Shooting E200 at long exposure.

Hello- I am going to go out night shooting this weekend and I was wondering what happens with exposures longer than 10 seconds with E200. Kodak's sheets say to run tests for exposures longer than 10 seconds. I will be heading to Boston to the top of the Marriott to shoot the city.

Patrick

No matter what kind of answers you hear here, I'd still bracket around the exposure you select. If you only have time for 2, then do your exposure and another with additional exposure.

I'll bracket.

The people I am going with will shoot digital at ISO 100. Should I follow suit so that I can use the same exposures that they do?

You could. But digital doesn't have reciprocity failure. So if you are doing 1-2 minute exposures, you'll have to adjust for reciprocity failure and bracket too. Some films are better than others for this. The tungsten films are a bit better. Fuji film is traditionally better too. You also might want to try googling "E200 reciprocity".

Well how bad will the reciprocity show with night shots? What happens? Do the colors change?

Some films like Velvia 100 have no correction out to a minute or two...

Contrast changes, colors shift, and exposure lessens. The last one is most important to compensate for.

Colors shift as tiberiustibz says is a problem, but the big one is exposure decreases. So you expose for 2 mins, but only get the equivalent of 45 seconds (just an example), so you shot is way underexposed. A good example is Tri-X and Fuji Acros. Even though Tri-X is ISO 400 and Acros is two stops slower, Tri-X has horrible reciprocity characteristics while Acros is great, so for exposures over a certain time (1 min? 30 secs? I don't know) Acros is actually faster.

This failure is repeatable and measurable, so if you find some data on it, and you meter a 2 min exposure, the data will tell you to add such and such exposure (+1/2 stop, or +2, whatever). So you meter 2 mins, and you actually take 3 mins, or 8, or whatever the compensation is.

Fuji film usually has better characteristics. Acros is amazing. Tungsten films are usually pretty good too. The Kodak documents I just scanned don't give much info other than to say up to 10s is fine. It says +1/3 for 64T at 100s. E100G seems to be good out to 120s, but the document wording is vague. This site seems to claim E200 and E100G are great, specifically E200, so maybe you will be fine.

I have used long exposures with Elite Chrome 200, and it has turned out fine. However, in general, I would go along the lines of others in this thread: Fuji is your best answer for long exposures. I don't know why, but Fuji's films have always been superior to Kodak's in reciprocity failure. I know that you do not particularly care for Fuji's films, but when taking night shots, especially landscapes, the minutae of different films are less apparent.

I just looked up some data on Fuji slide film. 400x is good out to 1 minute. At 2 mins they recommend +1/2. 4-8 minutes is +1. So if you meter 6 minutes, then actually give it 12.

E200 might be ok though. Ahh, just found this link: reciprocity for Kodak films.

Find and PM the guy from the thread a few months ago who lives up in the N.E.U.S.A. (was is VT or NH?) and does all those great astro photos. He knows all about long exposures for all sorts of films, and even mentioned something about E-200 in that thread, I believe.

Ektagraphic said:

The people I am going with will shoot digital at ISO 100. Should I follow suit so that I can use the same exposures that they do?

Click to expand...

Besides reciprocity, another thing that needs to be remembered about digital is that digital cameras often deliberately overexpose the shot. They do this in order to lower noise and better utilize the dynamic range of the sensor. Of course, they also do this since it is understood that the overexposure will be corrected in post-processing. On the other hand, overexposure is one of the biggest no-nos there is when it comes to shooting ANY kind of slide film. So be careful with this. If the people shooting digital are getting well-exposed shots using manual settings, then you will probably do okay with their settings. But otherwise, you might not want to use what they are using.

Digital Cameras are most sensitive for overexposure; they have no shoulder at all and clip very abruptly. That's why they almost always try to underexpose the scene; rather than overexpose. This is especially true with newer cameras as people have complained about clipping. So: digital cameras deliberately UNDERexpose the shot, to give that popular blocked-shadow look.

I've used a compact digital camera as a light meter when exposing slides at night. Usually you can expose slide even a stop more; so, when you look at the digital picture, the areas that are blown a little will be alright on the slide. Where digital clips, there starts the short shoulder of slide film. It's not much but it's there. When it looks like this with digital: Dead Link Removed (look at the blown-out sky), it comes okay with Velvia 50 with the same exposure (plus compensated for reciprocity failure).

But, the ISO values in digital cameras differ very much, more than one stop between manufacturers. In addition, they fake their highest ISO values, or maybe all of them. You really cannot say without comparing a particular digital camera to a particular film. This has come very clear today as I have been wondering these ISO 25600 shots of the new Nikon D3s all around the Web, and they are almost always both underexposed and blocked-shadows, true speed being much lower, something like ISO 3200-6400.

So, the bottom line is that I would expose slide at the same rating than with digital. It can be under or over but you can't know without testing. If I had to place a bet, I would say that it's half a stop under rather than over.

And, about the digital not having the reciprocity failure; it's true but in a sense they have same kind of problem; it's the huge noise buildup regardless of ISO value when using long exposures. Even 60 sec exposure (even at ISO400) can be very fatal to digital image. This is much temperature-dependent and if you have cold winter night at -30 deg. C then you will probably be completely ok with 120 sec exposures.

Now I spoke about d*git*l in APUG . Forgive me.

hrst said:

Digital Cameras are most sensitive for overexposure; they have no shoulder at all and clip very abruptly. That's why they almost always try to underexpose the scene; rather than overexpose. This is especially true with newer cameras as people have complained about clipping. So: digital cameras deliberately UNDERexpose the shot, to give that popular blocked-shadow look.

Click to expand...

This might be true with compact digitals, which clip at the drop of a hat and have zero dynamic range. But from my experience with my 5D, the meter always seems to set the exposure in such a way that the brightest highlights are typically just short of clipping (or, in extreme cases, just starting to clip). This usually results in an overexposed shot.

I shoot E200 at night a lot. It has minimal if any reciprocity failure up to a minute (from my experience and eye, not a scientist or engineer here). I shoot with a buddy that shoots digital at the same time. I keep notes on my exposures and can compare to his digi files. They are close some times but more times than not I get better exposures when shot 1 stop over what he is shooting. I spot meter on the brightest light in the scene to get a baseline exposure, then change it two stops more for my first exposure so that the dark areas will be exposed properly. I bracket from there. Hope it helps.

D.

So maybe I will push process and see what happens keeping exposures around 1 min or a little more.

E200 and Elite Chrome 200 has excellent reciprocity and little color shift. I have exposed it under Moonlight with 20 to 30 minute exposures and you would swear the frames were taken in daylight. These films continue to record light well into 2 hours plus before dropping off. There is some reciprocity loss, but I would think it would be one stop or less over many minutes. This is why it is the best color film for astrophotography

30 minutes at f/4 105mm lens Pentax 67 E200 pushed +2 stops

I think the consumer grade Kodak Elite 200 works just as well at night.
This was pushed 1 stop, 45 minutes at f/2.8 under a quarter moon just after it rose above the mountains.

Ektachrome 200 is great at long exposures. This guy here on apug uses it for astrophotograpy with excellent results. I think the site for his work was like Nightfly Zoomyshare or something...


*Edit*
Oh... Just looked above...

The best film ive found for reciprocity is Astia 100f.

edit: just looking at fuji's data sheet and for up to a minute, there is no reciprocity failure, and no colour correction

for 2 minutes fuji recommends 5B filter + 1/3 stop compensation, 4 min 5B + 1/2 stop and 8 min is 5B + 2/3 stop