[hks_kansei]

It's been ages since I've shot film, and even when I did used to shoot fil, it was when I was younger and dad was teaching me (generally motorsport photography, which meant nice even daylight.)

I’ve recently had a few rolls of film printed from my Pentax ME with a 50mm F2, film used was Kodak 400asa

Many of the photos are fine, but there are a few issues with some:

1: a few seem to be underexposed, it seems that the small portion of bright sky in the images has caused the camera to underexpose the foreground.
I’m guessing from this the ME uses average metering rather than spot or centre weighted?
Images with fairly even lighting throughout have all exposed fine.

2: A few indoor shots have taken of a horrible blue/green hue over the photo. I know this is to do with the lighting in the place (workshop style fluorescents)
How would one compensate for this? I know on digital it’s a white balance thing, but is there an equivalent for film? (all my old film shots were always outdoors)

3: The colours in the photos don’t seem particularly vivid, they’re all slightly dull. I presume this is to do with the film/processing more than the camera.

I just ask since it’s the first time I’ve used the ME since buying it a few months ago, I just want to check it doesn’t have issues.


The colour dullness I can understand, the roll of Fuji 200asa from the SP1000 looked similar in colour vibrancy, it’s just the other issues I can’t seem to fathom.

[LesDMess]

#1 Interestingly enough that Pentax pioneered spot metering but didn't put it in production until the modern film cams. Backlit subjects always requires +compensation depending on scene and taste. Fortunately, most all C41 can withstand gross overexposure and still provide useful results.
#2 Lighting temperature compensation is conducted in post. PS has built-in filters and most all post tools have white balance for the quick approach as shown below.




#3 Vivid is of course dependent on the lens, scene lighting, scan and post work and is the easiest to adjust to taste. Below is backlit Fuji Fortia which is naturally vivid with a particularly vivid scene.