How fast?

One invokes generalities at one's own peril, in these discussions.

Better simply to offer one's own advice and evidence, and let it be.

Use MLU and tripod whenever you can and if it suits the task at hand. It is also advisable to maintain a healthy diet and get regular exercise.

What a stupid argument. Who the heck is going to use a stupid tripod to shoot people in a low light situation? People who take stupid, boring, terrible, cliche photos, that's who. Those fools who distract from the whole party, make themselves and their pictures the center of attention, and make me pray that I puke during the exposure...and then want to talk to you all night about a bunch of technical crap when they see you have a camera, and think YOU have a bad attitude when you say something to the effect of, "A camera is a camera". Who wants to look at a bunch of stupid people standing in a stupid group smiling at your camera that will end up printed on a plastic plate, stuffed in a drawer, left behind by your kids when you die, and sold for 5 cents to me at an estate sale? If you want stupid pictures of the family making a stupid pose for the album, just use a stupid point and shoot, and/or flash on your good camera. If you want to plan a group shot, sure, use your tripod; whatever. If you were going to do that, why would you need a fast film, though? That discussion belongs in the cheesy family photos forum, and makes no sense here. If you want candids of people in motion in available light, which has to be the issue here, as high ISO films are being discussed, you cannot use a tripod. What a stupid concept! Well, you can, but your pictures will be stupid, and suck. This is the same stupid point someone was trying to make in that other stupid post.

Also, the idea that mirror slap makes no difference is ludicrous. Sometimes I wonder if the people who post this crap have ever taken a photo in the real world...and if they have, I wonder if they have ever printed them.

Welcome to the Internet, where some stranger is always on a crusade of some sort...and just as ridiculous as the actual Crusades. "Lets put this myth to rest." "This entire no-moving-mirror-makes-better-handholding thingy is silly. Extremely silly. It's time it stops." What stupid, arrogant, absolutist statements based solely on one person's - excuse me, one stranger on the Internet who none of us know from Adam's - opinion! You ask a question about high ISO film and you get people saying that it sucks and asking why you would use it in the first place. You ask a question about whether you prefer high ISOs on digital or film, and you get someone telling you that high ISOs are for lazy people, and a devolution into a general film/digital debate. You mention that rangefinders shake less, and you get someone saying no, they don't, and you're an fool for believing that they do. Go figure. It is the same crap that 35mm shooters have had to deal with since day one from "real" photographers. You'd think over 75 years of stellar 35mm photography that knocks the sox off of anything shot on a tripod in this time would shut these "artists" and their technical arguments up....

Happy fricking Boxing Day.

2F/2F said:

Happy fricking Boxing Day.

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:rolleyes:

And to you!

Well, 2F/2F,

Try Rollei_nuts experiment, hand held, and then come back and use the word "crap" a lot again.

And you're absolutely right: an awfull lot of utter nonsense is doing the rounds on internet.

SilverGlow said:

So the when would you use MLU?

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Every single time it makes sense.
Which is very, very often.
But not (!) when you are busy shaking the camera in your hands.

There a lot of factors involved in exposing in low light. People tend to go on about the technical stuff of film and cameras, but there are other things that can make a huge difference. How you use your body is of great importance. If you can get into the habit of using your skeleton as the support rather than using muscular strength you will find that things become a lot steadier. An example would be standing with your legs shoulder width apart, when hold the camera to your face tuck your elbows in so that sit on your hip (illiac crest to be precise). I see a lot of photographers holding their camera so that the weight is supported by the thumb, this isn't good as the thumb has a pulse. Think it won't make any difference, I used to shoot 3 positional rifle many years ago and the pulse in the thumb was strong enough to move an 11Kg rifle off target. A better grip is to support the lens barrel along the palm of the hand. Do you drink coffee? This can have your camera hoping around like a Mexican jumping bean on a hot plate.

As we have all just discovered no one knows what they are talking about on the internet so I've decided to link to Joe McNally's video on the subject

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDsx3-FWfwk

I would like this discussion to remain centered around available-light shooting with 35mm film, and particularly, about high-ISO/pushed films and developing. I have a F8001 with SB-28 flash that can do TTL and it works great, but that's not what the thread is about. So far I have learned that some people push TriX to 3200, which is good news to me and I would like to do this some day, although I have no darkroom at this point in time, I'm here to learn.

