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I was recently gifted an old Kalimar K-90 1000 35mm camera. My first roll of film turned out perfect, no flaws whatsoever. On my second roll I took photos of my daughter, the first half turned out beautifully but the second had a "fog" to them. I'll add a picture from the roll to show what I mean:

enter image description here

The photos were taken in the same spot, on the same day, just within a half of an hour of each other. As I said the first half were great and the second turned out like this. My question is could I have messed with the exposure on accident? Is it trouble on my end? I'm 100% new at this, I have no experience with 35mm. My daughters birthday is this weekend and I'd love to take photos with the camera but want to make sure I'm doing it right so I don't have ruined photos.

enter image description here This photo was from the beginning of the roll.

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    \$\begingroup\$ It can be hard to tell with colour negatives, but do the good ones and the bad ones look the same? That is, do the negatives look like they have similar contrast, or do the bad ones look foggier on the negative too? Because I'm struggling to think of a camera problem that could cause this. \$\endgroup\$ Commented Aug 27, 2015 at 15:54
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    \$\begingroup\$ Also, are you scanning yourself, or is this back from a minilab (or indeed lab)? \$\endgroup\$ Commented Aug 27, 2015 at 15:58

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Film often fogs for two reasons; age or uncontrolled light exposure. With age, the film exhibits similar characteristics as with the first image. The fogging effect is evenly distributed throughout the length of the film. With uncontrolled light exposure (a light leak) you'll get similar effect, albeit more blotchy and often only around the edges of the frame. Additionally, you'd expect to see coloured streaks entering the frame from the edges. This leads me to believe the issue at hand here has nothing to do with film fogging. Rather, something completely different.

That brings up the question of how you made digital copies of these negatives. Did you scan the negatives themselves, or did you scan prints of the negatives? If it's the former, then it may just be a bad scan. I work with an Epson V600, with everything from colour/BW 35mm to 4x5 film. It's a great scanner, but it isn't automatic. If you want the best results, more user input is required beyond just pressing the scan button. The issue you had described with your negatives looks like the same issue I deal with quite frequently. The scanner will attempt to correct for contrast, as it did in the lower image you had displayed, but sometimes it fails to do so, such as with the other image you have here.

The "fogged" image, as you call it, is what all of my scans look like in the preview window, prior to increasing contrast for the actual scan, so don't be alarmed. Play around with some manual settings upon scanning and see if you can match the tonality/contrast/colours of the "good" scan you shot at the beginning of that roll.

Hopefully this will help you, let me know how it goes! :)

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    \$\begingroup\$ I have seen a related effect when the shot was very underexposed and the automatic minilab couldn't cope with correcting the print, but that had a much poorer quality image; this is a decent image with low contrast, so I agree it's most likely a scanning problem. Also, an underexposure big enough to cause the problem was very easy to spot on the negatives. \$\endgroup\$ Commented Aug 27, 2015 at 15:57
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    \$\begingroup\$ Thank you for your advice. I send my film out to be developed by a business called The Darkroom. They've done excellent with my film before. Based on what you've told me I'm guessing I must have accidentally underexposed the photo and they attempted to correct it for me. I have to dig out my negatives and check. Thank you again I'm totally brain dead when it comes to this stuff I still have a lot to learn! \$\endgroup\$
    – Jennifer
    Commented Aug 27, 2015 at 16:48
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    \$\begingroup\$ The underexposed theory seems plausible to me. When you moved to portrait mode, you included more of the brighter background areas in the scene than when you were in landscape mode. That may have been enough to fool your camera's light meter by a couple of stops. \$\endgroup\$
    – Michael C
    Commented Aug 27, 2015 at 22:24
  • \$\begingroup\$ I too agree with the possibility of underexposure. That seems like the most plausible theory. I think the best you can do at this stage is to increase that particular negative's contrast a bit. I'd say play around with finding a balance between losing information on the negative and achieving deeper shadows. The more contrast you add, the more apparent the grain will be. In general, its better to overexpose and print down than it is to underexpose. \$\endgroup\$
    – Bipin
    Commented Aug 28, 2015 at 17:33

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