night photography with Portra 160

[luis a de santos]

Does anybody have a good table of exposures for urban night photography with Portra 160 on 4x5 format?

I would appreciate it.

Thanks Luis

[ericpmoss]

I don't have personal experience, so this may not be detailed enough to help, but this *might* help, so I'm offering it:

The book "Night Photography" by Lance Keimig has a table named "Film Exposure times at F8 in Different Lighting Situations". It's on p. 83 in the chapter "Film-Based Night Photography".

It mentions "ASA 160 Color Negative" as follows:

Bright street scene/lights in shot: 1sec - 4sec
Average street scene/no lights in shot: 2sec - 10sec
Dark Urban Area: 1min - 4min
Moonlight within 1 day of full moon: 10min - 15min

I believe the upper and lower limits are bracketing suggestions. He says that while development compensation can help dramatically with B/W film, it doesn't help with C-41. I don't know if the reciprocity curve continues as listed if you use f/11 or f/16 or whatever. But at least it might help avoid huge under/over accidents.

[miesnert]

I do a lot of nightphotography (prefer Fuji 160NS -but that's amatter of taste).
I usually expose a sheet of 160 iso negative film at f22 or f32 for 15 to 30 minutes when I am in an urban environment. I prefer to expose very long to get a nice negative and a lot of shadow detail.
Here are some examples:

96875
Fuji 160NS
f22
20 minutes exposure

96876
Fuji 160S
f32
15 minutes exposure

96877
Fuji 160NS
f32
25 minutes exposure

Hope this helps.

[Scott Davis]

I've shot a bunch of Portra 160 at night, and basically if the meter says more than 1 second, I add one stop. Beyond 30 seconds, add two.

http://www.apug.org/gallery1/files/6/7/8/5/secessionnegimakiroll.jpg

http://www.apug.org/gallery1/files/6/7/8/5/burmarestaurantdc.jpg

http://www.apug.org/gallery1/files/6/7/8/5/georgetownrainstorm.jpg

I want to say that the last one especially was about one minute thirty seconds, including the reciprocity compensation. The other two were somewhere in the 15-30 second range, including reciprocity.

[Andrew O'Neill]

miesnert, I love the "feel" of them, especially the middle image.

[al olson]

Several years ago I wrote up an existing light guide. While considerably outdated in terms of available modern films and links to products, the principles still hold.

http://photo-artiste.com/existinglightguide.html

There are several examples using Portra 160.

These are wonderful examples from miesnert and Scott Davis.

[luis a de santos]

Hi Al,

Thank you for the reply ,interesting but a bit convoluted for me.
Could you just give me some clear examples?.
City lights buildings etc how many seconds for what exposure
Darker street scene like warehouse district kind of place
That kind of thing

Luis

[Scott Davis]

Luis-

It's not complicated. My technique is to spot meter some area in the scene that I want to record as a "middle gray" density level. I don't do additional shadow and highlight readings because the contrast range in night photography is so extreme that it wouldn't help. If that's not practical, I take an incident reading using lighting similar to that in which I'm shooting. I typically get exposure times between 30 seconds and a minute and thirty seconds at f11-f16 using Portra 160. Those times are taking reciprocity compensation into account. I explained previously that Portra requires very little compensation, so if my meter reads longer than 1 second but less than 30, I give 1 stop compensation. If it reads longer than 30 seconds, I give two stops.