Focusing tips for night photo on slow lens

[RodinalDuchamp]

I am having a bear of a time focusing my 90 SA f8 for night photography lit only by streetlights.

Do you have any tips or gear that might make this task easier?

My current game plan is to arrive on location 30min before sundown set up the shot and wait until a proper night sky appears. However this too poses unique problems because it would not be factoring in issues like lens flare or lights in the shot that might need blocking.

[Dan Fromm]

Which focusing aid are you using? How do you find focus?

[Tim Meisburger]

If possible, you can place a point light source at your subject (like an LED flashlight) and focus on that. Or focus on one of the streetlights, if the will work.

[RodinalDuchamp]

I am focusing thought the GG it does have a plastic Fresnel but it is still very dim

[vinny]

Led flashlights and/or green laser pointer and. 90mm 4.5 by nikkor or rodenstock:)

[John Kasaian]

If you're focused during daytime, you'll be focused when the sun goes down.
Artificial lighting though presents issues you are wisely considering.
This site is pretty good for info--
http://www.thenocturnes.com/
Also check out Andrew Sanderson's book Night Photography which presents challenges and solutions
Have fun!

[Liquid Artist]

If your doing a landscape focus on any bright light in the distance and that should be infinity.
Stop down if desired, check the focus again.

Open the lens up, re-compose without touching the focus, then stop down again.

[Dan Fromm]

I am focusing thought the GG it does have a plastic Fresnel but it is still very dim

That's nice. Are you using a focusing aid (loupe? In-line or reflex viewing hood?)?

[RodinalDuchamp]

I'm using a loupe and dark cloth only. I do have an inline hood but it is cumbersome.

[RodinalDuchamp]

If your doing a landscape focus on any bright light in the distance and that should be infinity.
Stop down if desired, check the focus again.

Open the lens up, re-compose without touching the focus, then stop down again.
Well I'm using a wide angle lens. I don't think focusing to infinity will allow everything to be in focus at the foreground

[DG 3313]

+1 Underwater kenetics...SL4....LED "dive light" to focus on the near after I......focus at infinity (or the far) and tilt something...........



Led flashlights and/or green laser pointer and. 90mm 4.5 by nikkor or rodenstock:)

[RodinalDuchamp]

+1 Underwater kenetics...SL4....LED "dive light" to focus on the near after I......focus at infinity (or the far) and tilt something...........
I'm really trying to avoid unnecessary attention as shooting at night often attracts the wrong kind.

[DG 3313]

good luck using a view camera at night (at all) and not "attract attention".........


I'm really trying to avoid unnecessary attention as shooting at night often attracts the wrong kind.

[RodinalDuchamp]

Well the fuzz got on my case earlier this week. Just seems like a powerful flashlight might attract more.

[DG 3313]

I understand.....I shot a store front in the fog this weekend and the owner showed-up while I was exposing film. She wasn't sure what to think....I developed the negs. and then went out to breakfast. Three hours later I returned to the store with a contact print of my efforts and an explanation of what I saw.......when I left the store...she was still looking at the 4x5 contact and smiling....it doesn't always work out that way.

[RodinalDuchamp]

No it doesn't more often than not. If only we lived in a perfect world. I've only been hassled by the police a couple times but each time I was detained for about an hour or while they "investigated". Something about them not " getting it". I'm sure its a legitimate chasm I being the artist and them a watchdog, completely diametrically opposed mentalities.

[DG 3313]

Something is wrong with that picture...I have "NEVER" been rousted by the police.....my experiences have all been good.

Safety first RodinalDuchamp!




No it doesn't more often than not. If only we lived in a perfect world. I've only been hassled by the police a couple times but each time I was detained for about an hour or while they "investigated". Something about them not " getting it". I'm sure its a legitimate chasm I being the artist and them a watchdog, completely diametrically opposed mentalities.

[Jim Andrada]

Never been hassled by police but I have had a watchman call the owner and send a couple of German Shepherds in my direction.

Fortunately they were all bark and no bite and must have figured I was OK because after a lot of commotion they sat down and waited to have their heads scratched. Which REALLY pi$$ed off the watchman. Then the owner showed up and started screaming but I knew a businessman in the neighborhood and as soon as I said he was a friend even the owner got chatty.

[Liquid Artist]

No it doesn't more often than not. If only we lived in a perfect world. I've only been hassled by the police a couple times but each time I was detained for about an hour or while they "investigated". Something about them not " getting it". I'm sure its a legitimate chasm I being the artist and them a watchdog, completely diametrically opposed mentalities.
Although I've never had a problem, and really can't picture it with Large Format gear
I usually have a little portfolio close, and don't mind showing them some of my work.

I happen to know one of the former forensics police officers in my home town too, and they can always call her up for a reference.

Which brings me to this point.
Most larger centers may still have a forensics darkroom mothballed up somewhere and may even have the equipment and chemistry needed to develop your film.
If they do, they may just let you develop a sheet or 2 if you ask.

[tgtaylor]

No it doesn't more often than not. If only we lived in a perfect world. I've only been hassled by the police a couple times but each time I was detained for about an hour or while they "investigated". Something about them not " getting it". I'm sure its a legitimate chasm I being the artist and them a watchdog, completely diametrically opposed mentalities.

One night, a few years back, I was doing night photography in the San Francisco Tenderloin district with a Nikon F3 and tripod shooting slide film. On one corner I spotted this sign:

https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7028/6645513157_3b3187189a_z.jpg

With the sign's red light spilling over the neighborhood it was the perfect lighting and I mounted the camera on its tripod and focused for the shot. While doing that I heard muffled voices coming from the corner to my rear. I turned and looked and there were a good 10 or so gang members and I imagine that I was the subject of the conversation. Just then a San Francisco Police vehicle was slowly making its way to my left rear with two officers walking with it on opposite sides of the street. Their presence gave me safe passage so I took my shot and moved along.

