Moonlight shots

[Jehu]

Next Friday (full moon) I plan on going to Virginia City for some night shots at Boot Hill Cemetery. I want to try both B/W and Color (slide). I'm not experinced with metering moonlight and I haven't tangled with film reciprocity. Any advice would be appreciated.

Here's the main reason I want to go back:


I was "composition hunting" with a 35mm. I think that there's potential here.

[Kirk Keyes]

THanks for the reminder. I'll be out this weekend camping and I'll bring the camera along and try as well.

[Kirk Keyes]

Also - looks like it will be a good shot! Hopefully the moon will be coming up over your right shoulder to illuminate both sides of the wall.

[John Kasaian]

Scope out www.thenocturnes.com for free tutorials.

[Jehu]

Scope out www.thenocturnes.com for free tutorials.

That helped. Thanks John.

[Jehu]

These were both 16 minute exposures around midnight at the full moon. The plane of focus was about right but it looks like I should've stopped down a little more. On the left one, the tree is out of focus at the top and bottom but not in the middle.

What I don't understand is that the exposure appears the same in both shots but I'm sure I stopped down at least one more for the second shot. Is this just the reciprocity effect? I'm kind of lost on this.

I'm going back up to Virginia City tomorrow night. The moon is almost full again so I'll try it again.



After I took those, I noticed that I had a holder loaded with Tmax 400 so I tried it on this one:

I stopped down one more (f22 I think) and cut the time in half. I'm real happy with the exposure level on most of it. I think it may be a good idea to stop down one more and double the time. Then there's that reciprocity again. Any suggestions?

[poco]

I think your scanner is making adjustments in Auto mode that makes judging actual negative density difficult. If both top shots were 16 minutes and the second shot has better depth of field, then that's the one you must have stopped down further on ...and yet the stones look lighter. That has to be the scanner.

Stopping down beyond f22 for a moonlight shot sounds like a recipe for a blank negative to me. I aim to shoot as wide open as possible to avoid reciprocity problems and even have gone to the lengths of setting up the camera before dark to check for the maximum fstop possible ...and then waiting.

Once...

for....

five.....

houuuuuuurs........

But I got the shot!

BTW, your development is giving you surge lines along the sides of your negatives (lighter stripes in the sky). Shame to go through the trouble of shooting LF and the bother these night shots entail and then have them ruined by bad development, no?

[Jehu]

Now I'm really confused. I just checked both negatives. Both are notched as Delta 100. Both are from the same package. Both were developed in the same batch.

The time was the same for both shots. You can tell by the star streaks. I'm sure they're both 16 minute exposures. The shot on the right has a deeper DOF so it has to be a smaller aperture. There's no mistaking the negatives. I can hold both negatives over plain white paper and see that the shot on the right is darker so it isn't just the scanner.

This is so backwards!

On another note, I thought the light around the edges were from the city lights over the hill. I never even thought of the developing process. What am I doing wrong there?

Here's a shot from the same batch. The sky was completely clear. I think I had a polarizer though.

I grabbed a holder with Delta 100 by accident. I meant to use a 100VS.

[poco]

Jehu,

I think that, as a relative newcomer to LF, you really need to get a tighter control over the process. I'm the most disorganized person in the world but, recognizing that, I kept a very careful journal of every shot I took for the first two years. In the field I jotted down all exposure info for every shot, along with location, subject and any other info I could think of as being relevant. Then I'd go home and copy that info from my field pad to a larger journal and just that act of copying forced me to review every shot and learn from the day.

No offense, but there's just too many "by accidents" "I thinks" and "I believes" in your posts. I learned the hard way that you've got to get rid of those before you can learn from your mistakes and get beyond them. Try a journal.

As for uneven development, I assume you're tray developing and there's plenty of threads on the best technique for that. Generally a presoak, large enough tray size and shuffle technique affect evenness of development so I'd concentrate on discussion of those.

Good luck.

-Michael

[Jehu]

Michael, the forums are too full of compliments. A guy can't seem to get the kind of criticism that can make him a better photographer. Thank you for that.

I do have a journal. I left it at home a couple of days ago so I didn't have it for this post. When I went to this shoot, I had my plans written down. I got from nocturnes.com that I should use f8 for an 8 minute exposure. I checked up on the reciprocity of Delta 100 and somehow figured that I'd try f11, f16 & f22 all at 16 minutes. I wasn't as interested in a final product as I was in learning. I got the f11 & f16 shots and called it quits for that experiment. My wife was with me and getting tired so I figured I'd try one four minute shot with the Tmax 400. I forgot to log the fstop for that one but I remember the time.

The balloon shot was an accident but it was developed in the same batch. I thought it may be helpful in determining any problems in the processing.

I developed 8 negatives in a daylight tank. Some were Delta 100 and some were Tmax 400. I used D76 for the first time. I normally use ID-11. The edges of all negatives are clear so I'm not getting light leaks when I'm loading the film.

Right now, I'm trying to come up with a plan for tonight. I'm planning on trying 8 minute exposures at f11 through f22.

Is it possible that the light streaks along the edges are from the city lights over the hill?