2F/2F said:

What a stupid argument. Who the heck is going to use a stupid tripod to shoot people in a low light situation? People who take stupid, boring, terrible, cliche photos, that's who. Those fools who distract from the whole party, make themselves and their pictures the center of attention, and make me pray that I puke during the exposure...and then want to talk to you all night about a bunch of technical crap when they see you have a camera, and think YOU have a bad attitude when you say something to the effect of, "A camera is a camera". Who wants to look at a bunch of stupid people standing in a stupid group smiling at your camera that will end up printed on a plastic plate, stuffed in a drawer, left behind by your kids when you die, and sold for 5 cents to me at an estate sale? If you want stupid pictures of the family making a stupid pose for the album, just use a stupid point and shoot, and/or flash on your good camera. If you want to plan a group shot, sure, use your tripod; whatever. If you were going to do that, why would you need a fast film, though? That discussion belongs in the cheesy family photos forum, and makes no sense here. If you want candids of people in motion in available light, which has to be the issue here, as high ISO films are being discussed, you cannot use a tripod. What a stupid concept! Well, you can, but your pictures will be stupid, and suck. This is the same stupid point someone was trying to make in that other stupid post.

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Don't sugar coat it!! Tell us how you really feel! :munch:

eddym said:

Don't sugar coat it!! Tell us how you really feel! :munch:

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BetterSense said:

I would like this discussion to remain centered around available-light shooting with 35mm film, and particularly, about high-ISO/pushed films and developing. I have a F8001 with SB-28 flash that can do TTL and it works great, but that's not what the thread is about. So far I have learned that some people push TriX to 3200, which is good news to me and I would like to do this some day, although I have no darkroom at this point in time, I'm here to learn.

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Nobody pushes Tri-X "to" 3200. It is a 400 film, and there it remains no matter what you do to it, except for minor speed changes based on development materials and times. What they do is underexpose it by three stops, and still get printable negs because they overdevelop to compensate, and work harder than normal to make the prints. They push it in order to compensate for that fact that it was underexposed; not actually change the speed of the film. It is important to realize that when you "rate" a film at an EI different than its ISO, you are not changing the speed of the film at all. You are simply changing the exposure.

2F/2F said:

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Now is the time, perhaps, to break the news to you that noone suggested using a tripod?

Alright then, back to working with available light

Let me suggest trying the following. Set up an available light scene with a person and a single candle in an otherwise dark room. Spot meter from different places and take shots. So for example, meter off the face, meter off the candle; and then average meter the whole scene. Take a shot or two representing each metering technique.

What I think you will find is that the shots in which the whole scene is "underexposed" (meaning that a lot of peripheral detail falls into dark shadows) are actually the most effective. And your eyes will not miss the underexposed parts, in the actual print. You'll be amazed how far you can push this point; there can be ~no detail in the shadows and it'll be just fine. This is a basic point in photography: we seldom miss what detail isn't there. (if the content & composition is effective, of course) The brain makes good use of what detail is there.

What I am saying is that a low light scene is metered very differently... let the contrast of the light emerge by placing the highlights sensibly. What shadow detail you miss... well, actually, you won't miss it.

This sounds trivial but we have to remember that because of the pupil reflex, if you look toward a candle in the dark, your eyes will try to bring that candle highlight into range. So spot meter off the little candle highlights and see how that grabs you. Just a little bit of detail on the face, and... magic. I find spot metering absolutely essential in available light photography. The magic is in the little tiny highlights. Average metering is a mistake in this genre, IMHO.

Sorry if this suggestion is too basic for you, but... frankly I think people often drastically overexpose available light scenes. Remember that in the print, the very first thing you will look at is the highlights. Guaranteed.

P.S. Regarding grain, you won't see it in the shadows. You will see it in the highlights and midtones. The worst looking grain is had when you take an underexposed neg and overexpose the print! Yech. Don't do that. Let shadows be shadows!

Sorry if this suggestion is too basic for you

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Not at all; I actually don't have a spot meter acutally; I'll have to get one. I wish my F801 was an F801s. Then you could just spot meter the highlights, hit exposure lock, and recompose.

