black and white film at night

i am in photo 1 and am wondering about shutter speed on tmax black and white

film at night using 400 and 100, should i use lower or higher shutter speads?

Shutter speed is only adjusted to give you correct exposure and to eliminate or reduce blur in action and hand held shots.

 

You have to choose whether you want a larger aperture and a faster shutter, or a smaller aperture and a slower shutter.

 

The brand of film you use makes no difference.

 

If you're shooting 100-400 ASA film at night, then you probably want to use the largest aperture you can and just live with whatever shutter speed the camera offers you for correct exposure. You'll need a tripod too, although blur at night, can create nice effects too.

 

Hope that helps.

As said, you will need a tripod. Most likely reciprocity failure will have to be taken into consideration. The slower the film, the longer the shutter speed to get the correct exposure. (as long as your F-stop remains constant)

 

The brand of film does make a difference when it comes to night photography because of reciprocity. Fuji Acros has the best characteristics for reciprocity (if I remember right). No correction until 2 minutes I think...

See page 6 of this document for the reciprocity charateristics of Kodak's TMax films: http://www.kodak.com/global/en/professional/support/techPubs/f4016/f4016.pdf .

 

Night time exposures will vary all over the place. In a brightly lit city, one can often shoot handheld at f/2 or f/2.8 at 1/30 sec. with a fast (ISO 400) film. If you are out in the country with only moonlight to illuminate things, exposure times measured in minutes are not uncommon. At 1/30 sec., most folks are at the limit for hand held photography with a "normal" lens. Slower shutter speeds will introduce objectionable motion blur unless some sort of auxiliary support is used.

I recommend taking pictures with different aperture/shutter speed combinations. The results can be quite different with a large aperture and a fast shutter than a small aperture and slow shutter. Generally, if I have a tripod available, I like to stop down the lens to around f/8 or f/11 and use a slightly slower shutter speed. Be advised though that this way anything moving in the picture will be blurred.

 

An extreme is when it is really dark outside and you stop the lens down to a small aperture. That way you might have to use exposure times of several seconds, possibly minutes. In these cases, it might be possible that someone walks through the picture in front of the camera and does not even show up in the picture. It's worth experimenting, quite interesting things are achievable by just playing around with apertures and shutter speeds.

"The slower the film, the longer the shutter speed to get the correct exposure. (as long as your F-stop remains constant)"

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Interestingly enough, TMAX 100, because of its reciprocity charactersitics is actually "Faster" than Tri-X in long exposures. if your meter shows an 8 second exposure, Tri-X should be exposed for 37 seconds whereas TMAX 100 needs only 26 seconds.

Solace A good hand held light meter is a plus, also a good tripod and cable release.I have good luck w/hp5 400