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Night Shooting – Metering & Other Tips Welcome
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I’m starting to do a bit of night shooting again after a sojourn of quite a few years, and wondering if anyone has any tips on metering which is my main priority, but also other general night shooting tips/ pieces of kit genius. etc. :)
The last time I shot at night was back in my digital days, and had the luxury of matrix metering on my Nikon. Now, I’m shooting meterless film cameras, so will be using a handheld meter with which I can both spot and incident meter (Sekonic L758).
I’ve seen a number of users on the www advocate using a digital camera for metering, but I would rather not go down that route, and just learn to meter properly at night right from the start. Also, I find the instant review offered by digital distracting, and would prefer to focus on the shooting itself.
I’ll be shooting black and white film, so any film-treatment recommendations welcome also. I was hoping to stick with TriX for all my 35mm shooting, but Neopan400 may push better to 800/ 1600, so am keeping an open mind. I’d rather not switch from TriX, but I need to do some testing and research in pushing it to see if it is the best option image-quality wise when pushed on 35mm.
I know there are 1600/ 3200 films out there, but I will be shooting handheld (new f1.1 lens!) and think 800 iso will suffice. Also, I’m flying out for New Years in a few months, and would like to do some night shooting wherever I end up, and would prefer the peace of mind of travelling with 400 iso film as opposed to ultra high speed film.
Any and all advice welcome, though please note I will be shooting handheld with a very wide aperture lens, do not want to carry a digital camera, and would like to learn a method of metering with my handheld meter that I can also utilise when shooting some tripod-mounted night landscapes in the future on 6×6.
By the way, the above is in anticipation of a group night shoot suggested by shutterbug here, so if you think you might be interested, drop over to the PI Events forum and check out the thread there (pi-dublin-nationwide-night-shoot-event-t40663.html). Meeting on the evening of the 8th of November, with a docklands shoot planned in Dublin, and other shoots planned for outside Dublin.
Thanks in advance :)
cant offer any help but will be following this thread to pick up any tips
Hi Damien, the man you need is Andrew Sanderson who has written a book on the subject of night photography. He has a web site at http://www.thewebdarkroom.com” onclick=”window.open(this.href);return false; where he has written on the subject. I’m afraid he would not approve of your proposal to handhold your camera although he does favour the use of ISO 400 film. The book is out of print but could be obtained second hand off the net. There are some terrific photo’s in it and a lot of information.
Cheers
VincentYou don’t need a book to shoot at night… and certainly not a tripod =)
Tri-X at 1600 in something like Xtol will be gorgeous, especially at 1.1 on that Nokton. I wouldn’t go much higher than that though due to excessive grain, even in Tmax 3200 or Delta 3200 is too grainy for me. Neopan 1600 is another option if you can find some, amazing silky blacks.
Most people can handhold down to about 1/15 on a Leica some even lower. With the 1.1 you’ll be well within that range.
Available darkness =)
tex wrote:
Hi Damien, the man you need is Andrew Sanderson who has written a book on the subject of night photography. He has a web site at http://www.thewebdarkroom.com” onclick=”window.open(this.href);return false; where he has written on the subject. I’m afraid he would not approve of your proposal to handhold your camera although he does favour the use of ISO 400 film. The book is out of print but could be obtained second hand off the net. There are some terrific photo’s in it and a lot of information.
Cheers
VincentYes Vincent, had heard of the Sanderson book which seems to come highly recommended. Must keep my eye out for a copy, as it sounds like the type of primer I will be looking for when I turn to shooting some tripod mounted 6×6 night landscapes.
masteroftherealm wrote:
Tri-X at 1600 in something like Xtol will be gorgeous, especially at 1.1 on that Nokton. I wouldn’t go much higher than that though due to excessive grain, even in Tmax 3200 or Delta 3200 is too grainy for me. Neopan 1600 is another option if you can find some, amazing silky blacks.
Most people can handhold down to about 1/15 on a Leica some even lower. With the 1.1 you’ll be well within that range.
Available darkness =)
Now you’re speaking my language – no point in having a lens that’s almost f1, without letting it out to play :) I find 1/15 fine, and 1/8 manageable with some support.
