exposure time for night time

I have a rather interesting problem. There is a light swtich in my bathroom that at night has the most interesting shadows on it. It is lit by the bedroom light which is about 20 feet away and very subdued. The window is slightly open and lets in a far off street light illumination. The only film I have right now for 4x5 is either 200 or 125 ISO. When I took a meter reading, it came out the highlights were low light, but no reading. As for the shadows, it came out as a dash with no reading. I thought maybe my batteries were dead, but when I spotted in on something else with more light, I got readings just fine. The pinhole is an F256 size. It is a 4x5 3" wide angle pinhole camera. What I did was set up and left it there for about 2 to 2 1/2 hours. Now I am having second thoughts about this. Any other suggestions for exposure time short of getting a box of higher speed film which I normally do not use?

With light that dim it'll be next to impossible to overexpose. I'd go for the maximum time that I could.

when I tested a camera I built earlier in the year, I tried an indoor shot (it was dark outside, and I wanted to try it out). It was a paper neg (guess a speed of about 5 or 10), but even in a brightly lit room, left for several hours, I got absolutly nothing (maybe a spot where it was pointed at the bare bulb!).

Obviously you're using faster film, but I'd guess you'll basically need to leave it overnight.

Ian

with that pinhole, leave it there overnight!

now how to keep the cats from jumping on it, and sleeping with bedroom light on? Will try it again tonight.

Aggie are you going to post the print? I feel so remiss....my home has a plethera of light switches.......


That is a print I just might purchase.

Cheers
Dave in Vegas