Sinar F2 - Focus in the Dark for night time seascapes - Help please

[Heaver]

Hi,
I'm faily new to large format photography and have purchased a Sinar F2 camera along with a few lenses and have started a project which involves seascapes at night. I've aready tried a few shots with a digital camera and would like to try simular shots with my LF camera and 65mm Rodenstock.

I will be using Porta 400 pushed to 1600 and also have a few recomended reciprocity correction tables/graphs to allow for longer exposures...but my trouble is focus.

The landscape is reasonable flat so I would like to use the tilt function and hope to be shooting around f16 (to keep movement of the grasses to a minimal) and the focus will be required from aproximatly 4 meters to infinity.

I have a simple idea, but wondered if there is a simpler/better way of working out my focus through measuring the movement between my front and rear standard.

My idea is to stand in a field thats reasonble flat during the day time, focus and set the tilt required and then measure where the F/R stardards are in relation to each other. Then replicate these measurements when in the dark on the beach. I live 2.5 hours away from the beach, so its not easy to take the actual measurements there.

Hope you guys can help.

Many thanks
Mark

[soeren]

How dark do you need it to be? How many different shot will you do in one night?
And how long is the sunset? In other words, go there and setup the camera while light level are adequate for focussing, wait and do the shot when it's dark enough. If it's possible that is.

[Heaver]

The distance of time between sunset and darkness is approximatly 40-50 minutes, I would like it as dark as possible as this has given me the best images on digital so far.

I guess I could set the camera up just before sunset and wait, as all the shots should be the same to focus?

[soeren]

Or bring some light of your own

[B.S.Kumar]

You could stick some torches in the ground at whichever places you want in focus, focus, remove the torches and shoot.

Kumar

[Jerry Bodine]

Have you done your homework/testing for reciprocity effect with your chosen film? It's likely very significant.

[soeren]

And maybe some ND filters could add to give the desired effect without the need for complete darkness.

[Heaver]

Yes, I have a chart that seems to work well for the reciprocity effect. I've used it for this film on MF to great sucess.

ND Filters won't give the effect unfortnatly. I'm actually trying to keep the shutter speed as short as possible, gets all of the shot in focus, the sky dark and the ground evenly exposed....I have an example, I'll try and link it to this post.

My digital image -
https://flic.kr/p/CVCmx1

[Heaver]