Must have a look for TriX 1600 in Xtol. The failure reports of Xtol in the past have made me a little wary of using it, so must do some research. Seems like Neopan 1600 is gone, but do have a bit of Neopan 400 which is supposed to survive a 2-stop push quite nicely, but think I will persevere with TriX first, seeing as I have 100+ rolls of it lying around begging to be shot.
Did you go ahead with the 35mm f1.2 Nokton by the way ?
No ain’t got one yet, pondering over an M2 to go with it.
Xtol failures were fixed when they stopped making the 1L packages of it, I use it for pretty much everyhting and its fine never had any problems with it!
Ah, a good simple god-fearing M2 – nothing better.
That’s interesting re: Xtol, talk of developer failure was the only thing that put me off it. A lovely developer.
I use a good bit of XTOL and have never have had a problem with it from the 5L packs. I mix it up with distilled water and it lasts ages. Last batch was 7 months old before i finished it and it worked fine…superb developer
Hello!!, apologizes for my english :).
I have come across this topic and is very interesting since I used to shoot at night.
If you have your Noctilux or your Nokton with you, the 1.1 is pretty good but sometimes at night do the correct focus is very complicated, I have the Canon 0.95 and sometimes I was measured the distance in my imagination :D.I shot years ago with B&W, always overexposing til 1600ASA or even 3200ASA (it looks incredible, trust me!) but thats because I like the grain and how it looks in the lights zones, anyroad, I suggest you should try Ilford 800 ASA and developed with Rodinal in order to get more gray tones.
Nowadays I shoot in color because I like the contrast of colors in the night :).
Embrace the darkness :D.
Ha ha, interesting suggestions, Miguel. I can see you know the addiction of shooting at night quite well, too :) I find things just look so different at night, and it’s always been a passion, although getting up to go out shooting at night is not always the easiest thing to do, especially after a long day! :)
Since posting the thread almost 6 months ago, I eventually settled on the combination of TriX developed in Diafine, which works quite well for both pushing TriX to almost 1600, as well as taming the high contrast at night. It would also appear to work quite well with Fuji Acros, although have not tried that combination just yet. In all, I think I might have my handheld shooting film in TriX, and tripod mounted film in Acros for the non-handheld night landscapes I would like to shoot too.
Unfortunately, I haven’t had much opportunity to shoot at night this year yet, but am looking forward to easing myself back in, relatively soon :)
I enjoyed shooting with such a fast lens, in the Nokton, but I would seem fortunate that many of the handheld urban landscapes I like to shoot, seem to fall at about 1/60th f2 1600, although you can never have too much shadow detail! (providing the nighttime contrast is not overwhelming :) ) I guess the upshot is that I can get away with shooting with an f1.4 of f2 lens, which is nice, being able to leave the chunky Nokton at home.
Would love to see some of your colour night shots, if you have any up online. The colours and lighting at night, almost make a city look like a different place :)
Ha ha, indeed. My desire for scanning to date has been poor, but that is something I will be rectifying. Hope to post up some photo’s as I do :)
big fan of neopan 1600,from my tests its EI is overrated and the emulsion has a speed closer to 800iso:)
i always slightly alter my dev times by about 10% to alter the harsh contrast of night and bring back what little shadow detail is there.
my fav developer is ID-11 but to be fair will do you no favors if your pushing a film:)
hope this helps
stew
Thanks Stewart,
As mentioned, settled on TriX 1600 in Diafine in the end, which I find a great combo for night shooting, giving a nice, almost 2 stop push to TriX, while reining in the high contrast of night scenes nicely.
Read in the past, that Neopan 1600 is a VERY nice 400 iso film, behind it all, and one which pushes very well to 800 or 1600. Pity it’s discontinued now, although with a big cache of TriX, I’m delighted to have found Diafine which works very well in conjunction with it :)
Have a look at this, a nice little calculator.
http://www.stacken.kth.se/~maxz/files/jiffy.pdfAlso Philip Pankov has some good night time images around Dublin, Vincent would have known him from Dublin CC, he used to use the darkrooms there, check them out here. http://www.philpankov.com/-/philpankov/
My own preference for night shooting would be a slow film and tripod, a wet evening with lots of reflections might work well.
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