Best Films for Night Photography?

[carlo_falco1]

I am going to do a series of photos with the subject matter being the Dallas, Texas downtown area at night. There are many tall buildings that are sparkling with thousands of individually lit windows, and most buildings have dramatic exterior lighting as well. I will be using a 6 x 4.5 medium format camera, and I feel I should use a slide film which has very fine grain and some latitude as far as exposure is concerned. Would anyone have experience in this area and please be so kind as to suggest a film and perhaps some rough exposure estimates?

[p_ll_stef_nsson]

Velvia, but you have to double the time your lightmeter says. Mostoffthe time i use 12 sec exposure.

PS

[barry_eastlack]

Again, Velvia is an excellent choice, as I have shot both downtown Dallas and the Morton Meyerson. Reciprocity ratings for Velvia as follows:

 

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Meter Reading: 8 sec

[barry_eastlack]

Again, Velvia is an excellent choice, as I have shot both downtown Dallas and the Morton Meyerson. Reciprocity ratings for Velvia as follows:

 

<p>

 

Meter Reading: 8 sec Exposure time: 12 sec

10 16

12 19

16 28

20 39

25 49

32 66

40 88

50 116

64 158

 

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Take a good stopwatch. Good luck!

[zonghou_xiong1]

Be warned that Velvia will turn some underexposed night objects

including clouds to green. Bright light spots vs. dark building

will be fine, though. You might have to use a red filter and

extend the exposure by one stop.

[don_maldon]

I have used velvia on multiple occasions with great results. I used to meter the scene using a Minolta spot meter F. Lately I have achieved cnsistant results with a simple formula which seems to work quite well:

(10 seconds @ f5.6 to 8.0) depending upon if your subject is"close" or "far". I also recommend that you rate your film @ ISO 40 and bracket. Good luck.

[stephen_poe1]

I have done trials and find that there is no "perfect" film or filter for this process --- all different light sources give different colors of light---you can correct for one--incandescent, lets say, that is very warm for a daylight film like Fuji, and then you won't be able to correct for another -- fluorescents, for example. The problem is compounded by the fact that as different artificial light sources age, their color temperature changes. If an area is lit by 6 different fluorescent tubes, all 6 may read a different color temp. Your eye generally can't see these differences very well at all.

I have shot test film with a MF camera of a nightime city scene that had fluorescent, incandescent and unidentified light sources. None was absolutely correct. I used Velvia, EPP, Agfa RSX 100, Ektachrome 64T. I exposed without filters, with a color correction filter that shifted from 3400 K to 5500 K (I don't have the wratten number at hand), 10 M, 20 m and 30 m and others --- the ones that pleased me most were on EPP with the 30m and the RSX 100 with 30m. Note that this was my subjective judgement -- if you shoot you will have to make your own decisions as to what compromise you can live with.

I haven't photographed with transparency film outside at night for a while, but if I were to do it I would try several different film and filter combinations in each location to account for the changing light.