such a great tolerance to being pushed exposure-wise the only other place things can be blown is in the scanning stage, all things taken into account the root cause for that is usually going to be poor scanning. There's no doubt in my mind a much more detailed (and more technically correct) scan can be pulled from the neg. :)
 
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