Exposure conundrum

[Anscojohn]

I dealt with this once and thought I would toss it out to all the experts.
The customer was really adament: her camera (a 35mm Nikon SLR) always overexposed her black and white film, but never her color film. Go figure.

[msage]

I dealt with this once and thought I would toss it out to all the experts.
The customer was really adament: her camera (a 35mm Nikon SLR) always overexposed her black and white film, but never her color film. Go figure.

If we are talking about traditional BxW film, it might be her dev.

[archphoto]

Color OK ?
> ASA B&W set propperly ? >>> yes >>> wrong processing
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> no >>> her own fault, adj ASA to obtain propper EI

Reasoning: C41 is standardized, allways the same, B&W can vary

Peter

[glaiben]

Was she not changing ASA/EI between color and B&W films (assuming they were different)?

[Anscojohn]

Was she not changing ASA/EI between color and B&W films (assuming they were different)?

******
She was changing her ASA correctly. Processing was correct.

[Anscojohn]

She used a filter for B&W and did not correct for it ?

****
No filter for either.

[archphoto]

Only thing left for me: too sensitive film for her chosen apperture e.i. 5.6 at 800 ASA or higher

[JBrunner]

Her red dress always came out black.

[rthomas]

Ok, film processing was correct, no filter factor to deal with, and film speed was set correctly... needless to say, it's very unlikely that the camera was only misfiring coincidentally with the loading of B&W film. Could it be that she simply didn't like the printing? Maybe it's a question of different exposure latitudes of the films in use and the resulting prints.

[Anscojohn]

She was really adament about it. What it finally came down to was something that had nothing to do with the fact of color film versus black and white film. What a lot of questioning finally brought to light was that she always shot TRI-X at normal ASA (this was a before ISO standards) and always shot Kodachrome 25 at normal ASA.
Her camera's meter had a non-linear exposure problem that only came into play at higher ASA settings. But the customer saw it as a "black and white film" versus a "color film" problem since that was the way it manifested itself in practice.