Super Low Light Photography - Little to no ambient light just flash

Hello,

Ive been thinking about working on some night images whilst also utilising flash but in quite a rural (read dark) locations. I did some test images (please see the attached) using HP5+ @400 handheld using a small flash shot at sync speed of 1/50th. The focus is a bit off but will remember a head torch next time so I can see! Im looking to improve the quality of such an image and wondering how I would go about it. Might be asking a bit too much of the materials but wanted to see if anyone had done similar with improved results.

To describe the scene in this image - it was almost completely dark as woodland in the middle of nowhere. This is a scan for now as my darkroom is closed due to covid. As can be seen in the attached my shadows are very noisy which I have managed to improve a little by adjusting the gamma but I assume also its just underexposure.

In order to create a higher quality version of this image (less grainy / more detail / deeper blacks) would it work to use say a 100 iso film (across or delta) on a tripod for a longer amount of time possibly with more than one flash pop? Option of not attaching flash to hot shoe and firing manual near camera? As I said this scene is in almost near rural darkness so could a light meter to used to work out a suitable long exposure base and then effectively light paint with a few flash pops? Be keen to hear if anyone has done similar and excuse my pondering's if this sounds like a no go based on the fact next to no ambient light. Many thanks Ben

There's a lot of ways to approach it. And different methods will produce different results.

One way to approach it might be to leave the shutter open, and then just use several flash exposures or even a flashlight to light the areas you want to capture. Another might be to just do an ultra long exposure, and wait for a night with clear skies and a full (or near full) moon, and just use ambient light. Typically, if you're going to be doing a long exposure, you'll definitely want a very sturdy tripod and find a night without any wind. People will also typically use a film with good reciprocity failure characteristics in this instance, as it makes calculating exposure easier. Sometimes a film with low reciprocity failure and low ISO will expose a scene in less time than a high speed film with high reciprocity failure. So what kind film you should use is determined by how you want to shoot the scene.

Night shooting like this can be difficult, as you have to juggle a lot of things at once. Your best bet here is to just experiment, learn for your mistakes, and develop your own method. I couldn't even tell you how I'd do it, because I don't know if you're trying to expose the whole scene, or isolate the tree, or if you're going for a hard or soft light setup, etc. And depending on what I wanted to capture, and how I wanted it to look, my methods could change completely. There's no right or wrong way to do it. There are just ways that will give you certain results, and other ways that will give you different results. And at this moment, you're best off doing some experiments to learn what your options are, and how they effect the final shot. Then, if you run into a more technical question along the way, we can try to offer some assistance. But it's hard to tell anything from a heavily edited, digitally scanned negative.

Many thanks for your detailed reply, much appreciated! Sounds like experimenting is key here to seeing what may be successful but your suggestions have given me a better idea of how I might approach this. I couldn't get my head around how to meter such a scene using a light meter based on the fact that ambient light was in short supply - would you recommend metering the scene at all or just trying a few different length exposures, seeing the results and taking it from there? Ive taken longer exposure images and metered / accounted for reciprocity failure in semi lit urban type locations successfully but confused myself if there is any kind of method when light is lacking or if it really is down to pure experimentation to start off with until a personal method can be established.

I should've been clearer about my rough intentions here that the general idea was to isolate elements from the overall scene by using the darkness to obscure elements and the flash to highlight. I will get out there and try some further experiments with this and like you suggested maybe pickup som low reciprocity failure film for the task. Many thanks