Typical night exposures by moonlight?

Sparky · Apr 14, 2007

I was on a little excursion a month or so ago in the desert - and was fooling around with some experimental stuff with the hassy. I was trying for an effect with partial illumination by car headlights and partial long exposure to pick up some detail in the landscape. When i'm doing non-professional work, I work without a meter occasionally... at least for casual stuff. But anyway - in this case, it wasn't convenient to get to the lunasix. But anyway - i figured 4 mins. at f/4 or 5.6 would certainly (!) be adequate to pick up SOME landscape detail. I developed the FP4 in perceptol for N development... but I was surprised that, if anything at all - I just got the faintest silhouette of distant mountains - with NO other detail at all - despite it being a fairly full moon. So - I'm wondering what sort of exposure do others give night lanscapes (non urban) like this. I'd imagine a PROPER full exposure would be something around 15 mins at f/8 for FP4... but maybe I'm just way off base. I'm thinking there might actually have been a problem with my processing...

idears?

radiantdarkroom · Apr 14, 2007

I would say a minute at f/4.

wirehead · Apr 14, 2007

The nocturnes have a good resource page.

My guidline is, sans reciprocity (and FP4 is not necessarily known for long-exposure reciprocity ) is the light of a full moon is f/2.8, 15s, 400 ASA.

Roger Hicks · Apr 15, 2007

A good trick under a full moon is 1,000,000x sunny 16

Cheers,

R.

ricksplace · Apr 15, 2007

I shot at f8 for 25 minutes on foma 100, Pentacon SixTL 80/2.8 Biometar. See the shot "Centre of the Universe" in my gallery

Dan Henderson · Apr 15, 2007

I shot some full moon images last fall, using guidelines in an article in (I think) Photo Techniques. I used f/8@8:00 as a starting time, then also exposed for 12 and 15 minutes at the same aperture. either 8 or 12 minutes worked well. The time was long enough to get some nice star trails also. I used Acros film at IE 100, which does not require reciprocity correction.

m_liddell · Apr 15, 2007

Try this: http://www.mkaz.com/photo/tools/expcalc.html

Luminance values for different situations involving the moon:

LV Situation
-17.00 Dim Starlight
-10.00 Crescent Moon: a=135, k=.2, z=60, d=nominal, LV=-9.51
-7.00 Quarter Moon: a=90, k=.2, z=45, d=nominal, LV=-6.38
-5.00 Gibbous Moon: a=45, k=.2, z=30, d=nominal, LV=-4.43
-3.50 Average Full Moon: a=4, k=.2, z=15, d=nominal, LV=-2.76

Try using acros (or t-max 100) since they end up being faster than other films (like fp4+) because of their the tiny reciprocity failure.

Marco Buonocore · Apr 15, 2007

Sparky,

I think that the contrast range between what is lit by the car headlights and what is lit by the moon is very great. It would be something akin to getting full bore sunlight and deep dark shadows exposed properly on the same negative; pretty difficult unless you've planned to use a fairly compensating developer.

I don't think Perceptol would be the first choice. It's going to take at least a stop off your FP4 speed. I would think this shot, factoring in reciprocity, would be in the realm of f4-5.6 55min. Maybe I'm way off. Certainly, the foreground lit by the car would be blown the heck out!

Like another poster, I use Acros with good success at night. And The Nocturnes is a pretty fantastic site for these sorts of queries.

I've got a small book, 'Summer Nights' by Robert Adams, that has more than a few photos made with the combination of headlights and moonlight, and the results are lovely. So it can be done! If I had a car, I'd be out trying it myself!

Good luck,

Sparky · Apr 15, 2007

Marco - that's why I was double exposing the shots. Car headlamps on for 10 seconds - and 'ambient exposure' for 4 mins. or so. By double exposing - one should be able to get the contrast within printable range. But it really didn't happen. It's very weird. I wasn't trying to completely illuminate the landscape -just enough to pick up SOME detail. But there's almost NOTHING on the negs.

If I'm not mistaken - very dilute perceptol has a strong compensating effect and should develop the shadows effectively without letting the highlights get out of control... a LITTLE bit like pyro... but mostly just because it's not vigorous enough to let the highlights get too far!

glbeas · Apr 15, 2007

Looks like you fell prey to the reciprocity beast. If the actual exposure indicated by a meter was that long I would expect about a four stop compensation at least. Are you going back anytime soon for a retry? I'd love to see what you get.

Sparky · Apr 15, 2007

No well, good thinkin' but not really. I was already compensating for reciprocity in my head. I tend to overcompensate for that... but anyway... clearly, I think that 4 mins SHOULD have been more than enough at f-4-f/5.6. But i've been having some problems with some batches of film lately. I'm not sure what's causing it... COULD be fixer contamination. Might be especially sensitive to it as I'm using a really dilute dev... but anyway. Back to the drawing board, as they say...!

radiantdarkroom · Apr 15, 2007

It does sound like your having developing problems, I usually shoot under full moon at f/2.8 for 1min-1min30sec.

Typical night exposures by moonlight?

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