Shooting brightly lit things at night

Hi guys, I'm having fun shooting with my new-to-me Hasselblad 500CM. Been using my light meter to some degree (began by metering with my digital Olympus M4/3 cam). I'm getting a bit of a feel for what works in what conditions... with basically zero background knowledge or understanding of the theory or workings of everything. So far, MOSt of what I've shot, I've written everything down tho I confess to not having taken the time to go back with my proof prints to compare the actual results to my written notes on exposure etc.

 

That said, I'm having mild success in terms of exposure, Framing and composition with the square format not so much!

(is cropping really your *friend* here? sorry, I know that's a whole other can o worms)

 

I'm not afraid to throw it all into the wind so last night after work - about 2-230 am ish- in Washington DC, I decided, since I had my camera & tripod along, to take some night shots. I shot images of the Capitol Building, the Washington Monument, the new African American Museum, the Washington Monument, and the Lincoln Memorial. Most of which were lit up completely & brightly.

 

I basically set my camera on the lowest aperture (2.8 in the case of the 80mm lens), set the speed on B (bulb, yes?) and shot timed 30 & 45 second exposures. The skies were clear and of course there was plenty of ambient city light....

 

Just offhand, what do you guys think? Did I "do" the "right things" to maybe get some decent exposures? OH BTW- I was shooting current (not expired) Kodak Tmax 400 asa film.

 

I know this is a pretty broad question... I have lots of these: big, wide open questions that can, in no way, result in a single or simple answer. I apologize, but please indulge me. Thanks in advance.

Sounds like the exposure was too long - like Milky Way in an Arizona desert long. How did the results look to you?

 

I suggest taking a spot reading of the Capitol Dome and opening up one stop (aperture or shutter). Better yet, shoot test shots of the same scene with a digital camera and transfer the best settings to the Hasselblad.

You might find this useful.

I have this book and it is an excellent reference.

https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Guide-Night-Low-Light-Photography/dp/0817450416/ref=sr_1_9?ie=UTF8&qid=1541092562&sr=8-9&keywords=Low+light+photography

You can get a great primer along with some useful advanced info.

I expect you might be a bit over exposed in the cases you mentioned.

. . . about 2-230 am ish- in Washington DC, I decided, since I had my camera & tripod along, to take some night shots. I shot images of the Capitol Building, the Washington Monument, the new African American Museum, the Washington Monument, and the Lincoln Memorial. Most of which were lit up completely & brightly.

 

I basically set my camera on the lowest aperture (2.8 in the case of the 80mm lens), set the speed on B (bulb, yes?) and shot timed 30 & 45 second exposures. The skies were clear and of course there was plenty of ambient city light....

 

Just offhand, what do you guys think? Did I "do" the "right things" to maybe get some decent exposures? OH BTW- I was shooting current (not expired) Kodak Tmax 400 asa film. . .

 

 

One method of approximating Exposure is to use an ‘EV Table’. These were quite common in Photography Manuals and Texts and they are expansion of the simplistic table that was provided inside the film packets.

 

Predicated by the ‘F 16 Rule’, an ‘EV Table’ is basically an expansion of the ‘F 16 Rule’ an ‘EV Table’ provides a list of ‘EV numbers’ against a broad description of various scenes to which each number applies.

 

There are also ‘EV Calculators’ usually of the design similar to a circular slide rule. These were common in the Kodak Professional Reference Manuals

 

For reference and as an example here is an ‘EV Table’ in this {LINK}

 

 

Refer to the web page in the link and please note the descriptors for EV 6, EV 7 and EV 8. I expect that the brightly lit buildings you described would be about EV 8; however the surrounding areas of the scene more likely EV 6.

 

From this table you now have a range of EV that you can use to provide a reasonably accurate and informed guess.

 

You could enhance your chances of getting better results by bracketing your exposures, negative films generally has good latitude, so a bracket of three exposures ± 1 Stop would be what I would do.

