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Photographing at night
Hello all, recently I bought Brassai's Paris by Night book and was really inspired by the pictures in there. There are some beautiful examples- especially considering they were all shot at night on film nearly 70 years ago!
I thought I'd quite like to give that sort of style a try but I'm not sure how to expose the film. I want to have a go at photographing scenes lit by street-lights. Would a meter be able to make an accurate reading? Or would it be a case of a few minutes of exposure should do the job? I know reciprocity failure will be a factor too. Does anybody have any experience? Cheers, Ben |
#2
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Night photography by Andrew Sanderson (who's a Friend here) would be a good starting point - and might well give you all you need.
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people get hung up on reciprocity, especially those obeying the laws of the zone system.
The trick is to use the zone system and a spot meter and not an incident meter. Then you break the law of expose for the shadows and replace it with expose for a highlight of zone 7 or 8 and sod the shadows. It works and the shadows never turn out as dark as you think they will. Fact is that when you meter a highlight it often won't be into reciprocity or not as much as a shadow may be. So which is right? Well the answer is always the highlight metered value. Just don't meter the actual lights, meter something you want to place on a zone 7 or 8 and you'll be close. Night scenes with lighting are very high contrast but instead of trying to fit a square peg into a round hole, just concentrate on the central range of the subject (7 or 8 stops) as thats all you can get on paper anyway without destroying the night time effect. You can't see it in following print scan but the unlit background trees are well defined in this shot where I metered the church spire and placed on zone 6 or 7 if memory serves me. I corrected for reciprocity based on that (HP5) and not on any shadow metering. If I had metered shadows, reciprocity correction would have been much greater and would have overexposed the mid to high values which are the most important in night time images (and day time images). If you save the image from screen and play with levels you will see lots of tree details. It is night time after all. Last edited by Argentum; 15th April 2014 at 05:49 PM. |
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Brassai would time his night photographs by how long it took him to smoke a cigarette. A Gauloise for a certain light, a Bayard if it was darker. Seems better than the zone system to me.
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Mike |
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I do it a little differently though and it works too. Zone on a 7 like you and also Zone on a 3 (or a 4 if too dark to read a 3) check the differences and note what the N is likely to be. Using a compensating developer gives even more tolerance... RR |
#7
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That is a nice shot, Argentum, and a good explanation of your technique. I enjoy night photography, and will use your system next time I'm out. My previous 'successes' have been more to do with luck than any defined system of analysing exposure.
Alex. |
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Quote:
Ben |
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Ben, if you have a camera with aperture priority auto you can set it up on a tripod, choose a suitable aperture and let the camera set the shutter speed. Exposures will normally be several seconds so a cable release is useful as is mirror lock up. I have done this often, and you get usable results. A proper systematic approach is obviously better, but this would get you started. Fuji Acros 100 film is said to have no reciprocity failure in exposures of several seconds, so might be a good choice. The other approach you could try is the tables of suggested settings you find in books about night photography. They tend to give some good starting points. I have a few such books. I'm not at home so cannot check authors/titles, but could let you know after Saturday if you're interested.
Alex |
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http://www.abebooks.co.uk/servlet/Se...n=The+Negative I used to use a Weston but now I use a Spotmeter, which is far superior. The key to this method is that you measure the light values of the subject, not the light values of the light landing on it (incident readings). You will find a Spotmeter a great help. I use old Pentax Spotmeters they are not expensive if you are happy to use one that is not mint condition. richard Last edited by richardw; 15th April 2014 at 11:42 PM. |
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