photography

bovril

I have never taken any pictures at night with my SLR. I would like to take pictures of buildings at night while on holidays but don't know how to go about it. Do I need a flash?

thanks in advance for any help.

norma

There's really no point using a flash. A tiny bulb has no hope of illuminating an entire building. The best thing to do is to be at the building about 20-30 mins after sunset, when there is still enough ambient light to record detail in the building, but the lights have also been turned on inside. Taking photos at that time of night also means you have a rich dark blue sky instead of just boring black.
A tripod is essential, as your shutter speeds will be very slow.
Norma.

FinoBlad

I agree with Norma, think slow exposures [Tripods etc] not Flash .......

You can read about Tim Baskerville and co at The Nocturnes

If you're looking for a starting point, try ePhotoZines tutorial on Night Photography

davej

The most important thing you need is a tripod!
A flash is useless for photographing buildings and in fact would probably ruin your photo if you used it.

Another important accessory is a cable release or remote control for triggering your shutter - though it is not essential.

Reciprocity failure (film doesn't handle long exposures very well) means that you can't trust you're metering system at all for night photography. Check out this kodak page for a table that will give you a rough estimate for the best settings to use. Remember to bracket all of your shots.

http://www.kodak.com/cluster/global/en/consumer/products/techInfo/ac61/index.shtml

For example it suggests that if using ISO 100 film for floodlit buildings, 1 second at f4 is about right.

Ultimately you will have to do a bit of experimentation, remember to take notes of everything you do!

davej

DadaKopf

I did some night photography two weeks ago and I think I suffered incredibly badly from both dirty/low quality lens (although it was a Canon USM 35-80mm and, most likely, awful reciprocity failure.

On reflection, I probably should have cut my exposure time by half - it was 20 seconds at f8 or f11 or something on Fuji NPH (?) or NPC - whichever is the 400ISO.

The sky was deep blue, not ugly orange. I think I should have got a proper filter for sodium street lighting, too. The whole image is overexposed and the subtlety of light was completely lost.

bovril

I was told be a mate that it was all about film speed, he said go to ISO 1600+ and you can have a shutter speed of 60. Is this true?

this was also advice for B&W night pictures. I presume this is different than taking colour night photos?

DadaKopf

Yeah, maybe but your colours will be more bland and the prints more grainy which decreases enlargement potential. Still, 1/60 is just about the threshold you can reach before you get into camera shake land.

Personally, I'd go for a good all round film, maybe a pro 200 or 400 and use a tripod.

FinoBlad

on a budget basically work backwards, take your camera out [no film] and meter what you think you want or is similar, record the shutter speeds and aperatures you want and calculate the film speed. you may be surprised in that ISO 100 would be the one you need.

you would only use 1600 if you needed a fast shutter speed which is not usaully the case for night cityscapes etc, the slow shutter gives nice effect.

the technique is basically the same for color and b+w but watch for different Reciprocity failure as davej correctly pointed out

bovril

thanks for the advice, i'll take a few rolls around dublin at night before I go on holidays for practice.

DadaKopf

How do you measure for reciprocity failure? I read up on the formula but I couldn't understand it for the life of me.

norma

Reciprocity failure depends on the film. Some are worse than others. Velvia is notoriously bad, with the failure starting with exposures of just a few short seconds.

Here is a chart for some common slide films. And this will give you a starting point for some other films.

You can also search for specific information about your favourite films on the net. (Fuji call them Data Sheets, Kodak call them Tech Pubs.) Here's a sample one for Provia 100F.

Norma.

eramoments123

Hii
There is some camera you can use during night photography such as Sony a600, Nikon D3300, Canon EOS Rebel T5 and Nikon D7000.

pete4130

This thread is 14 years old. Nobody could afford digital cameras back then, let alone DLSR's.

The cameras you mentioned didn't exist back then. You'd be happy with a Nikon D1 or D1x back in 2003.

Tiriel

Zombie thread closed