*fast* film/Hale Bopp

[P3D Bob Wier <wier@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I'm attempting to do some pictures of my little town here with
Hale-Bopp visible just over the western mountains. Tonight this
was about 8PM local with a nearly full moon (not good - washes out
the dimmer background stars). What I'm doing is a time exposure (via
"bulb") moving the tripod a bit and doing a second time exposure
(this is a variation of the shifted foot technique...). The eventual
target if anthing works is holmes type views and/or images for the
photo-3d site.

Now, the question is, does anyone have suggestions for exposure
lengths? I'm bracketing from about 30 seconds up to 5 minutes or so.
On the 30 second end I'm expecting the sky to be too dim. On the 5
minute end, the town lights will probably be very exaggerated, and
I *may* have star/comet trails. This is hard to judge, though since
in order to get both the comet and the town, I'm running about 40mm
on my Pentax SLR which results in a pretty small image on the comet
(unless I'm picking up tail that I can't see naked eye wise).

I may have one more chance at this tomorrow night (although the forecast
is for clouds to start coming back in). Does anyone have any hints
to offer? I've not used that fast a print film much (incidentally
max aptr on my Pentax is 3.5 on the zoom I'm using). Seeing is pretty
good since I'm at around 8,000' elevation with no air pollution, little
light pollution, and reasonably steady (but cold) atmosphere.

I might try this with a Nims also, but I don't think there's any way
to simulate a B/T length exposure, is there?

THANKS! -BW 

   ====== wier@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ======
  12:36 AM Friday, March 21, 1997
   keeper of the Photo-3d, Overland-Trails, LDS State
    Research Outline Guides and other stuff
     (currently in Ouray, Colorado)



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