Best point and shoot 35mm for low light (no flash)

[jim_helleck1]

I'm looking for recomendations for a point and shoot camera to use

for night photography instead of my slr equipment. Auto exposure with

long shutter times is important to me along with moderate zoom. The

camera will be mounted on a tripod. I read in Lee Frost's book, "The

Complete Guide To Night And Low Light Photography" that the Pentax

Espio 115M has a programed shutter speed down to 5 minutes. If anyone

out there has comments or recomendations on a specific model I'd

appreciate it greatly.

[jim schwaiger]

Most SLRs only do auto exposure out to 30 seconds or so and I doubt any camera can

auto expose anthing out to 5 minutes. Even if they did, the recipricosity failures

would kick in and you'd still have an underexposure.

[leslie_cheung]

get a used cheap manuel cam if you are doing long exposure. you'll

end up saving money due to battery.

[walterh]

YES! get a cheap old manual camera with a decent lens that offers B or T setting for the shutter. buy an stop watch and a cable release. off you go.

 

well if you insist to be perfect : get an old lunasix light meter and get lots of experience estimating the exposure time based on the light meter reading. experience beats light meter readings very often in night shots :-)

cheers

walter

[jim_helleck1]

Thanks for the responses. I guess I'll stick with my Nikon FE. It does what I want very well. I was thinking point and shoot simply for convenience sake.

[fourfa]

I have an olympus stylus epic (fixed 35mm f2.8). with 400 or 800 speed print film at rated speed, I have yet to be unable to get a decent picture with its 4-second shutter. this is on a mini tripod of course, and night time city shots. pitch black star streaks are something else I suppose. Anyway, just a point of info if you're still deciding exactly what you really need.

[imaginator]

What kind of night photography? The last response about a P & S with f/2.8 lens brings up a good point: lens speed. I had an older Canon Sure Shot with a 38mm f.2.8 lens and loved it. If you really want a P & S camera, look for fast lens, but I don't see why you wouldn't want to use your current camera. Keep it and put money into more or better lenses.

[jsbc]

Hexar AF is nice if you are into low-light photography. It really is 35mm, and F2 at that.

[jamiew]

I am sure that pentax has long exposures to 5 minutes, but I would be suprised if it metered to 5 minutes. My advice if you want super long exposures is to forget auto exposure (I too have an FE and it can't meter to 5 minutes well). If you want small and you will dedicate it to this function a Rollei 35S is great.

[ed_berman6]

Contax T3 with the 35/2.8 lens can keep its shutter open for up to 180 seconds on either manual exposure (bulb setting) or AE. But it's not cheap.