Hi Barry, John, and others:
Prior to shooting for this month's TOPE, I'd done very little night
shooting. My low light shooting has been shooting sports or concerts
with flash, fast film, or pushed film. Natural looking exteriors
haven't been anything that came up very often.
Interesting, as the OM cameras do a very fine job at night photography...
I'll have a shot at giving some suggestions here, perhaps I'm way off base,
but perhaps one of these suggestions helps you in finding out what went
wrong.
So on my first attempt to shoot something for TOPE2, I noticed that
there was a lot of heat lightning one night,
I'm not quite certain what you mean with "heat lightning", but I suppose
that you're referring to the phenomenon where after every few days of heat
you have some thundershowers, that cause the temperature to go down a bit
again, only to heat up over the course of a few days, to repeat itself all
summer long? If so, then that sounds like something we also have over here.
Either way: the type of thunderstorms I described above, are what I have
been hunting for some 5 years now. Over here it's really difficult to get
good lightning pictures, as there's light pollution everywhere (that's what
you get for living in the 2nd most crowded country (in terms of inhabitants
per square KM) in the world). So, with no big plains it's not easy to get
the actual lightning bolts in your picture. Either way: in my experiments I
have learned a thing or two, so I'll see if I can add some experiences:
drove to a remote bridge on the farm (with a great looking cypress tree
framing the horizon), framed my shot, set to underexpose 2 stops, and let
'er fly. During the exposure, anywhere from 2 to 5 flashes of heat
lightning would occur (sometimes different colors), so I was sure I'd get
good shots
O.k., before we get down to the specific problems you described, I will
already give you one key to success: from your descriptions I presume you
had the camera set on Auto. Don't do this, as the camera will wait until
_all_ of the film has seen enough light to satisfy the centre averaged meter
(or until it's cut off by the 4 minute limit). Effectively this results in
the lightning bolts that were "drawn" on the film being washed away by other
environment light (or by stray light from the other bolts/flashes), I have
some examples of this which I could send your way (when I get access to a
scanner again). I never use underexposure, so I'm not certain how that would
influence these shots. My approach is to more or less guesstimate (yes,
experience _does_ make wise ;) ) or calculate how long the exposure should
take for the surroundings at f16 or whatever the smallest aperture of your
lens is. Then mount the camera with lens (a wide angle gives you a higher
probability of actually framing a bolt than a telephoto does) on a tripod,
determine your composition, set the camera to "B", open the shutter for the
guesstimated exposure time (200 ASA @ f16 gives more or less 2 minute
exposures) pray that some bolts are sent your way, don't get overexcited
when one does (keep that shutter open! ;) ), and close it in time. Repeat
this procedure some 10, 20, x times (as often as you like, and as often as
the thundershower permits you) and hope that at least one shot came out
alright. For all the technically challenging shots I've made, the lightning
shots without any doubt were the most challenging. Why? Well over here there
are 4 parameters that must _all_ coincide for success:
1-The thundershower should be severe enough in order to see bolts instead of
only flashes;
2-Light pollution! :( (a BIG issue over here);
3-You can't really rely too well on Auto exposures, instead you have to
shoot them using bulb exposures, so it's difficult to judge the exposure
correctly;
4-Luck: there should actually be lightning bolts in your composition.
(I was hoping a bolt would hit the cypress tree or a nearby
irrigation rig, but no such luck).
Now THAT would have been a big bonus! :)
After shooting a half dozen exposures, I thought I should perhaps
flash the cypress tree to get it better defined, and freeze motion
(the wind was blowing pretty strong), so I started my exposure, gave
it 3 or 4 seconds, and then fired a hand held flash (Sunpack 433D) at
the cypress tree. Did this a couple of times, had lots of heat
lightning activity on the horizon, and was sure I'd gotten SOMETHING
useable.
An interesting experiment. I've never experimented with this flash technique
but in my mind I can picture the effect that you wanted to achieve and it
sounds like a cool experiment which I may also give a shot someday...
