Analog film photography and cameras

Leica iiia / poundland vista

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Zeiss Ikon Nettar, Kodak TMAX400 pushed to 1600.
I'm loving this camera, cheapest one I own but the most fun to use. However, despite the film being pushed to 1600 the scans came out quite flat - is this due to the old lens or perhaps under/over exposure ?
Anyhoo, the scanned files worked really nicely in Lightroom so I guess it doesn't matter in the end.

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These are really fabulous - must dig my nettar out!

Strong! Love the second one.

It may be coincidence but I’ve had a strange issue with developing. Just got some scans back from Film Dev and noticed a roll of B&W I sent hadn’t been scanned. Just spoke to them and they said it was blank. I think it was run through my GFs Olympus. But I’ve gotten back colour photos from the same camera which look perfect. Same thing happened a few months back, a roll of B&W through the same camera came back blank but 3 photos. Am I missing something? Film speed was set correctly on the camera for metering etc.

love the first one

@HoKe

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Nice! Reminds me this year I have to come back my stronger and not to be at the back (anymore)

#rep

Race ya

Another one from that race I quite like. Only just had the roll developed

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Atm, everyone is destroying me on the road. 🤦🏻‍♂️

Strong page Ste, Rik and Phil!

due to the old lens or perhaps under/over exposure ?

..yea, maybe. Your processed files look great though!

Nice one!

Can't figure out what the white circle left to his bum / the Rapha logo is though!

I’ve no idea either!

Thanks for all the kind words folks

..yea, maybe. Your processed files look great though!

Always takes me by surprise how much you can get out of B&W neg scans. I'll look at a set of scans and be disappointed, 5-10mins in Lightroom later and I'm pretty darn happy.

@PhilDAS I take it FilmDev didn't send the negs back ? Might be worth asking to see if you can get them and have a look ? If any kind of light is hitting the film, even if massively under exposed, you should get something.
Alternatively, Is the Olympus auto-wind ? I've had cameras in the past that have re-wound the film back into the cannister when they've been on the blink.

Can't figure out what the white circle left to his bum / the Rapha logo is though!

Some sort of light halo thing from the panning ? Related to the light that's in the top right and bottom right corners ?

Not yet but they will be doing soon so I'll have a close look. No, manual sadly. Its an OM10 I think with auto speed so Aperture priority basically. Could be all sorts of problems I guess. Just strange it was both times on B&W. Expired film would just be funky looking and not ever blank right?

Expired film would just be funky looking and not ever blank right?

Yup, absolutely. I don't want to cast aspersions on filmdev, as they're normally excellent, but my initial thoughts are that something went wrong at the dev stage. Either that or something was drastically wrong with the film ie missing emulsion ? Negs should help to inform anyway.

Speaking of wonky film, I've had the fabled Kodak TMAX backing paper problem where text from the backing paper is printed onto the film.
Luckily only noticed it on one shot from three rolls so far, and a busted shot anyway (a 5min exposure that didn't work out). Makes me nervous to shoot the remaining two rolls from the pack though

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What level of automated "improvement" occurs in modern-day film processing?
Back in the 90's when I used to send my films off to Jessop (GB) or HL Markt (D) I'd expect about 20% failure rate . nowadays everything I send to Snaps photo services is bang-on.
I'm a bit more sober these days but even so, the majority is still sunny 16-guesswork on battered old cameras so I can't be that much improved over my 15 year digital hiatus (2000-15), particularly in view of my deteriorating eyesight...
I'm assuming that modern day machinery automatically pushes underexposed images to make them nice - is that likely or would you need to push the entire film?
Maybe it's just the scanners that improve everything - the metadata tells me it's a Fuji SP-3000, presumably that's where the magic takes place.... Anyway, I sent 5 films off last week and there's barely a shot that'd merit a condescending jessops sticker* across the middle of the print.

*can't quite remember what they said but they were little oval stickers that read something along the lines of "oh dear, we're a bit shit aren't we" and were stuck on over/under exposed or poorly focussed images

Here's another from my recent stash - Kodak colourplus x Yashica Electro 35mc - completely unadulterated
loving the kitsch 70's browns on colourplus... I'm almost over my horror at the demise of vista

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I think Film Dev say on their site that they will push individual images to make it uniform with the rest of the set

That makes sense - most kind of them!

Maybe it's just the scanners that improve everything - the metadata tells me it's a Fuji SP-3000, presumably that's where the magic takes place

I think it's a couple of things - the ability of scanners to pull detail from a neg, and the wider exposure latitude of modern film. You have to really try hard to mess up a shot now.

Also, unless you were lucky/skilled enough to use a darkroom, we have much greater creative control over images now with hybrid analogue/digital workflows. As long as there's enough on the neg for the scanner to read, you can do a lot with a photo in Lightroom or similar.

^ this