P3D Re: Photographing Holiday Lights

[John Baird <jbaird@xxxxxxxxx>]

>Subject: P3D Photographing Holiday Lights
>Once more, our friends at the New York Institute of Photography
>have anticipated our recent discussion.  Their advice may be
>found at http://www.nyip.com/tips/topic_holidaylights.html

Happy holidays to you all out there in 3D land! I went to the above site
and found the information really slanted toward P&S cameras shooting
print film. All good advice but not really applicable to shooting slides
in our manual stereo cameras. Let me throw in my two cents worth.

Several of you have re. to this subject and Dr. T pretty well said it
all but let me add to that. First, stick to ASA 100 film (daylight) to
keep grain at a minimum. I always like to shoot at 5.6 as a starting
point for my tests. I bracket my shutter speeds at 1, 2, 4, and 8 sec.  
One of these exposures should be right on. This will allow you to get
several scenes on your test roll. Pick scenes with more or less light so 
you can see the effects of each lighting condition. Keep using this
shutter sequence and you won't even have to take notes. 

One of the problems with shooting tungsten lights (all Xmas lighting)
with daylight film is a heavy red/orange cast to the photo. Eliminate
this problem by using tungsten balanced slide film (160 ASA) or better
yet use 80A filters with the daylight film and this will correct the
color shift. A 2"x2" 80A filter gel can be purchased for about $10 and
can be cut in two (one for each lens). Figure about two stops of light
loss with this filter and adjust your shutter times accordingly (4 sec.
to 32 sec. at f5.6).

An interesting star effect can be obtained by stopping down to f.11 or
16. Each point of light will turn into a four pointed star similar to
the effect of star screen filter. The disadvantage to this is the
correspondingly long shutter speeds. Shooting at f.16 you'll need to use
speeds starting at 15 sec. up to 2 min. (this is without the 80A filter)
With the filter figure times up to 8 minutes. Actually 100ASA film is
very forgiving on these long exposures and likes to be overexposed due
to reciprocity failure. (The slower you introduce light onto the film
the longer it takes to get it exposed correctly.) I recommend to stay at
f.5.6 for most of your test roll but at the end try a couple stopped
down to see the effect. 

"Happy Holiday Shooting" from the light painter guy, John Baird!


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