Tent, Lake, Glacier, Mountain and Star Track

Please Critique, thanks

Wonderful! nice composition!

perfect work! very nice!

Very nice work Eric...I would like to see the original, your scan looks great!

How long was your exp?

 

Regards, Mark

Eric--Your creativity in creating this shot is out of this world! Absolutely great! Could you please share with us some of your settings (time of bulb exposure, aperture, ISO, etc.) I've often thought of trying true night shots like this but I have no idea how you get the exposure right. How did you know how to keep from overexposing the tent? Any comments you can offer are appreciated--you obviously have a firm grasp of this technique. Great work!

Really appreciate the comments. Thanks, guys.

 

This is actually my first shot which is longer then one hour, and fifth of which are longer than 15 minutes.:) Here are some details of the exposure:

 

Aperture: F8

 

Exposure time : 5.5 hours to 6 hours.

 

Lighting for Tent: from a Petzl Myo XP Headlamp(LED).

 

1. the headlamp used as flashlight, medium brightness, "paint" all over the tent and surrounding area for about one and half minutes.

 

2. went into tent with light off, while I was taking off my cloth and organizing stuff in tent, I moved the headlamp around once a while with medium brightness switching to minmum brightess, about 4-5 minutes. after that, the lamp stayed on beside my "pillow" for about two minutes, then off, I went to sleep, waked up 5 to 6 hours later...:)

 

 

The Camera is Nikon F3HP , Film is Fuji RVP100 which performs better than RVP50 under long exposure, also the one more stop on ISO means lot for a several hours exposure. The silde was scanned by my Nikon 9000ED scanner. A drum scan probably will make the reflection on lake little bit more visible, also bring out more detail from darker area.

 

This is a backcountry camping site, with the surrounding mountains, the moon sets with sun in late October, so it's completely dark out there, except the stars in the sky. If there were moonlight, I would skip the step of "light painting" on tent, and lower the aperture or got up earier:-). As it turned out, I think half stop higher aperture probably would be little bit better for the situation.

 

Also couple things I want to mention:

1. Because of the completely darkness, it's very very difficult to make sure everything is ok in composition, use a very wide lens will give you some room to crop or do something later if there were mistakes, use the lamp or flashlight to help double checking the composition before exposure. it turned out ok for me, I didn't have to do any cropping or fixing afterwards, I was lucky.:)

 

2. Remember to turn your light off when you walk from camera into the tent. I had a friend with me that night, his tent is about 30 meter away from mine, he was making simlar shot with his tent, and he walked around and into the tents with his headlamp on, it left some light track in the final image. Also because of the battery problem of his headlamp, he ended up have the lamp on for a shorter time in tent, the tent didn't get lighten up enough.

 

3. not to aganist the digital camera , I do think film is better choice than digital in this kind of very long exposure situation due to the special properties of film under long exposure, also don't have to worry too much about the camera battery thing on film camera in this kind of cold night, but color shifting under long exposure definely is a problem for film.

Very nice work, Eric. I wish the sky had a different color, but the hue you got is normal for this film under these exposure conditions. I did a few attempts with Velvia 100 F for star trails, but never this long. Best wishes. Peter