 

The bottom line base exposure:

 

EV 6 ~ EV 8 using 400 ISO B&W Film, exposed at 400 ISO:

F/8 @ ¼sec to 1/15th sec

 

***

 

Yes "B" stands for "Bulb" (as opposed to "T" which stands for "Time"), the difference being B requires pressure to keep the shutter open, T is a twofold action, one press to open and another to close the Shutter

 

WW

I have used the existing light exposure dial from The Kodak Master Photoguide very successfully for this type of photograph. As you can see from the picture it indicates an exposure of 1/5 second @ f2.8 for a floodlit building at night with Tri-X film. I do bracket my exposure just to be sure but it is surprisingly accurate. This little book is always in my camera bag and has a lot of useful information. I am pretty sure you could find on on ebay or Amazon.

^ Thanks, that's exactly the type of "EV Calculator" that I was referencing.

You are going to get a range of indicative exposures, as per my response and robert bowring's response, above.

 

Obviously the estimate is dependent upon how we interpret the written description of the scene: and, importantly our interpretation of that description will become more accurate as we develop our skills and build our knowledge base of previous night time scenes that we have phoographed.

 

The other element you need to consider is, in any high contrast scene, such as a floodlit buildings situated on a dark night time pallet, even considering the broad latitude of most negative films, is where you actually pitch the exposure - for example a tad towards the highlights but not to lose any detail at all, or play it a bit safer and pull back a bit to ensure you get the details of all the buildings, or pull back even more to maintain good shadow detail in the overall scene.

 

WW

Sounds like you are having fun with your new toy, that’s great!

 

I think maybe you took a leap here beyond what was required. you can meter a floodlit building, just like you can anything else in normal daylight. Sure, it’s a bit darker than what you are used to, but the principle is the same. Your meter turns everything into an average grey tone, so look at your scene and think to yourself ‘what do I want to be an average grey in my final picture’? Take a meter reading from that, and you should not be too far out. Night scenes can be complex because of an abundance of very dark skies, and very brightly lit buildings, neither of which are an average grey. If you are faced with this, meter from both and take an average.

Framing and composition with the square format not so much!

(is cropping really your *friend* here? sorry, I know that's a whole other can o worms)

What do you want to hear? A sheet of paper is usually 8x10" or an aspect ratio closer to 2:3. So either you crop the paper or the neg. Or do rolls of paper exist for you, as a home processing amateur? - To me moderate cropping in the darkroom seemed the right thing to do. - There is an instant to capture a moment and all night long to print the best out of your neg. AFAIK there was no 645 with a rotating back and I really loved my WLFs / chimney finder etc. so cropping seemed the way to go. Shooting slides is a different can of worms and something I don't recommend beyond 35mm film, since you'll be broke before you get a show together.

 

Like everybody else I think your exposure was a bit overdone. - It might have suited a cautiously set aperture, like maybe f11 but still sounds like "a lot" to me. The printed "EV calculators" do help. - If you are feeling less comfortable with them, I recommend getting hold of a handheld meter using still common batteries. - Lunasix 3 is out for that reason. I am right now reluctant to recommend the analog 9V Gossens, having issues with two of them. - I am not familiar with the sensitivity of Sekonics but guessing they should work for you.

With cityscapes at night you can give almost any exposure and still get a picture. It depends what effect you're after.

 

1/500th at f/16 with 400 ISO film would probably still show points of light from streetlights or car headlights. However a more typical night exposure might be 1/15th or 1/30th @ f/2.8 to show some detail in lighted windows and well-lit streets. To show buildings silhouetted against the sky might take 1 or 2 seconds @ f/2.8 , but then the brightest bare lights are going to be well overexposed.

 

It very much depends on what effect you're after, but 30 seconds plus at f/2.8 and 400 ISO is definitely too much exposure unless the area you're photographing is almost totally unlit.

 

Why not just use your digital Olympus to get an exposure reading? The great beauty and advantage of digital is that you can quickly learn the effect of exposure by taking full manual control of ISO, aperture and shutter-speed. And even if the camera doesn't offer manual control, you can usually get the exposure information during playback.

 

WRT cropping the square format: Basically it was designed to be cropped. Otherwise waist-level finder cameras like 'blads and Rolleis would have to be awkwardly used sideways to get a portrait orientation shot. The square format was a fudge, invented to get round this intrinsic drawback. It has no aesthetic merit IMO.