That was the first time that I had been back in the Tenderloin in a couple of years and it had changed from a skid row area with drunks and down-n-out types to a gang infested and very dangerous area at night. If it wasn't for that fortuitous police patrol I would have been out of a camera kit at least.

Thomas

[RodinalDuchamp]

My subject matter is somewhat precarious though I am careful never to trespass. Let's say they are structures that people might now want photographed.

[Peter De Smidt]

Find the distance between the standards corresponding to the hyperfocal distances for your lenses at your normal shooting aperture. Set your camera for the appropriate hyperfocal distance, and shoot away.

[Will Frostmill]

Find the distance between the standards corresponding to the hyperfocal distances for your lenses at your normal shooting aperture. Set your camera for the appropriate hyperfocal distance, and shoot away.

I can't say it better than that.
If you want to measure a different, non-hyperfocal distance, you can prepare a "manual rangefinder" ahead of time. Take a pair of cheap laser pointers and attach them to a board, angling one in slightly. Measure the distance the beams converge at - where you get one dot instead of two. If you want to get fancy, glue one of the laser pointers to a protractor with a moveable arm, and you can make a table of angles and distances to work from.
When you are out in the field, project your two red dots, and when they merge, you can dial in that distance on your focusing standard. If you can hold down both buttons for just an instant, you only have to worry about drawing attention for as long as it takes for you to determine if the dots line up.

A more primitive way to do this is pick a constant length object in your scene, and compare it to a line in a viewfinder. For instance, street lamps in the same municipality are almost always the same height. In daylight cut out a rectangle from a piece of cardstock, hold it at arm's length, and mark the height of a street lamp at a known distance at the edge of the rectangle. Walk forward, and continue to mark taller (i.e. closer) lamp heights until you have enough distances.

Of course, you can buy an expensive laser rangefinder for golf (50-500 yards distances) and for hunting (don't know the distances). But where's the fun in that?

[RodinalDuchamp]

Find the distance between the standards corresponding to the hyperfocal distances for your lenses at your normal shooting aperture. Set your camera for the appropriate hyperfocal distance, and shoot away.
This is something I am interested in but I don't know where to begin however you have raised some excellent questions and away I go to research them.

[RodinalDuchamp]

I just found this hyperfocal length calculator on Schneider's website :
https://www.schneideroptics.com/software/DOF_Calculator.xls

[Michael R]

Focus during the daytime, mark everything including some chalk marks for your exact tripod position, and come back at night for the exposure.

[RodinalDuchamp]

Focus during the daytime, mark everything including some chalk marks for your exact tripod position, and come back at night for the exposure.
This seems to be a good solution. As far as flare I'll have to finagle with my lens hood some possibly. However I was able to produce some very controlled streetlights in my last batch of processing which give me hope since they are at the extreme end of the scene.

[Michael R]

I set the compendium shade or hood during the day also (since I find it very hard to do it at night). This also saves me a lot of set-up time when I'm shooting at night, which not only makes it safer, but somewhat lessens the chance of being bothered by cops, security guards etc.

It is obviously all quite cumbersome as a procedure but not so bad if you're shooting locally. After scouting the location I have to come back several times (including once at night just to do the metering). But this way each visit is shorter and might attract less attention, and I don't have to bring lots of gear for the actual exposure. By then I already have the lens choice, composition, metering and focusing done in advance. And to decide on a lens and composition I don't even use the view camera under these particular conditions. I use a 35mm camera instead.

[RodinalDuchamp]

Michael thanks for tour experience. I think all of you are on to something by setting up during the day. I might just set hyperfocal length and just worry about composition and any small movements necessary immediately preceding the shot

[Nodda Duma]

If you're focused during daytime, you'll be focused when the sun goes down.
Artificial lighting though presents issues you are wisely considering.
This site is pretty good for info--
http://www.thenocturnes.com/
Also check out Andrew Sanderson's book Night Photography which presents challenges and solutions
Have fun!

The only concern would be the difference in ambient temperature between when you set focus and when you takes a shot.

The change in temperature will cause a focus shift due to thermal expansion coefficient of the camera material and change in index of the glass. How much shift is acceptable depends on the depth of focus of the lens vs how much the focus shifts due to temperature. The amount of focus shift due to temperature depends on the details of the optical design itself...there's no real correlation with the speed of an optic except for the larger depth of focus for a slower lens. You can try John's suggestion and it'll probably work out fine, but if you runs into focus issues when you think you've set it just right then it might be explained by the temperature drop from day to night.

I used to run into this problem in astrophotography, where as the temperature dropped during the night I'd have to readjust focus from shot-to-shot (for a telescope running at f/6.3).

Regards,
Jason

[RodinalDuchamp]

The only concern would be the difference in ambient temperature between when you set focus and when you takes a shot.

The change in temperature will cause a focus shift due to thermal expansion coefficient of the camera material and change in index of the glass. How much shift is acceptable depends on the depth of focus of the lens vs how much the focus shifts due to temperature. The amount of focus shift due to temperature depends on the details of the optical design itself...there's no real correlation with the speed of an optic except for the larger depth of focus for a slower lens. You can try John's suggestion and it'll probably work out fine, but if you runs into focus issues when you think you've set it just right then it might be explained by the temperature drop from day to night.

I used to run into this problem in astrophotography, where as the temperature dropped during the night I'd have to readjust focus from shot-to-shot (for a telescope running at f/6.3).

Regards,
Jason
Thankfully for now in work in FL which doesn't have too drastic of a weather change from night to day though I will give your advice consideration if I run into the situation you have mentioned.