City Scapes by night

[stephen_schumacher]

I'm still somehwat of a newbie, but I recently bought a Sekonic

Incident/Spot meter, which leads me to metering questions when

shooting at night.

 

There are a couple great vantage points to shoot city shots of

Washington DC. Even a couple where you can down a few cold ones while

snapping pictures. So what I'm planning to do is camp out and take

shots during daylight, dusk and night. The real question is how to

meter for a good night shot. If one wanted to pick up the color of

the street lights and still get some detail in the Washington

Monument or Lincoln Memorial in the background.

 

I was considering spot metering on the Washington Monument, which

would be prominately in the foreground. Then adjusting maybe two or

three stops so that it apears white? I figure I would shoot something

like Kodak 160VC (4x5 format) and aim for maybe a 30 second exposure?

I haven't tried this method yet, but I assume I will find that a well

lit building at night is suprisingly bright.

 

Are ther any general rules of thumb for bringing out street lights

and window lights on buildings?

 

Steve

[david_goldfarb]

Spot metering is the ideal approach, but here are a few ballpark numbers that are surprisingly consistent in my experience:

 

A floodlit building at night is usually around 1/4 sec. at f:2 at ISO 400 (recalculate for your film and desired aperture and don't forget reciprocity factor).

 

Average indoor lighting is about 1/30 sec. at f:2 at ISO 400, and you can use that figure to determine exposure through a non-tinted window from the outside.

 

It is very difficult to control street lights and give adequate exposure to surrounding buildings, particularly with color where compensating development is not an option, so in this case the best option is to shoot around dusk rather than when it is completely dark.

[john_kasaian1]

Stephen, you might enjoy this: http://www.thenocturnes.com/index2.htm good luck!

[michael_chini]

The answer to your post is not a simple one. Night shooting requires a bit of experience. First, each film has its own reciprocity characteristics. I suggest ditching your light meter and go out and shoot a scene with a 400 speed color film that has 4th layer tech. to help deal with the variety of color temperatures out there. Choose a 'typical' night scene and shoot 3 exposures at f8: 10 sec., 30 sec. and one minute. Then, do the same scene for f11 but at 30 sec., 1 min. and 1:30. Then another at f16 along the same lines and finally again at f22. You'll find the correct exposure for each aperture that way and learn how that film responds to long exposure times (you'll also see color shifts as the times grow longer). At night, you'll probably be primarily concerned with aperture so once you get to know your film, you won't need a meter at all. If you come across a scene that looks brighter-than-normal, you will know to stop down a bit or vice-versa.

 

Remember though, as exposures get longer, contrast is increased as a bright streetlamp will burn into the film quite strongly for a minute whereas the increase in a dark shadow over that time will be minimal. So, when in doubt, bracket.

 

Carry a good dark cloth, a good cable release that locks, and a stopwatch if you don't trust your 'internal' clock.

 

B&W is much easier at night, but if you really want to shoot color, I'd say 30 sec. on 4x5 film with 160VC is off. For a normal scene, you should use 400 speed Portra and shoot at about 30 sec - 1 min. at f8, or about 4 - 6 min. at f22 for good DOF. I don't often shoot color so these times are based on my b&w times. If the Monument is brighter than other illuminated buildings at night (your corner store, not the Capital etc.), maybe shoot at f22 for 3 - 4 min. Don't sweat the times either - once you get past 1 min., being off by 20 sec. or even more, will not make any difference at all.

 

As with anything though, your work will improve after you've been at it a while...

[gene m]

Mmmm...cold ones.......

[psychophoto]

Spotmetering is definitely a huge help with things like this, as are trial runs. Nothing

is going to tell you more about what kind of shutter speed, time of day, etc you want

to try for than just going out and experimenting. My choice for color work with long

exposures is definitely Fuji RDP III (Provia). The long-exposure characteristics of this

film are phenomenal. A color negative film would give you better lattitude for coping

with high contrast, but depending on the situation, this might not be necessary.

Good luck.

[john_cook1]

My thanks to John Kasaian for that site. Neat!

 

Here's another one by Ed Deasy which has some more nifty information:

 

http://deasy.com/

[philip_sweeney]

I can't keep up with changing films but here is a shot I did with E100S. <html>

<ul>

<li><a href=http://home.att.net/~shipale/pitts.html>a pittsburgh panorama</a></li>

</ul>

<html> I recall you can expose 8-10 seconds without reciprocity failure. With the spotmeter I place the values in zone VII (two stops over) and see where all the other values land. Some lighting is OK about one stop over if you are losing shadow detail, otherwise I hold it to zone VII.

[philip_sweeney]

I should have said place the highlight values!

[stephen_schumacher]

WOW!!! Great shot of Pittsburg!!!!!! That's what I'm hoping to do. If my pictures come out anything like that I'll be jumpin' for joy.

 

So if I understand you correctly, you meter lighted values, which would put an exposure at Zone V. Then you overexpose two stops to put the lighted values at zone 7?

 

Correct?

[philip_sweeney]

E100S has a scale of about 3 stops (or 4 if your definition includes all zones in which values are placed). In zone terms: III-VII. You have to get the highlight values (lamps etc.) at the upper end of the scale. I ususally try to find the brightest area and yes that metered value is then placed 2 stops over (VII). For good detail go no lower than IV (one under). You can place white lamps to VIII but try to keep the brightest colors at VII.

 

I use the same method for daylight use also. I can't tell you much about color negative film.

[oskar_ojala]

Color neg film holds a quite impressive range of highlight detail, so you could expose on the safe side to get decent shadow detail while retaining good highlight detail. However, with color negs you'll probably run into reciprocity problems, some films can get nasty casts on longer exposures (these films were designed for portrait use, which doesn't require 30 sec. exposures), especially if you want to shoot at something like f22 and set the time accordingly. Fuji Reala might be worth trying because its color layer technology, but then you'd have to shoot roll film.

 

Remember that for night photograpy there isn't a single "correct" exposure; a lot depends on the mood you're trying to achieve. I also suggest shooting close to dusk, since a hint of blue in the sky usually looks better than the blackness of the night. Also, I've had good experiences using tungsten film, ie. Ektachrome 64T, to balance for the lights and create a different mood than daylight film.

[matt_kime]

When I shoot my night stuff I go f/45 and usually keep the shutter open for about 8

minutes. When I'm shooting at night, its usually pretty dark, just enough light to see.

Shooting at night has taught me how little color we see at low levels of light. Because

of this, I think you have to be insane to try to shoot transparency at night. Its pretty

rare to find pure tungsten light. Most people putting up the bulbs in public places

don't care what color temp they are. Further, those extra stops of detail in color neg

will save you from needing to do super human metering. (shooting transparency is

fine when you can bracket or have controlled lighting, shooting 4x5 at night gives

you neither) Watch out for hot spots metering at night. Its rare during daylight to

have really strong highlights, but its quite common with streetlights at night.

 

I've failed to figure out what real problems one can have with reciprocity failure. If

you're shooting color neg, it should balance just fine.

 

I think shooting at dusk is overrated. You can catch some beautiful light if you're

quick and lucky. But once the sun goes down everything becomes very blue and you

might as well go in and eat until its solid night.

 

Take a look at my uploaded pics. I've been around the block a few times on this one.