 

Neither does using film make anyone a better photographer. There are no extra merit points awarded for using it. It's just an expensive way of being ecologically irresponsible while unreliably producing pictures.

Neither does using film make anyone a better photographer. There are no extra merit points awarded for using it. It's just an expensive way of being ecologically irresponsible while unreliably producing pictures.

The first two points, yes.

The third point, no.

The first two points, yes.

The third point, no.

 

- Which of those 'qualities' of film are you taking issue with? It's certainly not cheap on an ongoing basis. It's certainly not 'green' either, and you only have to look at the number of posts here asking 'what went wrong with my film?' to get an idea of its lack of reliability in the hands of a novice.

Moderator Note:

 

OK - points have been made about the ecological value and worthiness etc. of using film.

 

That's not the main topic.

 

This is the Beginner Forum and some restraints apply.

 

Noted that the Opening Post's first sentence is, (My bold for emphasis): "Hi guys, I'm having fun shooting with my new-to-me Hasselblad 500CM."

 

Helpful replies, in that vein, should be where the focus of the conversation is bedded.

 

Thanks in advance for your assistance.

 

William

Hi everybody.

Thanks so much for your responses. I appreciate each and every one of them I'm learning and am also wide open to suggestions and critiques. Otherwise I wouldn't bother to post in a forum where so many talented and experienced folks hang out.

 

Afterthought being far more adept than forethought (or total lack of thought), I probably had my light meter along with me! Long day, no sleep -I'd been up and working for roughly 22-24 hours at this point- got the better of me, I guess. I got kind of excited, I admit, when I realized I had. my camera with me.... I have no idea why I thought it a good idea to expose for so long. BUT, working in DC and knowing I'll be back and getting off in the middle of the night, there'll always be more chances to revisit these shots.

 

The whole EV thing is honestly beyond me, however as you probably know or may know, the Zeiss 80mm f2.8 lens has an EV scale on it. Yet another aspect of photography I hope to acquaint myself with. I have a printout of a chart that is based around the "sunny 16" rule, and have actually used it successfully a couple times, but have Ince began using my light meter as well, hoping to get a feel for how it works. Its a modern Sekonic L308S I got for 75.00 off our local Craigslist! So far I have been punching in the Iso setting for whatever film is in the camera, metering, and adjusting up/down until I find something that fits the limited settings on my old lens. By now I have 6 or so rolls of film to send in for processing so I don't really know what I ended up with yet! At this. point, I'm going to hold off s hooting any more until I get these rolls back to see what worked and what didn't

 

Meanwhile, I found an "excellent" copy of the Kodak Photo Manual as seen above, on ebay for 13.00 shipped. As for square format, thanks for the back up, re cropping. I've already cropped a couple image scans digitally, and honestly feel zero guilt about having done so!

 

As for analog VS anything else, of course there are many many ways to enjoy photography, none of which are "wrong" as far as I can tell. It's a science and an art, it's a passion, a pastime and a profession. Whatever results are achieved is/are often subjective, beauty etc being whatever it may be in the eye of the beholder. I enjoy it, and after shooting digital cameras set on "auto" for years, I recently stepped up to a M4/3 Olympus and some nice lenses. Now I'm finally making an effort to learn actual old style "photography". Never learned much post processing, what little I do is usually basically auto-correcting color, light, levels, and curves in my Apple software. I feel pretty good about many of my images, and get compliments from folks here and there so whether or not they're blowing smoke up my shorts, I find encouragement in it and as stated I'm having fun. I really enjoy it all and am glad I made the choice of my completely mechanical Hassleblad. It's been a few weeks since I even got my Olympus out, so the other day, I took it for a ride on my motorcycle and took some pix along my way.

 

I do love night time images, and with some good help from some photographer friends, I am learning a bit about how things work, and through my own missteps, what tings don't work- if nothing about the theory behind any of it. I have a log book & I'm mostly writing down settings, conditions, and subject matter for each shot on each roll of film. At some point I'll actually sit down and compare each image to my notes, I plan to keep doing this for some time, and in doing so will learn more and more. I plan to take a course in B&W photography in the spring at our local community college, and one of my pro photog buddies who used to teach there has gotten permission for us to use the darkroom and lab there any time we want- and he'll teach me how to develop my own film! (I *just* have to find the time- no easy task with my all consuming job) I have a couple books I'm reading. little by little, and will also order the above linked book (thank you very much to Moving On for that suggestion) and print out that EV chart to peruse.