Unfortunately, when the roll came back from the lab yesterday, there
were a dozen black frames in the middle of an otherwise normally
exposed roll. ARRRRRGH.
O.k., now here's one important question: slide or film (did you write this
somewhere and did I miss it)?
In other words: were your "negatives" black (yielding white prints) or where
you using slides that came out black?
For the latter case I wouldn't have a clue as to how to explain it. If the
positive looked completely black, that would indicate zero light reaching
the film, something I guess only would be possible if you left the lens cap
on your lens and shot a bulb exposure. In the other case (i.e. a completely
white positive) it would mean that way too much light hit the film. IOW:
that would again indicate a bulb exposure, but this time one that was way
too long. I really don't see any other way that this could have happened, as
the light meter should have made sure you would at least have a properly
exposed picture if the camera was on Auto mode without spot metering.
While it's possible that I shot the shots on another roll,
accidentally left the camera on manual mode (wouldn't account for the
5-10 second exposures),
Yes, that's the strange thing. 5-10 seconds is really short (if your lens
was stopped down a fair bit, that is)! Did you perhaps do one of the
following:
-Shot wide open (causing short exposures - don't do this);
-Metered wide open; set the camera to Manual; shot closed down all the way;
-Taken a spot reading somewhere and stored that in the memory.
In the first case, an auto exposure should still be correct, in the last one
not necessarily so, of course.
or otherwise managed to commit a serious photo-pas, it doesn't seem
conceivable that not even one of the shots left so much as a trace on the
film.
Well, I often had rolls coming back with nothing but completely black or
white pictures, but that was always when I shot bulb exposures; and _never_
in Auto mode!
Can you perhaps give the following data:
-Lens used;
-Aperture;
-Exposure mode;
-Spot meterimg + memory yes/no (perhaps you shot something before and locked
the exposure in the memory?).
Further, the exact same camera shot some very nicely exposed night shots in
Philly a week later (soon to be submitted to TOPE2) on the same settings.
City shots can perfectly be shot in Auto mode, but for the lightning one
really (IMO) should go with bulb exposures; Auto mode tends to keep the
shutter way too long open causing the lightning to be washed away by other
light.
Anyone else ever do this? Did I make a serious mis-calculation? Any
ideas on what could have happened?
O.k., the above is some speculation based on some of my own experiences and
on assumptions regarding the way you shot the pictures. Perhaps matters
would become clearer if you could provide the data that I asked above...?!?
Then John went on to write:
I've done night fireworks in manual mode using the recommendations in
Kodak's Master Photoguide "Existing Light" section (new title is Kodak
Pocket Photoguide). The recommendations for lightning at night are
identical except one stop wider aperture (more exposure).
I find it strange that they correlate the film speed to the aperture, but
perhaps in their experience this gives the best results. Either way, I
myself always simply stop the lens down all the way to give me really long
exposures with lots of probability to capture lightning bolts (which are
bright enough to be rendered perfectly on film even through a lens @ f22).
The only time I like to shoot a bit wider open is when there are also lots
of flashes during the exposure, as these tend to wash away the previously
recorded lightning. Then, based on the aperture I determine how long the
exposure should take...
Following is a summary for lightning by film speed. Since we are getting
close to July 4th, after that is a summary for fireworks, for the benefit
of U.S. list members. The higher film speeds will only work with
telephotos that can stop down far enough (see the tables).
I see absolutely no advantage here for the really fast film. I think
typically 100-200 ASA would work best, unless for some reason short
exposures (at a closed down diaphragm) would be desired...
I've had very good exposures with the fireworks using medium speed ISO 100
film, camera on tripod, and a cable release (used my finger on the OM-4
release once).
Yes, getting fireworks in bulb mode is pretty easy: 100 ASA, f16, 5 seconds
(or something like that; depends on the brightness of the fireworks).
Lightning at night
(shutter open on "B" for several streaks):
ISO Aperture
------------------------
64 - 100 f/5.6
125 - 200 f/8
O.k., so these are the ASA/Aperture settings they recommend, but how long
should these exposurs be, did they gave that info too?
Cheers!
Olafo
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