Do you think overexposing slide film by a stop is a creative choice or just sloppy technique?

I keep seeing people post overexposed slides with this washed out look calling it 'artistic' but to me it just looks like they forgot to meter properly, so which side are you on where's the line between a happy accident and a basic mistake like forgetting to set your ISO?

2 comments

2 Comments

harper_owens8d ago

Read an interview with a Kodak tech once who said slide film has basically no room for error - it's designed to give exactly what you meter, unlike negative film that has a lot of forgiveness in the highlights. Overexposing by a full stop on something like Velvia 50 just crushes your highlights into white, and that washed out look people call artistic is literally just missing detail. There's a big difference between intentionally pushing for a pastel effect and just miscalculating your exposure, especially when you could achieve the same thing in post with a scanner anyway.

victor_carr548d ago

Oh man, this one gets me every time I scroll through film groups. @harper_owens is totally right about slide film having zero forgiveness - you can't just wing it and call it a creative choice when your highlights look like a cloud of milk. Overexposing by a stop on purpose is like saying you're going for a "dreamy" focus but really you just forgot to focus your lens (I mean, we've all been there with an accidental double exposure or two). At the end of the day, if you're doing it on purpose and you actually like the result, fine - but don't pretend a happy accident is the same as a planned effect when you could have just underexposed a stop and fixed it in scanning.