Night Shooting

Every Memorial Day weekend, a local waterpark/campground has a balloning event. I'm not reallt sure where they're balloning to or from (hell, they may even be balloon racing for all I know). The whole idea of balloning has never really appealed to me.

Something that has appealed to me photographically is at night. The balloonists anchor their balloons to the ground and turn their flames on, filling their balloons up with hot air. It's very pretty to see the flames filling up the balloons at night, and I want to take pictures this year.

I have one roll of Kodak Ultramax 800, about 5 rolls of Kodak Ultramax 400, and one lone roll of Ektar 100. I'm wanting to do a long exopsure, perhaps one to 5 seconds, loner if I need to. Which of these films do you suggest, and what are the reciprocity characteristics?

I did a search for Ultramax reciprocity on google but didnt come up with anything particularly useful. Links to other threads or websites would be fine. Personal experience would be even better

Here is the tech sheet for the Ultramax 800 that will talk about the reciprocity. http://www.kodak.com/global/plugins/acrobat/en/consumer/products/techInfo/e7024/E7024.pdf For all of the consumer films you have such as the 400 and 800(including extra color and elite chrome), just go to Kodak.com/go/film For anything truly professional such as Ektar or Ektachrome, visit Kodak.com/go/professtional. At those two site you will find the tech pubs that give all of the info about the films. I personally would go for the 800. You may even want to have it push processes. For anything else that know one around here can answer, try calling
1-800-242-2424 and put in 19 right away after the voice comes on. You will reach an American. Good luck and let me know how you make out. Patrick

I would recommend bracketing. Meter the shot (or don't), and then do a series of exposures going from the initial exposure to +1 or +2 stops. If the light level is low, you aren't really going to blow out your exposures, so more is usually better.

Tim Gray said:

If the light level is low, you aren't really going to blow out your exposures, so more is usually better.

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That's what I'm thinking, too. The only thing I'm worried about blowing out is the flames on the balloons (I dont know what the thing is called that actually makes the flames...)

Bracketing may be my best bet, especially with the tricky lighting. The sky and background will be dark, but the flames and area around the balloons will be well lit.

Ektagraphic said:

Here is the tech sheet for the Ultramax 800 that will talk about the reciprocity. http://www.kodak.com/global/plugins/acrobat/en/consumer/products/techInfo/e7024/E7024.pdf For all of the consumer films you have such as the 400 and 800(including extra color and elite chrome), just go to Kodak.com/go/film For anything truly professional such as Ektar or Ektachrome, visit Kodak.com/go/professtional. At those two site you will find the tech pubs that give all of the info about the films. I personally would go for the 800. You may even want to have it push processes. For anything else that know one around here can answer, try calling
1-800-242-2424 and put in 19 right away after the voice comes on. You will reach an American. Good luck and let me know how you make out. Patrick

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I checked out the link to the ultra max 800 you posted. When it says exposure compensation and/or filtration may be required for exposures longer than a second, they mean longer exposures and color filtration right?

*scurries off to read the ultra max 400 pdf...*

yes, longer exposure - like usually at least 2x the metered/guessed exposure to account for reciprocity, once beyond one second, and colours will shift.

C-41 films will work over an amazing exposure range though (think 7 stops or more), although it may take some digital image processing (or the equipment and patience to make panchormatic 35mm contrast reduction masks - not my idea of fun) to make the print work to show all of the detail and to not burn the highlights. I would suggest to resist shooting the 800 at 800 and use it at 800, to get some of your shadows off of the toe of the exposure curve.

Mike Wilde said:

yes, longer exposure - like usually at least 2x the metered/guessed exposure to account for reciprocity, once beyond one second, and colours will shift.

I would suggest to resist shooting the 800 at 800 and use it at 800, to get some of your shadows off of the toe of the exposure curve.

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I'm not worried about color shifts with these pictures. I actually thing color shifts in this situation might be pretty cool.

And dont you mean shoot 800 at 400 to get the shadows off the toe of thr exposure curve?

my oops - yes I meant shoot 800 at 400. For a lot of different films, whether it is my gear, my development routines, or whatever, I often shoot at under 'box rated' speed.

Then there are developers that you know will cause film to loose speed, but offer so much more in return. In the traditional black and white films my mind turns to fp4/Plus X shot at EI 80 and developed in 1:2:100 PMK pyro. It does magic for caputring early morning mists, etc. in my world.

Another note. Some fast films are actually slower than slower ones for long exposures, because of reciprocity failure. If it's already on a tripod and a 1+ second exposure, you can always use a slower speed for less grain. So what if its a 8 second exposure instead 1?

I shot some long exposure stuff on Portra 800 and Fuji 400 consumer stuff. The Fuji was a lot cheaper - I didn't really need the extra speed on the Portra since I was already doing long exposures. I just metered the scene with my in camera meter (a lot less meticulous than I normally in), took an exposure, then did +1 and +2 stops. Almost all of them actually came out fine, but generally, the ones with longer exposures looked better. You could always add +3 or +4 in there if you want to account for reciprocity failure, but I would think exposures under 10 seconds or so won't need compensations as large as a stop.

Lastly, Fuji film tends to be better in the reciprocity failure department. For example, Superia 200 (just looked it up) needs no correction under 32 seconds, and +2/3 stop for 1 minute. It also calls for slight color correction at 1 minute, but I say screw it.

Tim Gray said:

Some fast films are actually slower than slower ones for long exposures, because of reciprocity failure.

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Can you give an example of this please, with data on where the crossover in speed occurs?

Thanks,
Lee

Look at T-MAX 100 and Fuji Acros compared to Tri-X. Granted, these are B&W films, but it is possible.

Ektar has excellent reciprocity. Don't forget though, you'll probably want at least an 80A filter or whatever to cool down the light to reasonable levels. Without that everything will be irreparably orange. You may end up needing/ wanting more. Try shooting by candle light for approximation of the color temperature.

I actually got rained out

I'll still remember everyone's advice next time I'm planning on shooting at night

Sorry you got rained out.

Since it's a bit OT, I'll keep this short. I'll give Acros becoming faster than Tri-X, but with the best data I can find, Howard Bond's July-Aug 2003 article in Photo Techniques and Kit Courter's Acros data on his lunar photography web page, best fit curves give the attached graph. X-axis is metered exposure time in seconds for 100 ISO and y-axis is adjusted exposure in seconds. The graph accounts for Tri-X being 2 stops faster, i.e. a 1 second metered exposure for TMX and Acros becomes a 0.25 second exposure for Tri-X. When that is accounted for, Acros becomes faster than Tri-X at about the point that Acros needs 16 minutes of metered exposure, adjusted to 1085 seconds, and Tri-X needs to be adjusted from a 4 minute exposure to 1093 seconds. That's not a very common circumstance. If you run these curves on out, TMX will never be faster than Tri-X.

The new Ektar 100 loses about 1.3 stops at 2 minutes of metered exposure according to a test I did last fall with a B+W #110 10 stop ND filter. That makes it pretty average among current color negative films.

Ektar 25 in the late 80's early 90's had a reputation among astrophotographers for being faster than some 400 ASA color negative films. I never saw any hard data though, just anecdotal info. I wouldn't be surprised if it had the same kind of performance relative to other color films of the time that Acros now has relative to other current B&W films.

Lee