Night Photography

[Sascha Welter]

Check out the CityScapes thread. Apart from lots of great example photos, you can also see what people work with and quite often their exposure choices.

I'd say they use almost all kinds of large format cameras. Focusing on the GG will mostly be influenced by the maximum aperture of the lens and by the quality of the GG. Rangefinders are things for quick shots, not for exact composition, that's why people use large format cameras in the first place :-)

[Steaphany]

About Foveon sensors, I think Sigma SLRs are quite old. New Nikons, Canons, etc, provide dark frame subtraction for noise reduction and I heard it works.

The SD14 also performs dark frame subtraction, but the Foveon noise has less to do with silicon and more to do with the mathematics of separating the spectral overlap between the layered red, green, and blue channels. Being film experienced, I chose to go with the Foveon, despite the detracting reviews, because the imager employed a color film like layered architecture. ( I purchased my SD14 before learning that film and large format photography was still alive and thriving. ) I have experimented with processing the RAW data through an identity matrix which yields wonderfully noise free low light images, but the color rendition becomes a problem.

I know Nikon received a patent, US Patent 7,138,663, which optically stacks the three color channels under a common microlens, eliminating the weakness's of a Bayer masked imager, while achieving better low light noise response than a Foveon, but Nikon tech support was never willing to identify which cameras took advantage of this technology. The best I got from them was "Nothing, digital or film, beats our products".

I also noticed your square format pics... Are those with a MF camera?

If you are referring to my image "Hit & Miss" in my Texas gallery on Imagekind, which I previously posted to:

safe haven for tiny formats

No that was shot as a 3 x 3 mosaic with my SD14. I was too close to the engine to capture it in a single frame when shooting through my 1250mm Maksutov Cassegrain with it's 0.95° x 0.63° angle of view. After stitching, I cropped the frame to a 4x5 film frame aspect ratio.

[ki6mf]

I haven't read all the posts so don't know if the http://www.thenocturnes.com/ site has been mentioned. A good resource. Basically you test for your exposure based on the ambient light conditions. A meter almost always does no good. I shoot film and have exposures ranging from 5 minutes to 30 minutes. Almost always shooting at F22 and using compensating developer, Choice of developer is not really important you will be overexposing highlights and under developing shadows so need to compensate for the extreme contrast range. Process is basically the same for digital. Test and remember what the light looked like for your exposure. After a while you will figure out what works. As to gear for film it all works the same and I have seen great night photos taken on 35 MM film. I shoot 4X5 and usually when shooting long exposure will take my Shen Hao field camera and my Crown Graphic and set them up side by side that way i can have a 5,10, 15 minute exposure on one camera and the 20 minute on the other. Also I bring a folding chair to sit in so as to be comfortable. A LED flashlight helps to illuminate subjects to get the focus right.

[BennehBoy]

Wish I could see some of those Chris Jordan images, but there's nothing still available on the forum that I can find.

[pocketfulladoubles]

Aside from setting up in the day, you can use a flashlight to help you focus at night. And 30 minutes? Maybe not. I took a moonlit shot the other day using Velvia 50, and the average light in the scene metered a -3 exposure with 15 minutes at f/16. I know Velvia isn't recommended for long duration shots, but I assumed some reciprocity failure and gave it 5 hours of exposure, from about midnight to 5am. It came out just right. It is hard to tell if the color shifted due to the mystical shades of moonlight, but all in all I like the way it looked. Too bad it was a boring picture

[tgtaylor]

If the intent is to take B&W images "...in urban settings with low light conditions. These scenes aren't totally dark, but very contrasty with harsh highlights and large portions of total darkness..." then several hour exposures are not needed and it is not necessary to stop down. F8 or F11 will be sufficient in most all cases.

I once shot the Bay Bridge at night with a Toyo 45cf that didn't have a fresnel using a Nikkor-M 300mm lens (F9). Because I wanted the bridge cables sharp in the print and couldn't see them on the ground glass I stopped down to F16 and took a 60-second exposure. Came out really good with the cables and bridge sharp and a nice silver streak on the water. The 60-second exposure evened out the turbulance in the water into nice calm looking little waves.

I have found the spot meter to be a real help in shooting urban scenes at night as it will tell you where the highlights are and therefore give you an idea of where to put the exposure. Take, for example, paulr's image on the first page of this post. A spopt meter will tell you where the lights in the windows are as well as the street below.

Thomas