Deep orange cast

Hello everyone,

I have just gone back to Large Format after twenty years away. I am a commercial photographer with nearly thirty years worth of experience, but, I am at a loss with a project and would really appreciate your collective expertise.

I am currently trying to shoot on ektachrome 100 in the studio. The first polaroid came back with my calculated exposure for the lighting system - strobes with modeling lights as f13 @ 1/60 (I'm shooting on a Sinar F1 with a 210mm lens and behind the lens shutter) as being spot on, however, when the sheets returned from the lab they were massively underexposed with a deep orange cast - this I am familiar with in terms of a light/film error, so back to the studio...

This time I took incidence and reflection measurements with a flash meter and ran exposure tests on both settings. Again, a deep orange cast and underexposed... Back again to the studio...

This time I ditched the flash element, set my D3 up in 5x4 mode and recreated the initial fault. Progress, I thought, so I then gelled the lights to daylight, changed the exposure to a longer exposure based on a combination of incidence and reflection measurements with a light meter - ran a polaroid and it was fine. Spot on for exposure. So I committed two sheets to slightly bracketed exposures and they came back identical to the others - exactly the same deep orange cast and the underexposed, it was as if the gels were not there.

So, have I got a bad batch of film? It is in date, but has come from Germany in to England and it has probably been scanned with some new x-ray or penetrating system. Could this be producing this ridiculously frustrating problem. Or, is it a duff lab?

Your thoughts, experience and wisdom on this matter would be deeply appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

That happens when you load the film rear side out, exposing the layers in the wrong order and through the anti-halation backing. The coating does face you when the notches are on the upper right hand corner.

Now that is what I call a good answer (if correct)!

I'm afraid Sevo is correct, that sounds exactly like what happens when you load the film backwards in the holder. We've all been there, but usually it's a mistake you only make once...

In case you loaded the film correctly, the other possibility is the lab; even the lab I used to go to was ok, but not as good as it used to be because they are letting chemicals sit idly for longer periods of time.
I process colour at home now.
If you depend on this lab for critical work, it would be a good idea to send them some test sheets at various exposures and see what's what.
Search the forum for a no-fail method for loading sheet film.

It does sound like you loaded the film wackbards, though.

Another vote for backwards film, I don't know what else could give uniform results like this. If the lab had bad chems, results would vary from different batches you sent. If they processed it as C-41 you would recognize the cross-processing look.

Yes, I've been waitng for the hipsters to discover this look. They've done just about everything else to bollix up their film except leaving it in a reactor core for a while.


If the code notches are in the upper right or lower left corner, you're looking at the emulsion. Or, you would be looking at it if you were not handling the film in total darkness.

*slaps forehead* Doh!

Thank you all. I shall rectify this problem and get down to it seriously. In my defense I can only say that it has been twenty plus years since having to think of such things.

Again, thank you all.

Is the sync on your shutter correctly set to expose by flash? If not, the modelling lights could account for the orange underexposure.