Past a certain shutter speed, depending on focal length, MLU makes little or no difference at all, because the bulk of the exposure is happening outside the slap and vibrations it creates. In other situations where the camera is can be absolutely stable it allows the sharpest possible picture. Using MLU in a hand held fast evolving situation, when looking for the decisive moment would be more problematic than a tripod, so no MLU isn't a gimmick, nor is it the answer to camera movement at the shutter speeds and style of shooting being discussed, in this case mirror slap and MLU is a moot point compared to the other factors. Want the sharpest possible picture? Use a tripod, and pay the price for what you gain. Don't want to use a tripod?(completely reasonable) but you will pay a different kind of price for what you gain. Faster lens? Less DOF. Faster film? More grain. Less grain? Less speed.

In photography there is no free lunch, always a give and take, and where you prefer to stand in that yin yang is your business and your decision. All that really must be done is to understand the give and take, so that you can choose what you need, and understand what you gain, and what you lose, and make the best deal for what your intention is. That's why blanket statements and pontifications (not singling anyone out) are so silly concerning photography. I do so much the wrong way, it's a wonder I ever sold a print.

In terms of a good trade, I like Delta 3200. Grainy? Of course, but it is a pleasing grain (subjective, of course), not like noise at all. I just wish I could get it in 8x10.

Lacking a spot meter, let me suggest getting an average reading and then "underexpose" relative to that by 2 or 3 stops.

In a pinch, without a spot meter on some of my cameras, I sometimes simply expose as much as possible, i.e., do the longest exposure that I feel I could reliably pull off, handheld. So for example, with an f/4 lens, I'd set it at f/4, set the exposure for 1/30 sec or so, and just let it happen. Try it!

Q.G. said:

Now is the time, perhaps, to break the news to you that noone suggested using a tripod?

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The stupid tripod thing is from another recent stupid post.

Way way back when I did not know any better I used to shoot musicians in performance. Some of the venues were smoky, badly lit dives and available light was mostly unavailable but sharp photographs were still possible. I used a Canon 7 with the 0.95 lens and a Leica M2 with a Noctilux f.1.0. Film was TXP pushed to 3200 by stand development in D76 (1+3) for 24 hours.

The single breakthrough technique in getting sharp hand-held "darkness" turned out not to be a gift of the camera, the lens, or the film but surprisingly by just shooting enough frames. At 1/2 second only one frame in 20 would be acceptably sharp so the thing was to shoot, shoot, shoot multiple repeats for each set up. A good one would eventually turn up somewhere on the contact sheets. Film didn't matter. Someone else was paying.

***The single breakthrough technique in getting sharp hand-held "darkness" turned out not to be a gift of the camera, the lens, or the film***

..erm the digital guys would disagree with you, using IS.....I'm a film guy, but can see the advantages of digital in low light and they are only going to get better...and in the future wouldn't mind using digital and film together....horses for courses.

The confidence people have in technology saving the day - the universe ultimately - knows no bounds.

I agree with Maris: shoot enough!

And keep prints small, so you can't really see whether or not...

I shoot my Leica M6 in low light at 1/8th sec max, hand-held. The problem is not so much how good I hold the camera but if you shoot scenes with people, their movements will appear blurred at that speed. 1/15th is better in that case.

Maris said:

...so the thing was to shoot, shoot, shoot multiple repeats for each set up. A good one would eventually turn up somewhere on the contact sheets.

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Isn't that what the digital guys do as a matter of habit? just keep shooting, hoping for something good to register on the CCD (a socalled "Sandisk Moment")

@Excalibur2: a spin-off of D could be lenses with build-in IS for analogue.
The Canon lenses have that, for D at least.....

I love IS, it make shots posible otherwise not to be taken, because I can not put my tripod where I need.

Peter

With a rangefinder, I usually can shoot at 1/10, but NICEFOR88 is right that subject movement can be a bigger concern than camera shake.

Regarding concert pics.. I've shot a couple of shows of a friends band.

I'm not an expert by far but heres a couple of things.. Subject movement is both a problem and a bonus. Basically some blurred shots will be crappy and some will be amazing. So as said above.. take lots of film.
Decent fill flash will do good stopping motion but they just dont have the same atmosphere sometimes, so I try to mix it up.
Watch for decicive moments when notes are held.. the performer is often still during this time. It helps if you allready know the songs beforehand.
In small venues, the mic stands are allways in the way.