P3D Night shooting

[Greg Erker <erker@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

{The list is slow so time for a new topic.}

  I had a change a couple of weeks ago
to shoot some hyperstereo city skyline
night shots (in medium format).

  Before going out I dug through my old
magazines and found an article I remembered
about (2d) night photography, to find out
some recommended exposures.

  The article said he always shot with 50 to
100 speed (slide) film and bracketed at 10,
20 and 40 seconds at f4. One and sometimes
all of them usually looked good.

  I used my Bronica S2A (in shoot, shift,
shoot mode) on my 3' slidebar, and used
the 80mm f2.4 lens at f4.7 and focused
at infinity. (Using E100S slide film)

  I was shooting with 120 film so that gives
12 exposures per roll which is 6 stereo
pairs. So I didn't want to do brackets of 3
shots. Instead I did 20s and 40s and varied
a little if I though the particular shot
was brighter than average.

  The results were superb. The different
types of lighting (mercury, sodium, tungsten,
fluorescent) give cool emerald green, yellow
and other neat colours to the scene. All
of the shots looked good, though one exposure
looked better than the other when you had two
to compare.

  The shots weren't perfect since there was
retinal rivalry from using a single camera.
Next time I'll probably use my pair of Ricohflex's
to solve that problem. They only have 3 element
lenses so I'll probably shoot at f5.6 or so
to get better sharpness.

  So my message is: try it! (I don't know how
well this will work with print film since
the automatic printing will brighten up the
blacks to grey and burn out the bright areas,
but with slide film you will be pleased).

  When I get my Stereo Ricohmatic 225 up and
running <http://www.angelfire.com/ca/erker/twin225.html>
I'll give non-hyper night shooting a try.

Have fun - Greg E.