4x5 film for blue hour

[Darryl Roberts]

Hi,

What, current stock, of film would you recommend to capture the magical blue hour?

Thank you

 

[koraks]

I assume color?
Do you require negative or positive? Will you scan and/or print optically? What are your visual preferences and what's the brightness range you expect to photograph? Are you looking for something middle-of-the-road, or something experimental/odd? What's your budget?

 

[Ian Grant]

Shooting at dawn or dusk raises issues of interpretation, how do you convey the mood. I had a tutorial, before my Masters exhibition, some years ago with the author/photo historian Roger Taylor. All of my images were shot on Tmax100 and one print was dark and moody, Roger asked why. The issue was I could print the image to look like it was taken full daylight even though it was on the cusp of dusk turning to darkness, or print as I'd seen the image.

Ian

 

[loccdor]

I like the look of slide film for both golden hour and blue hour. Ektachrome E100 is a safe choice, or you could go for something expired. Mild slide color casts can lend atmosphere to an image taken near sunset, especially purplish ones. You can also use filters.

Shooting C-41 or ECN-2 can lead to headaches with color adjustment, unless you get really good at that stuff.

Here is a 35mm slide taken during blue hour on '96 expired Sensia 100. I had the option of balancing out the purple or keeping it. For a while I was printing the balanced-out option, but later I decided to keep more of the purple.

 

[Trail Images]

Ektachrome E100 is a safe choice

All I use these days and photograph once a week at pre-dawn cycles. Does require the usual post processing adjustments like any film I've ever used.

 

[Darryl Roberts]

I assume color?
Do you require negative or positive? Will you scan and/or print optically? What are your visual preferences and what's the brightness range you expect to photograph? Are you looking for something middle-of-the-road, or something experimental/odd? What's your budget?

Color, definitely digital captures.

Cityscapes in Atlanta during the blue hours, I.e. morning or evening. Any 4x5 film

 

[koraks]

definitely digital captures

Any 4x5 film

Whichever is cheapest (least expensive). I' d personally go with a color negative for its flexibility - Aerocolor if money matters and Portra if it doesn't.

 

[BrianShaw]

Hi,

What, current stock, of film would you recommend to capture the magical blue hour?

Thank you

There are so few choices in this day and age.

I'd just use Portra if I had confidence that the capture would be good. Mostl likely, though, I'd use a different format as a cost-savings measure and a way to get more exposures in that 15 minutes or so Why do they call it "blue hour" when it's really much less than an hour????

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

Velvia 50 4x5 Not manufacturered any longer in 4x5)


Velvia 50 120 more sunset than blue hour.

 

[Paul Howell]

Black and white, Tmax 400, color Porta 400.

 

[Darryl Roberts]

Velvia 50 4x5 Not manufacturered any longer in 4x5)


Velvia 50 120 more sunset than blue hour.

Excellent

 

[_T_]

I shoot blue hour on 4x5 frequently. There is some ISO limitation unless you don’t mind motion blur. I use whatever ISO 400 film I can afford for the project and sometimes still it’s not fast enough.

Depending on your process you might be able to get a little more speed out of certain emulsions. For example HP5 looks best with an EI of 640 the way my lab develops it. That extra 2/3 stop can help a little.

 

[blee1996]

Velvia 50 is really something I treasure for the dawn/dusk hours, demonstrated by @Alan Edward Klein.

 

[beemermark]

Trying not to be a smarta*ss but what is the blue hour??? Your local disco bar? If your shooting negative or positive film you need to understand color filters and the temperature of the light. Doesn't matter if it's your disco room, the mountains, an overcast day, or the sunset. Film records color within a spectral band. Filters like 85A, 85B, etc. change the colors recorded. Not good at scientific explanations but a good book on color photography would help a lot. Tiffen used to put out a nice 8x11 soft cover on filters. Good news is that filters for film color control are cheap.

 

[BrianShaw]

Trying not to be a smarta*ss but what is the blue hour??? Your local disco bar? If your shooting negative or positive film you need to understand color filters and the temperature of the light. Doesn't matter if it's your disco room, the mountains, an overcast day, or the sunset. Film records color within a spectral band. Filters like 85A, 85B, etc. change the colors recorded. Not good at scientific explanations but a good book on color photography would help a lot. Tiffen used to put out a nice 8x11 soft cover on filters. Good news is that filters for film color control are cheap.

blue hour - Google Search

 

[koraks]

you need to understand color filters and the temperature of the light.

The point of much of blue hour photography is to record the blueish palette as it is. So no filters needed, in principle. However, a challenging aspect is that the human eye adjusts very readily to very strong color casts, resulting in our subjective of blue hour light being much less blue than it is in reality. The result is that people are often disappointed with their photos - "but in reality it was more magenta, and the blue was much warmer in hue". Well, in reality, this is what the film captured, but your eyes told you otherwise...

 

[GLS]

Provia 100F can be useful under those conditions as it requires no reciprocity or colour corrections for exposures up to 128 seconds.