This article aims to explain why the image on film may not turn out the way it seems in the viewfinder, and what you can do to accurately reproduce the image you saw in the viewfinder onto the film.

Behold the advances of modern technology. Today's high-tech cameras seem all powerful as they take over the controls and free you from the mundane tasks of setting the aperture and shutter speeds, leaving you to concentrate fully on the creation of the image. Whatever that could be automated had already been - shutter speed, aperture, DX-coding of film, focusing, metering, film loading and rewind...
 

The glossy pages of advertisements and brochures would have you believe that the latest SLRs allow you the full freedom to compose and shoot, and helps express your creativity since the automation wraps up the rest of the "boring" tasks. The hype goes on about the ultra-accurate metering system and clear high eye-point viewfinders being an extension of your mind's eye, hinting that the camera will translate accurately what you see into a two-dimensional representation on film.
 

I wish it was that easy.
 

To put it concisely, the day when what you see in the viewfinder is what you get on film, professional photographers can consider themselves out of work. Professional photographers know how to "read" the situation, and make the necessary adjustments so that the resulting image corresponds to what the eye see. That is what separates the pros from the amateurs who count more on the "lucky shots" than repeatable performance.
 

There are many factors which affect the translation of the reality you see in the viewfinder, into the image that ends up on the film. By learning how the camera translates the image onto film, you too can make sure that the resulting image is close to what you saw with your eye.
 

There are several factors affecting how the image will turn out differently:

Exposure

Camera meters are designed to translate the scene into scales of grey. To a camera meter, a scene is properly exposed when it averages out to 18% grey. Thus, the meter reading that a camera gives you is the one that will turn everything into mid-tones. In practice, this works very well in most of the situations, since many subjects are on average near 18% grey in tones (not colour !!). However, some subjects which are extremely bright or dark will not be accurately represented in the image if exposed at 18% grey tone.
 

For example, if you have a white wall, the meter will try to read the huge amount as 18% grey, thus reducing the exposure and giving you a grey wall. This applies to highly reflective metal surfaces too. Or if you have a black wall, the meter will try to increase the exposure until there is enough light transmission to render the wall as a grey wall.
 

To depict such subjects in their original colours and tones, you must recognize the situations where the meter will not portray the tones as your eye sees them. If you know which are the subjects which will likely not render accurately on film, it is then easy to make corrections for them if you want to portray the scene as you see it. Bright beige colours (think polar bears) normally require 1 stop of over-exposure, while bright white colours (such as reflective fresh snow) calls for around 2 stops. For dark subjects (eg. brown or dark red), dial in 1 stop of under-exposure to bring back the dark tones, or 2 stops for black subjects. I shall not go into details about exposure compensation, since there are already volumes written about it in various books and magazines.
 

Tip: You can also experiment with creativity by not correcting for the meter readings. E.g. by not adjusting for the snow scene, you get dark gloomy grey snow which may portray feelings of despair and disaster. 

Framing and cropping
 

Most cameras have viewfinders that show approximately 95% of the final image. This means that your negative/slide image will show 5% more than what you see in the viewfinder. The dimension of the image area on film is 36mm X 24mm. However, the dimension ratio of the normal lab prints (eg. 3R, 4R, 5R, 8R etc) and slide mounts do not correspond exactly to that of the image area. As a result, around 5% of the image is cropped off when you print the image or put it into a slide mount. But because this 5% reduction is already designed into viewfinder, what you finally see on film or mounted slides will be almost exactly what you saw in the viewfinder !
 

This is a problem when exact framing is required. Because the viewfinder image does not show the 5% of the total image area, you may accidentally include elements into the image area which you did not intend to. And when printing, you may not have control as to which edges you do not want to exclude, resulting in the prints showing elements at the edges which you meant to exclude. However, this is only a small problem and unlikely to occur in 90% of the images you take.
 

Some professional-caliber cameras show 100% of the image area, which means what you see in the viewfinder will be the total image area on the film. However, this also creates a problem. As mentioned before, lab printing and slide mounts will crop off around 5% of the film image area, so if you crop too tightly in the viewfinder, you will find that some crucial components at the edges of the image will not be seen in the prints and slide presentation.
 

However, you can correct for this situation by requesting for full-frame printing such as 8X12 inch (super 8R) prints, which corresponds to the full-frame dimension of the image area (36X24 mm)

Reciprocal Law Failure
 

When you expose film from 1 second to 1/1000^th of a second, the film follows the reciprocal laws. By increasing exposure by one more stop (doubling the exposure time), you get an image which is twice as bright. And vice-versa.
 

However, at exposure times shorter than 1/10,000^th of a second or longer than 1 second, the film may experience reciprocal law failure. What this means is that increasing the exposure by one more stop will not result in images that are twice as bright. This is caused by the physical reaction of film to extremely long or extremely short exposure to light.
 

In practice, this means that for subjects such as night scenes, you must increase the actual exposure to have a accurate representation of the scene as you saw in the viewfinder. If the meter recommends 6 seconds, increase the exposure to 8-10 seconds or more to compensate for the reciprocal law failure. If you don't, the image on film may end up darker than the image you saw.
 

Different films have different thresholds to reciprocal law failure, and thus you must experiment with the film type to determine the threshold. Or you can obtain data sheets from the film package or the manufacturer's website which lists the film's characteristics. Usually, the threshold is at 1 second, but newer films can tolerate up to 10 seconds of exposure time without reciprocal law failure. Knowledge of reciprocal law failure is especially important when you are using slide films, since negative films have a wider exposure latitude and can be corrected at the printing stage.

