Understanding Exposure by Viewing Negatives

• Posted on 3 September 2021
• By Dave Rollans
• Posted in Film Negatives, Film Photography

Understanding exposure is a difficult thing for many. 

Understanding how to "read" your negatives is even more difficult. 

In this blog post we'll share how to interpret your negatives to understand what exposures you can expect. 

Terms we often use are "thin" or "dense" to describe the exposure of a negative. This directly correlates to how bright or dark your images will be. A thin negative is underexposed, while a dense negative indicates overexposure. It's that simple! 

Take a good look at the chart below to get a better understanding by viewing the negatives with the values indicated next to the image. A minus value indicates underexposure while a plus value, indicates overexposure. The numbers refer to how many stops under, or overexposed, the negatives are. 

Here's examples from this series of images so you can see how the color shifts as the negative is under or overexposed. 

While this article goes over color negative specifically, the same will apply towards black/white negative films and should give you a good idea for interpreting those negatives. 

Happy shooting Everyone!