BEST night photography camera

[Paul Howell]

You might want to try Dianfine with your current camera to see if it will work for you. If is does then rent a medium format and shoot a roll and process it in Dianfine. In addition to typical press cameras you might want to consider a twin lens reflex such as a Mamyia C220 or C330. Very quit, easy to hand hold, and with waist level viewing great for kids, but the viewfinder is rather dim.

Paul

 

[kaiyen]

Diafine sounds very interesting, however, Im not so sure that the lighting for the shots Im trying to capture is so contrasty.

What are the lighting situations in which you see yourself shooting? Most night time stuff is pretty contrasty, to me. Maybe in a coffeehouse or something would be pretty low contrast.

I think you may be right about a 35mm rangefinder, there seem to be some problems with the mirror shake of the MF camera's, except for the MF Rangefinders, but they all have slow lenses.

Well, if you _want_ to have MF, then it's still quite manageable.

For instance, the couple of times I've shot at friends' weddings, I've had to rate TXT at 1600 to get sufficient shutter speed on my N70 with my 105mm lens (roughly 1/100 - 1/125). This is accounting already for mirror slap.

If you were to rate TXT at 1600 in, say, a Fuji GS645, you would lose 1.5 stops of speed on the lens (2.8>4.5), but gain 2-3 stops of speed on usable shutter speed (I can handhold my 645 at 1/15 if I really need to). So I can basically use the Fuji in the same situations.

Of course, the flip side is that I would gain a heckuva lot more with a 35mm RF, but if you _want_ medium format, it's doable despite the slower lenses.

allan

 

[Paul Howell]

As I was thinking about Dianfine I thought I needed to add: if you try Dianfine I would use TX or HP5. As I understand it a divided developer works when the developer soaks in during the 1st bath and the activator in the 2nd. Thin emulsions such as T100 or 400 are not able to asorbe as much developer as older style emulsions like TX so they have a lower film speed 160 or 650. I think TX is rated at 1600. But I don't know off the top of my head what any of T3200 film are rated at in Dianfine.

Paul

 

[Roger Krueger]

I have a Mamyia Universal with 3 lens. The only draw backs to a Mamyia Press or Universal is that you have to cock the stutter, and you have to look at the lens to confirm and change both the shutter and f stop. Most photojournalist who used any of the press type camera used a flash. Mamyia made a family of press cameras, the early cameras used a 90 and the universal uses a 100. There are 2 wides a 50 and 65, (and need a seperate viewfinder) and 2 longs lens a 150 and 250 (rather rare) which if I recall correctly did not couple to the rangefinder.

There are two 250s, a HUGE f5 that couples, and an f8 that doesn't. There's also a great 75, but none of these are what the original poster is looking for.

Mamyia made a 127 for the Polaroid verison of the press. All of the lens are rather slow

Actually the 100/2.8 is as fast as any quality 6x9 lens ever made. (There are some oddball antiques that could theoretically be rigged to a Graphic but none of them are remotely sharp outside the center.) To get a faster medium format lens in any format you're stuck with an SLR system and mirror slap.

and I think I would have a difficult time hand holding a Universal at low shutter speeds as it is a rather heavy camera.

I find mine easier to handhold than anything else I've got, but it took a while to get it down.

First, throw away the godawful useless grip. For the 100/2.8 I use my right hand on the right side of the back, left hand under the camera, left thumb and middle finger on the focus ring, index finger on the on-lens trigger. This only works well for the older Seikosha shutters, on the newer Seiko shutters it's far too easy for your index finger to grab the aperture handle instead of the trigger. The dead-smooth, absolutely effortless action of the on-lens trigger eliminates much of the trigger-action induced shake that is your big problem at 1/15-1/8.

For even less shake sometimes I'll hold the camera underneath with my right hand, focus with my left hand, then take my left hand completely off the camera and fire with a cable release. This eliminates all trigger shake, but means there is a couple-second delay between focus and then grabbing the cable release and getting everything back to steady.

And if you're trying to be discrete it is a very large camera.

True enough, but I've found pointing something this funky looking at strangers doesn't elicit anywhere near the venom that my big black Canon DSLR does.

The upside is that with a 6X7 or 6X9 depending on the back (Mamyia also made a multiformate back with 4.5X6 6X6 and 6X9) you get a large negative to work with, so you can push your film 1 or 2 stops, or use Dianfine so the slower lens are not too much a problem.

These days there's just not much reason to shoot smaller than 6x9 with these. But yeah, the big neg makes pushes look great.

 

[Paul Howell]

I think the reason to use the mutiformate back is that you can double the length of the lens when shooting 4.5X6. I agree that in the 6X9 format the lens are not slow, the comment was in relationship to 35mm rangefinder lens. In addition to the hand held tech described above you can also use a monopode. If you don't need all of the features of a Universal then a Mamyia Press with the 90mm can be a good choice.

Paul