How Much Can You Overexpose Negative Film? Have a Look!

Want to see how much you can overexpose C-41 color negative film and still get usable shots? Photographer Daniel Lachman of Retro Camera Review decided to film out recently after coming across a broken Mamiya 645E with a busted light meter.

�With digital images, overexposing can ruin your photos at the dreaded �255 white level,’� Lachman writes. �But with C41 color film, it�s really the inverse relationship, with detail getting lost with under-exposure. But in terms of over-exposure, it theoretically has no limit.�

To test this �limitlessness,� Lachman took a roll of C-41 120 medium format film and shot the same scene with various exposures that ranged from -3 stops under correct exposure to +6 stops over.

Here�s what the negative frames looked like after the film was processed (the �C� frame is the correctly exposed shot):

Now here�s the trick: with a professional-grade film scanner, a ton of detail can be obtained from frames that look completely unusable. Here�s what the scanned photos look like:

3 Stops Underexposed

2 Stops Underexposed

1 Stop Underexposed

Correctly Exposed

1 Stop Overexposed

2 Stops Overexposed

3 Stops Overexposed

4 Stops Overexposed

5 Stops Overexposed

6 Stops Overexposed

�Turns out you can overexpose nearly 6 stops until the scanner starts losing the ability to shoot through the negative,� Lachman says. �What I took away from this is that film basically can�t be overexposed, it can just be too dense for the scanner to be able to shoot through the negative. But the information will always be there.�

Pretty amazing, huh?

Image credits: Header illustration based on photo by Jason Rogers, all other photos by Daniel Lachman/Retro Camera Review and used with permission