Colour neg for architectural exterior at dusk

[Andrew Ross]

I'm looking for some recommendations on colour neg film that would work well for an architectural exterior at dusk. The western sky will be in the background and the building is well lit by sodium lights with yellow gels. The interior lights are a real mix, including fluorescent and tungsten.

The client wants that nice, rich, blue sky that you get about 20 minutes after sunset and my digital test shots indicate an exposure of about 30sec at f22. I've done some homework and it looks like tungsten film such as Kodak Portra 100T would be best. All the daylight balanced films I've looked at are not recommended for exposures over 2sec.

Is tungsten film the best choice? I know the sky will go quite blue, but will the colours be believable?

This is a bit off topic, but I'm planning to use a Rodenstock Grandagon 90/6.8 that I have borrowed from a friend. Will I have to worry about fall off? He said no, but I just want to be sure.

Thanks very much,

Andrew

[Bruce Watson]

I've done this exactly once. But I got a good print out of it and a happy client.

The film will record the colors it sees. What you expose it to will not be what the film is balanced for. Daylight film assumes, what, 6500 degrees K? Tungsten assumes 2800 K? I don't remember the exact numbers, but it doesn't matter - you aren't going to give the film the lighting it's designed for no matter what. IOW, you can expect a color cast.

The way around this, for me, was to scan the negative so that I could color correct the image using an image editor. I found that my scene went way blue, just like you'd expect when the main light source is a dark blue sky. When I backed out the blue cast, I found the grass was still green, the pine tree bark still that brownish gray, the tungsen lights on the outside were yellowish, and florescent lights on the inside were greenish. All of this can be corrected if you want to spend the time and effort - my client wasn't interested in more that removing the overall blue cast.

I had the pro lab that processed the film (4x5 160PortaVC - daylight, and yes, 30 sec. at f/22) also make a custom photograpic print. Their print was just amazingly far off - they couldn't cope with it at all. The print I made after scanning and colour correcting was spot-on. My client couldn't believe how much better my print was than the pro lab print. But clearly, YMMV.

[Mark Sampson]

Sodium vapor lights don't have "yellow gels", they are inherently yellow/orange and emit no other color. So they'll photograph as orange no matter what. "Mixed tungsten and fluorescent light" is a large set of variables. Daylight color film is meant for short exposures, and 5500K sunlight. It will most likely suffer from color shifts and reciprocity failure in your application. Your best bet is to use tungsten film. This will allow at least some of the interior lights to reproduce correctly and produce that totally-saturated cobalt glow in the sky. See Norman McGrath's book for a fuler explanation, and practice beforehand if you can.

[Kirk Gittings]

I use NPS for everything, all lighting situations, and have for years. I do my own printing for clients and scanning for local and national magazines. It corrects back regardless of the light source and is very forgiving in mixed light sources.....No filters. I also know people who use NPL for everything including daylight and it corrects back beautifully. Fuji and Kodak want you to believe that you need two films. You don't.

[Kirk Gittings]

A note of example. I learned this from Joel Merowitz years ago. He used tungsten neg film for all of the Cape Light & St Louis Arch images regardlesss of the time of day. It all corrected back.

[Andrew Ross]

Thanks for all the quick replies. This is a great forum.

Mark, I scouted the location and they have actually added yellow gel filters to the exterior lights. So it is very yellow, but they obviously like it that way.

It definitley sounds like Kodak Portra 100T is going to be good choice.

Thanks again,

Andrew

[Kirk Gittings]

Go to this web site to see some examples of exactly what you are talking about. All of the images on the profile page are mine and all are done on unfiltered NPS.




http://www.jonandersonarchitect.com/profile.htm

[giancatarina]

i will go for the portra 100T, and maybe a second shot with portra 160NC just in case... but i pretty shure that you will choose the 100T at the end. Anyway, you will have color cast, but using the 100T it will look better !

A lot of people are using Fuji NPL for this kind of application, i just don't like it, a question of taste ...

[Andrew Ross]

Very nice work, Kirk. It looks like NPS is working fine for you.

I haven't shot much film at all for a few years, and when I did it was mostly transparencies. With trannies I would bracket in 1/3 or 1/2 stops, but with the latitude of negs is it okay to bracket in full stops?

I was thinking I would use my digital to get a base exposure and then bracket over and under two stops in one stop increments every five or ten minutes until the sky goes black. Does that sound like a good idea?

Thanks again for all the feedback. It's been very helpful.

Cheers,

Andrew

[ronald moravec]

If you have control, keep the lights off for the sky and then double expose for for the interior lights after the sky goes conpletely dark.

Another possibility is to expose for the sky just before the building lights come on. You will pick up a bit of building facade. Then after it is really dark, expose for the interior lighting.

Use filtration to adjust tungsten to daylight or daylight to tungsten and you can have the advantage of both on one piece of film.

The extra time for all this is really worth the trouble. Practice with a roll of 35mm and keep records.

You can also merge two images in photoshop if you know how.