Day 77: Long Exposures on Ektar
Day 77: March 18, 2014: Tank Hill
Another little experiment today. As much as I love night photos, film can be quite the proverbial pain in the ass for this kind of work, I’ve found. The lighting is always tricky at night, since any lights tend to be so much brighter than the rest of the background. This makes it difficult to keep everything in a range that the camera’s sensor or the film can capture. Film tends to handle the bright lights a bit better than digital, but adds the complicating factor of reciprocity failure, requiring exponentially longer exposures than digital for the same shot and settings when you get into exposures above a couple seconds. With enough data, the reciprocity of particular films can be calculated and accounted for, and some of the info can be found on the internets, but realistically, I’d generally rather just go hang out on a hilltop and guess instead of looking these things up on the internet and doing the calculations. If I was using more expensive/precious film, it would probably be worth the extra work, but as it is I generally get close enough with a couple tries, and I have way more fun just shooting. With this photo, this Kodak Ektar has just made it as one of my favorite nighttime long exposure films. I had to about double the exposure to 30 seconds from what I would have used on my digital camera, and it came out pretty clean, with way better highlight colors and detail than I tend to see from digital. Not too shabby.
I honestly don’t know what kind of crowd is reading these posts, whether this technical stuff is interesting or not at all, but it helps me think about and learn from these little experiences, so I’ll keep posting some of the stuff I learn along the way. In non-technical stuff, this view is from Tank Hill, home of my favorite bench and one of my favorite views in SF, looking over Corona Heights, another of my favorite viewpoints. That big building in the front is the formerly concrete-clad former AAA headquarters, currently getting a shiny new glass skin as part of it’s conversion to apartments. Will they be affordable? History and the amount of money being put into the renovation suggest no, but housing is housing in this city, and we need all we can get right now. As a commercial building that required a complete gutting and re-skinning, the end result will surely be better than the vacant space it is replacing. And aesthetically, it’s certainly a step up from that old concrete hulk on the skyline, I think. 🙂
(Kodak Ektar 100, EOS 3)
Thanks for the writeup – probably the only reference on the net for guessing the timing of Ektar for nightshots.
I was just heading down the beach for a midnight session with a roll of Ektar, and was wondering what sort of duration I should be shooting. Not many references out there on the web.
I am using my digital as a sort of lightmeter – set it on ISO 80, mimic the industar26’s 52mm range, and then bracket some shots.
Not much light tonight, so it took 16secs exposure on the digital to get the look I was after (reflections of lights off an otherwise black ocean, with a hint of surf)
1 minute exposure on the digital had too many white blotches, and too light in the foreground.
So putting it all together, I guessed around 2 minutes for the film camera, knowing that it shouldnt blow out the highlights so much, but still able to fill in the shadows. Will see what happens anyway !
I guess we get more than our fair share of the “need for perfection” in our everyday lives now – its so much better to be able to tackle the important things purely by feel. Like it.
Thanks again for posting
Thanks for the feedback! Hopefully your shots turn out.
I’ve been using a Canon SLR with a built in meter for the film, so I’ve gotten to the point where I tend to start at somewhere around 0.5-1 stop over exposed according to the meter for anything over about 5 seconds of exposure, then bracketing up a couple from there, just in case. Since I’ve been shooting a fairly random assortment of film in different conditions, it’s still mostly just trying some things to see what works, but hopefully I’ll have a feel for at least a few favorites after a few more rolls.
Digital is definitely a lot easier at night, but I love film for the colors I get in the highlights particularly, and with the sun going down a bit earlier again, I’ll have to be out there shooting some more night exposures soon.