Depth of field and Hyperfocal technique
 

When you view the image in a viewfinder, you are visualizing the image with the aperture wide-open. This allows you to see a bright image for ease of focusing and for composition. However, it also means that you do not see the depth of field in the image when you stop down. Some cameras are equipped with a depth of field preview, which is very useful for checking the amount of DOF that you will get in the final image. But most low-end and mid-range cameras do not have this useful feature. This means that you do not get to see the depth of field that will appear in the final images. So the image in the viewfinder will not correspond to what you will get on film. However, if you shoot often enough, you will learn how to estimate the depth of field in the resulting images.
 

The hyperfocal technique allows you to maximize the depth of field from a certain distance to infinity. This is done by utilizing the depth of field chart on the manual focus lenses. However, this technique depends on stopping down the aperture, and thus you cannot see the effect in the viewfinder if you do not have the DOF preview on your camera. In fact, the image in your viewfinder will appear completely blur at the moment of exposure ! But when the aperture is stopped down as dictated by the technique, the resulting image on the film will be tack sharp. So for those attempting the hyperfocal technique, rest assured that the blur images in the viewfinder is completely normal !

Colour Temperature
 

Most films are daylight films, which means that they are "balanced" to give accurate colour representation when exposed in daylight or flash. Both daylight and flash are around 5500k (kelvins) in colour temperature. If you shoot a picture in daylight or with flash as the primary light source, using daylight film, your pictures will reproduce the colours in the scene accurately.
 

However, if you shoot under tungsten lighting or other types of light-source which are not balanced to 5500K, you will get images that has weird colour casts on them. Tungsten light are lights which depend on a burning filament to give off light. Your normal household light is a good example of a tungsten light. Pictures shot under a tungsten light source will have a yellowish cast. You might have encountered this if you tried shooting in a restaurant lit by tungsten light, or when you tried taking pictures of a friend as she is blowing out the candles on a birthday cake. Even the common fluorescent lights will cause a slight green cast.
 

To correct for such colour casts, there are several things you can do:

Use negative films, since you can ask the printer to correct away the colour casts during the printing stage.

Use tungsten films when shooting under tungsten light source. Tungsten films are available in slide films only, and is usually designated by a "T" behind the film name, eg. Kodak Ektachrome 64T and Fujichrome 64T.

Use a magenta filter to correct for the green cast caused by fluorescent lights. But this method requires knowledge of precise colour compensation, since if you use too strong a magenta filter you will end up with a magenta cast. If you are unsure, use a negative film. Or even better, use Fuji Reala (a negative film) which has inherent capabilities to correct the green cast.

Thus, knowledge about the types of lighting is very crucial if you need to photograph a accurate representation of the scene.

Types of films
 

Yellow is better than blue because yellow is a brighter colour.
 

Absurd ? Yes. But that's exactly what people are saying when they say one film is better than another ! Different films have different personalities, and no one film is better than another. They each reproduce the scene differently, instilling a different version of how the final image will look like. Thus, given the same scene, different films will reproduce the image in a different manner. Knowing the film's characteristics will help you reproduce the scene in the viewfinder more accurately in the final image.
 

Konica film gives a cooler representation, giving a unique shade of blue. Kodak film produces striking reds and yellows, while Fuji gives a very vibrant green and blue. And within each brand of film, the different films in each brand has their own characteristics. High contrast, low contrast, vivid colours, pastel colours, grainy, fine grain - you name it, they've got it. There are at least 40 types of film on the market at any one time, and each film has a unique personality. Learn to use the personality of the film to create the kind of image that you want. Try to imagine that you are going to a art shop to buy art paper. Each type of paper has a different colour, a different texture. No one type of paper is better than another, just that some types of paper are more suitable for creating the final effect that you want. Films are exactly like paper, so choose films to help you create the image that you want.

Contrast
 

Probably the most important factor for ruined shots that didn't appear as they did in the viewfinder is contrast. Our eyes is a amazing device - by changing the size of the iris, we can see details in bright light and in the dark shadows. Because our eyes adapt to changing light conditions so fast even as we scan across the scene, we can see the details both in the highlights and shadows.
 

But we forget that the film cannot capture such a wide range of exposure, and consequently in the final image, either the highlights become burnt out (as in the case of washed out skies) or the shadows become totally dark (becoming a dark patch with no discernable details). Slide films has less latitude than print films - meaning that it cannot capture as much a range as print films. It's latitude is around 4 stops - which means the difference in light levels between the shadows and the highlights must be within 4 stops. Otherwise details will be lost in either of them, depending on where you meter off.
 

How do you reduce the contrast in a scene ?
 

Increase light levels in the shadow area, by using fill-in flash or reflectors

Decrease light levels in the highlight area by using graduated neutral density filters

Use print films which has wider exposure latitude, biasing the exposure for the shadows and increasing exposure time in the darkroom to burn in the details in the highlights.

Choose a low-contrast film, rather than high contrast films like Fuji Velvia.

Crop off the areas that fall outside the film latitude by changing your composition of the picture, or by zooming in.
 

Conclusion
 

The most important thing to know is that you shouldn't believe that what you saw in the viewfinder is going to be what you get. Understand the various processes that is going through the camera and the film as it is being exposed, and know the transformation that takes place. If you can perceive the various conditions that lead to different results, you can take the precautions to correct for any alternations that is going to happen to the image. Photography is not just a simple process of pressing the shutter button. Although technology has made it possible for automation to relieve us of many tasks, thinking is certainly not one of them ! It is the thought that goes into a photo, that separates good images from the mediocre ones. Visualize your final image before you shoot, analyze the current situation before you, and use the necessary tools and make the essential adjustment to get your desired results.
 

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