Night shots with LF????

[Cletus]

Just my two bits - Film reciprocity characteristics are probably your biggest consideration for very low light, or night photography. Don't be surprised if you're math is turning up exposures of a half-hour, to an hour or more. When that becomes the case, wind, stray car lights and other factors can come into play working against you. And you WILL have star trails if it's a clear night, but you might want that, I don't know. In the past, just about any night photography I've done has been in the city. Skylines, traffic trails and what-not. For Ilford HP5+ (400ISO), I just set the lens to about f/11 and hold the shutter open for about 5-8 minutes, which was a total, absolute wild guess. I have a few decent nighttime skylines like that (Medium format, not large) but I still think the few good exposures I got were pure luck. Probably for scenes that averaging EV 3 or 4, I would guess, but could be way off.

I'd like to see what a night landscape - especially if it's out away from all artificial lights - looks like. As I think about it now, I don't think I ever have seen one! I guess I have seen a few night shots with high ISO digital cameras now that I think about it, but they pretty much just look like daytime shots. Anyway, I think doing a night shot with a camera that goes up to ISO 125,000 or thereabouts is just cheating!

I did a star trail photo once with 35mm slide film up near Flagstaff, AZ once. Kept the shutter open for about 5 or 6 hours at maybe f/11-16 and it came out pretty good.

[Tim Meisburger]

Yes, it was the Jiffy calculator. I have tried it six or eight times and so far worked every time!

[Jim Jones]

. . . pin pointing a star with LF may not be possible. Or is it??

Bob

It's certainly possible, but difficult. The camera must precisely track the stars while they move across the sky. The axis about which the camera rotates should be pointed at the celestial north pole, less than a degree from the North Star. Astronomers have successfully wrestled with such photography for a very long time. A wealth of information can be found in a search for astrophotograpy.

[Pfiltz]

I was thinking of doing the same thing. Long Exposure in the country with no light polution. My question is, how do you know your in focus? I mean even in the daytime, looking through the ground glass, I miss focus at times.

TIA

[Brian C. Miller]

There's a few ways to focus at night. One is to use a very bright flashlight for a bit, and focus on something. The other way is to set up your camera for infinity in the daytime, and then just set it up on your tripod in the dark. Usually, though, a flashlight works great, as LF isn't known for nighttime stealth photography anyways.

[dave_whatever]

Anyone had issues with the film "popping" in the holder during long night shots? I tried some LF moonlight shots once but was worried about this so used a 120 back instead. Also made it less costly when It turned out that all of them were out of focus.

One thing I'll say is if shooting colour then provia is about the best slide film in terms of minimal reciprocity failure.

[Bob Farr]

Thanks for all of the questions and answers. Will be aware of reciprocity and focus when trying this out. Though the experience will be different for urban and landscape. Seems as though pre-focusing will help. Is there a link on the LF Fooorum for night photography??

[Greg Miller]

Don't expect too much with star trails at f9 unless using very fast film. Even f5.6 might be a bit too little light to get more than dim trails.

[John Kasaian]

Andrew Sanderson's book, Night Photography has some examples of 4x5 work and technical details if you be lookin' fer inspiration.

[John Kasaian]

Anyone had issues with the film "popping" in the holder during long night shots?

No sir!