400nc 4x5 - seeking info/experiences re: Night Landscapes

[Pressman45D]

Hello,
I'm shooting with a Wollensak 127 f4.5 for a Night Landscape Project and it appears that 400nc Kodak is my only 400iso Color Film option. (If I'm wrong please advise!). Does anyone have experiences with it's reciprocity characteristics? Exposure Compensation Guidance for choosing shutter speed starting points? Does it 'behave well' with exposures up to 30 seconds?
My ultimate goal is to make 'spectacular' shots including a beautiful landscape which frames or counterpoints beautiful 'Stars' in the sky above. I'm going to try for both sub 30sec exposures to catch 'fixed point' star fields and loooooooooooooooong multi hour exposures to catch star trails in their 'apparent' rotation around the north star.

Richard

[Neil Folberg]

Hello,

I know nothing about those films, however, you can probably enhance both sensitivity in shadow areas and possibly reduce reciprocity somewhat by making Zone 1 - 1 1/2 pre-exposures of your film before exposing it to your subject.

If you are unfamiliar with zone system terminology, take a neutral gray card that is evenly lit, bring it close to the lens so that it will fill the frame, set the focus around infinity, and take a reading off the gray card. This reading is probably zone 5 - then reduce the exposure by 3 1/2 to 4 stops and you will be exposing at zone 1 - 1 1/2.
Expose accordingly and then re-use this film to make your night exposures. Compare to film that has not been pre-exposed in this fashion and see what you got ...

Neil Folberg
www.visiongallery.com

[al olson]

Richard,

I have written a guide that summarizes my experiences with existing light/night photography that is available at:
www.photo-artiste.com/existinglightguide.html

I prefer Kodak's Portra 160 VC for long exposures with 4x5. The guide has some estimates for exposures during nautical twilight. I find that about 45 minutes after sunset, while there is still color in the sky, I will make one exposure at 2 minutes, a second at 4 minutes, and the last at 10 minutes to accomodate reciprocity failure and the rapidly dimenishing light. These are with the aperture set halfway between f/8 and f/16.

I also use other films including Fuji for 35mm and 120. The details are noted in the examples in the guide.

Cheers,

[mrladewig]

Also be aware that 400NC was changed last year. I couldn't find any long exposure recommendations in Kodak's tech doc (usually that is included in the slide film tech docs). I have the new 400NC in 4X5, but have not tried any long or night exposures with it, but can say that the colors are pretty mild and the grain size has been noticeably reduced from the older stock. Not all films require significant adjustment for reciprocity. Provia for instance has excellent reciprocity characteristics, certainly fine for 30 second exposures.

But yeah, Portra 400NC and TMY are the only 400 speed films I've seen lately in 4X5.

At the same time, people have been using ISO 50-100 slide films to do long night exposures for quite some time too, so both options are possible. Its also fair to say that some folks let the film choose its own course with regards to color shift in reciprocity failure while others choose to color correct.