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Thread: Moon lit scene with Txp 320

  1. #1
    Steven Ruttenberg's Avatar
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    Moon lit scene with Txp 320

    I shot a scene at f/16 for 1.5 hours under a 3/4 moon. Took a guess. It was enough to fog film, but not much else. Looks like it would be a 4-6 hour exposure at least judging by failure of first attempt.

    What is people's experience for a moonlit scene? Expo sure, etc?

  2. #2
    Tim Sandstrom
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    Re: Moon lit scene with Txp 320

    The times I was doing a lot of night work, TMY2 seemed the best for LF, reciprocity-wise, fullmoon I was getting usable exposures in 10 minutes.

  3. #3
    Steven Ruttenberg's Avatar
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    Re: Moon lit scene with Txp 320

    Hmm. I might have to make some exposures of various times to figure out.

  4. #4
    Tim Sandstrom
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    Re: Moon lit scene with Txp 320

    you could always go michael kenna style: trip the shutter, cover the camera with something dew protective, sleep until the alarm goes off [and before the sun comes up], and then close the shutter

  5. #5

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    Re: Moon lit scene with Txp 320

    f/16 is going to make life difficult. Reciprocity failure means that faster f-stops are more efficient than longer exposures. I haven't taken a moonlit shot for a while but believe that I've had decent results with a small format lens at f/4 or so, ISO 400, and exposures well under an hour.

    I googled up this calculator which seems plausible: http://sgphotos.com/blog/exptime.html Please note the author likely wrote this for digital and so it doesn't account for reciprocity failure. You also have to experiment for personal taste, since it's usually okay for a moonlit scene to appear pretty dark, not Zone V.

    Something the calculator author did take into account, which matters, is that the moon surface is more reflective directly back at the viewer than at an angle. So full moon is significantly more than 2x brighter than half moon (1st or 3rd quarter).

    A rule of thumb is that the full moon is 400,000 times less luminous than the sun. That is about 18.5 stops. Consider trying to reason from Sunny 16. To expose 400,000 times longer than Sunny 16 at ISO 400 = 1/400 sec, we have 1000 sec at f/16 (likely need to add a lot of reciprocity failure), or about 60 sec at f/4 (plus reciprocity failure, but less of it). That is for full moon, so partial moon would need longer time, but allowing the scene to go dark would allow a shorter time.

  6. #6
    Vaughn's Avatar
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    Re: Moon lit scene with Txp 320

    I have posted these before -- These figures are from Michael Kenna -- from a workshop 40? years ago.

    Might be worth considering as a starting point.
    Attached Thumbnails Attached Thumbnails Kenna's Night Exposure Recomendations_Page_1.jpg  
    "Landscapes exist in the material world yet soar in the realms of the spirit..." Tsung Ping, 5th Century China

  7. #7

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    Re: Moon lit scene with Txp 320

    Vaughn, the second part of those notes look like they were taken directly from the "Kodak Professional Photoguide" or their pocket version of same. The OP might do well to find a copy of one or the other of those publications (even if they're long out of print).

  8. #8
    Steven Ruttenberg's Avatar
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    Re: Moon lit scene with Txp 320

    I have a reciprocity table for most folks. All the ones I use. The main problem is even with moon at full brightness, the landscape will not register on the meter so one has to make an educated guess based on experience. In my case that is not an awful lot. My 1.5 hour exposure probably should have been 8 hours, but my wife was freezing her boobs off. Next time I am gonna go for 8 hours or whatever my testing says.

    BTW, This was at Horseshoe Bend. It was a ghost town. Something positive from this virus.

  9. #9
    Tin Can's Avatar
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    Re: Moon lit scene with Txp 320

    Looking up the next 2 Full Moons at the Page location has just about 8 hours from last light to first light

    I await the results!
    Tin Can

  10. #10
    Corran's Avatar
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    Re: Moon lit scene with Txp 320

    T-Max 100 or Delta 100 will be "faster" than 400-speed film at a certain point, which you probably hit. Or if you've got some Acros, that's the "gold standard."
    TXP would be about the worst film to go with on that, other than Foma films I guess.
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