OT: photos under sodium light?

I want to take some colour photos under farm security lighting which

happens to be yellow sodium lights. I realise that there is a very

limited waveband of light involved.

 

Can anyone advise on which emulsions will perform best, and how to

estimate exposure?

Try digital instead. Don't forget to make a white balance before shooting. If you insist in shooting film, use negative film and all the luck available. And trust your meter.

There are no filters (to my knowledge) that will correct for high pressure sodium lamps.

Jonathan - Sodium discharge lamps will probably give you a strong yellow/green colour cast with any film, positive or negative. I found it impossible to fully correct and get decent prints, not surprising as there is very little bandwidth and therefore virtually no colour information to be recorded besides the yellow/green. Best results have been with B&W film (Tri X rated @ 320 ASA) for slightly flat negs that print well with a bit of contrast correction. You could probably add more colour after the fact in Photoshop this way than you would get using colour film, depending on your digital darkroom skills.

Yes, that's correct, there will be very little visible that isn't a shade of sodium yellow. That's what I want to capture - it looks good. Of course I could capture it in monochrome and add the colour later. This isn't a question of correcting for the colour cast, but rather how do I capture the image at all? Which kind of emulsion is most sensitive to this wavelength?

 

Digital is out - I don't have a digital camera.

We used to use tungsten chrome film and then use a color correction filter. I can't

remember if it was a magenta or a blue filter. It gave pretty good results .I will ask around

the photo staff and see if anyone can remember ,which filter.

how "normal" do you want it to look? a very cool, different image under sodium is epj @500 push 1.5, cross processed.

Singh-Ray makes a filter for sodium lighting. It was called the "Lucalox Type B" and is

used with Tugsten (Type B) film. I used it extensively in the early 1990's for shots of

industrial sites and it works great. B&H Photo has them in stock. BTW Lucalox is the GE

trade name for sodium lighting.

Tried film failed, tried digital (Canon 10D) failed, finally tried 10D with a 420EX as fill in and it worked fine, just enough light to change the spectrum so the AWB work fine. Good luck.

Singh_Ray product information write up: <BR><I>High-pressure sodium vapor street

lamps are one of

the pitfalls of photographing after dark. Used to light many city streets, sodium vapor

lights are amber with strong, difficult to correct, emissions in the green, yellow and orange

region of the spectrum. Singh-Ray Lucalox filters, named for the GE sodium vapor lamp,

are the only tools available that yield faithful color reproduction of these scenes.

 

NOTE: Lucalox filters are formulated for use with Ektachrome Tungsten (Type B) film.</I>

"and how to estimate exposure? "

 

Its hard to predict without testing. The response of your light metering system depends very much on the system used (the more primitve the better, e.g. hand held old selenium cell). Be prepared that the dynamic range of your film may be severely reduced in case of color film. I would bracket and shoot trying to avoid overexposure (if based on incident light measurement).

Use BW film if its low pressure Na lamps as these are monochromatic (only emits light at 2 wavelengths-589.0 and 589.6 nm). High pressue Na lamps give off a broader but still limited spectrum. Use of fluorescent filters with DL film MAY give acceptable results.

 

More info on emission spectra of various light sources at <a href="http://www.lamptech.co.uk/Documents/SO2%20Spectral.htm">info</a>

One last thing: I have shot thousands of chromes using sodium vapor lighting. I got paid

a nice amount for it. All the other suggestions you are getting are off the wall, period.

They will not work.

<i><<a href="http://4020.net/">4020.net</a>></i><p>

 

Use a high quality C41 film (I use Kodak Supra 200). Also use a 80B (blue) filter.<p>

 

You won't be able to completely get rid of the yellow, but it will be good enough. Yes I

know in theory it shouldn't work, but try it - you'll be surprised :?)<p>

 

I used this combination a few years back for commissioned work inside the Treloar

Technology Centre storage facility run by the Australian War Memorial Museum. They

were delighted with the results, apparently it was the first time they'd seen shots taken in

there which weren't monochromatic yellow.<p>

Jonathan: I don't have anything useful to add. Some of the older Sodium lights are Low Pressure Sodium which have an even yellower cast than the current crop of High Pressure Sodiums. Depends on how old the lights are as to the type. It depends what I was exposing for as to how to meter. Please let us know what works for you. Thanks

 

Mark J.

what are you trying to accomplish Johnathan? Maybe the thread needs that info. Some are responding trying to help you accurately correct your lighting for an accurate image, which i think is silly under these lights. If you want to make a different looking photo by taking advantage of this different spectrum, then everyone is now right and wrong. No one has mention the kelvin differnces in high pressure and low pressure sodiums either.

Wow, thanks one and all! What a lot of amazingly helpful people there are here. If I ever succeed with this you can be sure I will post the result.

 

I want to capture this farmyard scene as it appears to the eye under the sodium lighting. I do not want to get rid of the strong yellow/orange colour cast. I think many of the contributors above were under the impression that I did.

 

WJS: I'm especially confused as to whether the Singh-Ray filters correct for the colour of the light, or allow one to reproduce it as seen?

 

Worst news is that the bullocks that were essential to the scene appear to have gone off for slaughter. Hope they'll be replaced!

<p align="center"><img src="http://fujirangefinder.com/files/0441/

customer_parking.jpg" border=2><p><center>Kodak portra 400 NC-20seconds

exposure at f/16</center><p>

 

Jonathan, is this the effect you're looking for? I just used my spot meter and over

exposed a 1/2 stop or so to make sure the neg wasn't too thin because I would be

only using the yellow sensitive layer(s) of the film. I found I liked some of the yellow

sodium light photographs better in b&w and some better in color, yellow and

all.<p>Have fun, go shoot some and post the results here.

Spot on, BG. I really thought it'd be more difficult than that. Many thanks, I'll go and play.

Really difficult without adding flash, but this is what we really see!

Sorry, here is the picture.<div></div>

Here is what one looks like. You use it just like any other correction filter, TTL metering

no tricks or bells and whistles just compose and shoot. It just works!<div></div>

<p>@William John Smith - Does that filter work with digital?</p>