Early evening and night time photography

[more photography]

Planning to shoot iearly evening my town in colour, normally the river is lit.

What film and if any filters you would normally use, any special techniques.

Thanks in advance

[Gordon Moat]

It can depend a little on the type of lighting in usage, though sometimes not much filtration is needed. Normally I use Kodak E100VS, and shoot in a timeframe less than one hour after sunset. An example is this four minute exposure using an 82A, which is a very mild blue filter. An 82B would be another choice, though E100VS shifts slightly blue on longer exposures anyway (over two minutes).

Ciao!

Gordon Moat Photography

[al olson]

The nautical twilight (from about 26 minutes after sunset to 50 minutes after sunset) has the richest color in the sky.

My rule of thumb is to begin exposures about 40 minutes past official sunset. You can get this time from the Naval Observatory site. Using Portra 160NC and setting the aperture midway between f/8 and f/11, I do my first exposure at 2 minutes, the second at 4 minutes, and the third at 10 minutes. There is about a minute between each exposure for changing film holders, cocking shutter, and other fumbling activity.

Each of the three exposures seem to compensate for reciprocity failure and the diminishing twilight. By the end of the third exposure, nautical twilight has disappeared. The following recent images illustrate this sequence of exposures. I was attempting to pick up the star trails (usually these will show nicely by the third exposure) but was cursed with a hazy northern sky.

I have more examples on my web site at:
www.photo-artiste.com/night.html
and
www.photo-artiste.com/existinglightguide.html

This should give you a rough idea of where you can start. Go out and experiment. Because most of the time the lighting is very uneven, you will get results that emphasize different aspects of the subject depending on the exposure. You can hardly go wrong by making the exposure longer than you think.

[rjbrine]

I tend to shoot buildings at twilight in that all important 3 minute window when the relationship between the ambient and the artificial light become balanced. That is specifically within the brief architectural photography where it is important to see the inside of the building. In this instance I shoot on Provia 100F, put pink on the lens to correct the green and blue to add a little drama to the sky.

I recently shot my first commercial night shot which was great fun and a success. It was a roof top view / cityscape with light pollution and artificial light in the foreground. Using Provia I shot at about 11pm at F16 and opened the camera for 15 minutes with some pink on the lens to clean up. The result was a lovely tranny with lots of detail in the shadow areas and I just pulled it 1/3 in the lab to fill in highlights.

Night photography is a very interesting area and there is so much to learn and experiement with.

Good luck.

[David Karp]

The Fuji color negative films are nice because they have outstanding reciprocity characteristics and can render different light sources (not the sodium vapor variety) pretty well without filtration.

[Lucas M]

Don't forget overcast days too. The artificial lighting bounces off the cloud cover illuminating everything, and decreasing contrast somewhat- always good with colour.