 

Thanks again, TTYL.

Tom

You have the right attitude. Enjoy the experience.

When you get results you like post them here.

I’d like to see them.

Unless you have subject motion using f/2.8 isn't necessary. Pick the aperture that gives you the depth of field you want.

I like the idea of taking test shots with your digital, then picking the one you like, and transferring the exposure to your film camera. Just be careful of the ISO. If they don't match, you have to do an adjustment to compensate for it.

We never had that option in the old film days, so we bracketed like crazy, not knowing which exposure would give us the results we wanted.

Then took notes, so that we could "try" to duplicate that shot later. Or we were sloppy and did not take notes, so had to bracket again the next time.

I was using my digital camera fro metering earlier but actually didn't have it with me this night. Someone here suggested I set the dial on Shutter, the set the iso to match the film. I found its not always exact, some of the images I took with the Hasselblad came out very differently than what I expected based on the digital camera's metering. I have s one rolls of film to develop and I used the Sekonic light meter for these latest rolls, so we'll see how that worked out.

 

I received my copy of the Kodak Master Photo Guide as pictured above and have been reading thru it a little. The dial on the Zeiss 80mm F2.8 lens does have EV values on it so here's yet one more as pet of photography to understand! ha ha..... For me, right now, it's endless. It enhances the joy of c choosing shots and trying to compose them

tho.

As above, I think you overexposed the building.

 

You might, though, be close to the exposure for much of the rest of the scene.

That is, the part without big lights on them.

 

Exposing for the building will pretty much mean black everywhere else, I suppose except

for lamps in the frame. You can meter the building by getting close to it. The building

exposure will be the same from a distance.

 

I was recently at Butchart gardens, when they stay open after dark, so you can see

(and photograph) the lit-up gardens.

 

I had both digital (D700) and film (Nikon FE2) with old (refrigerated) Ektachrome 100.

(I haven't finished the roll yet.)

 

I did some, as above, matching the exposure to the digital shot, which I could view on

the LCD screen.

Hello, everybody. Apologies for the long response time here- I was on holiday in Europe for a time and also was waiting to receive my processed film back from Richards Photo Lab. Without further adieu, I present the 4 images I took that night. These are straight-up, unedited in any way, from "medium quality" scans I download direct from the Lab, and loaded into my Zenfolio host site.

 

Edited November 29, 2018 by Ricochetrider

number 2

 

number 3

 

number 4

 

 

 

Seems the buildings are blown out but not drastically so- however, blown out is blown out. I thought I'd recorded what I'd done for each shot, but all I have is the first two-

the Capitol Building was f2.8 shutter at "B" for 20 seconds &

the African American Museum Building was f2.8, "B", for 45 seconds

 

I assume the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial are similar times, probably somewhere between 20 and 45 seconds- everything was f2.8, shutter at "B", timed using my mobile phone. These were shot using a tripod, if I didn't mention that already.

 

Thanks for all the commentary, advice, & replies so far, I'll be interested to hear opinions etc after your seeing these images.

Actually, I think your shots are quite good - with a bit of Post, even better, I use spot metering,and based on doing it for a long time, "trick" it by metering areas that are in between, locking and shooting. Other times, not often, I'll bracket. I think the tables are a great tool. I was just out on line, and if budget allows, there are relatively inexpensive spot meters to be found. Hope / expect you're still having fun, and as stated you're also getting results already.

Sandy, thanks for the kind & supportive words!

Here's the Capitol shot with just a few small adjustments. I use the native Apple photo editing software- I'm not much at post editing.

 

I'm definitely having fun. I love shooting with film, and I'm like a kid waiting on Christmas when I send film away for development. I just got 5 rolls of film back and there are a few "keepers" in the lot. I also just shot 5 or 6 rolls in Rome & Amsterdam in addition to my digital images- so will send that off before too long.