Fuji Neopan ACROS iso 100

Ted Witcher said:
Not to hijack, but how does one calculate the time necessary for those deep-stop night exteriors? They look amazing. What's your technique? Just "B" and a stopwatch?
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Thanks for the nice comment on the images Ted. I use B and a Casio watch with count-down stop-watch function for timing. As for calculating the right exposure time it's come from experience mostly and gut feeling. I learned in a night shooting seminar up at Mono Lake that out in the dark late in a forest on a moonlit night that f/5.6 or f/8 for about 13-18 minutes works well for Acros. For the city shots and similarly lit areas (old bases, industrial areas, etc.) I found that typically f/5.6 and about 4-6 minutes works and I use my gut feeling to adjust up or down slightly based on how much security flood lights might be spilling some light into the photo, or how much the sky might be lit by light pollution, how much misty cloud cover might be in the sky, and so forth. But really with not only it's great reciprocity characteristics Acros also has some very good latitude which helps too. I suggest if you try similar city night scenes try f/5.6 and 5 minutes and see what you get. Or better bracket by a minute or two either way and then see how dense your negs are. I personally find a slightly less exposed and less dense neg is best for my workflow of scanning and working in PS. Let me know how it goes....:D

Now all this said I've also had good results using Neopan 1600 shot at 1600 and developed in D-76, all shot at 1/30 and 1/60 at f/2 and 2.8 hand-held with my Contax G2. It was a rainy, wet night though which is a bit brighter than typical for night. Different style of shooting but it works too! See this tagged set (click on thumbs for larger image views):

http://www.flickr.com/photos/rich8155/tags/ferrybuilding/
 
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Okay, I'm underway. Your recommendations are for 5.6, though... do you have a personal formula for going up a stop? Would an 8 require one more minute? Two? Thanks for the help.
 
Ted Witcher said:
Okay, I'm underway. Your recommendations are for 5.6, though... do you have a personal formula for going up a stop? Would an 8 require one more minute? Two? Thanks for the help.
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Well, that'd require adding a stop of time (doubling the time). As long as you're still around 8 minutes or so after compensation for that I'd not worry. Again, most B&W film, and this one particularly, can handle some wide latitude.

Just get out (tonight!) and shoot a few rolls and you'll get to know the film and it's reactions to your lighting situation.

Please post some results later.
 
Harry Lime said:
How does it handle hightlights?

thanks,

HL
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Overall pretty well. Better than Tmax. Depends on your highlights of course. See my Flickr links above to get some idea...
 
I don't use it much because I rarely finish a roll at one sitting and can't be sure I won't be shooting in low light next time I pick up the camera, but the times I have used it I was very very pleased with it.

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Wow, those photos are almost a year old. I need to load some Acros 100 into my Rollei again soon.
 
Fantastic reciprocity too- so this is an excellent if unusual choice for night shots.
I've had several students get some remarkable stuff with this at night.
 
the reciprocity is excellent, though I've never shot it at night.

long exposures with acros
pier_M7II.jpg


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Todd
 
O.K., now my interest is piqued.
I struggle with a strange permutation of reciprocity failure, i.e. multiple exposures with flash. It seems I generally have to overexpose by about 2 1/2 stops according to my meter for some of my underground shots, taken with no ambient light but the shutter open for as much as 1/2 hour and the actual exposures being dozens of pulses from electronic flash guns.
How is the grain with rodinal? I'm used to using FP4 and HP5, though my underground shots have been made on (ugh) xp2 because of reciprocity concerns. They actually look pretty good, grain nice and sharp and just showing printed at 11x14, but that is using medium format.
 
This guy here did some tests. I used his results together with the human exposure computer thingy (ev values) to do some night-time long exposures. I found 35mm acros in this case to do well with xtol, and the MF stuff with rodinal was superb. I have a few in my gallery here, nothing special or nearly as excellent as Todd's examples, but they demonstrate what the film can do even in my hands ;)
 
Thanks for the link, Jano.
Just when you think you've got the perfect routine something pops up to make you question it. I'll be trying this out very soon!
 
rodneyAB said:
this is about my fourth roll of ACROS, and first time with a 5minute exposure.
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Nice Rodney. A little hot in the highlights. Seeing how much light is spilling in I would have gone 3 1/2 to 4 min likely on that one, but still a very "printable" neg!
 
rodneyAB said:
Ok, thanx Rich for the tip, i'll have to experiment with exposure time.
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Rodney, when I first started shooting Acros at night I bracketed every shot about 1-2 minutes either side of what I thought was correct with three exposures. I then developed promptly (sometimes the same night----yes, 2am developing!) to remember the conditions freshly vs. the times and exposures. This along with seeing which scanned best gave me my best innate sense of good exposure times. That said, I'm still learning!
 
Thanks Rich, i probably did not need the moonlight to shoot the building with the lightsource, but the buildings are probably more to my interests as subjects. i stood out on the pier and shot the GGB, and i think the 5 minute exposure was a good place to start for that. only used about 23-24 frames on the roll, found it a lot harder to fill a 36 roll than i anticipated. I'll take your advice on bracketing, and any other you offer, and then just try to experiment. So..just curious, do you find the fuller moonlight to be the best time for night shots?
 
rodneyAB said:
So..just curious, do you find the fuller moonlight to be the best time for night shots?
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Well, it's a pretty good time to shoot, but no, not unless I'm shooting somewhere with little artificial light sources, or want to use the moon behind objects, like here:

http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=412281194&size=o

A couple night photog guys I know, Joe Reifer and Andy Frazer, use the full moon weekend as an excuse to go night shooting, which is not a bad idea, and I've gone out with them a few times.

Really depends on your subjects. I've shot out in the hills around Briones, near Lafayette, in midnight deep darkness (no moon) with 20-30 minute exposures (using color slide film) to around the Ferry Building in SF on a rainy night with Neopan 1600 shooting at 1/30th wide open at f/2.

If buildings are your main interest for night I'd say you can use a combination of moonlight and artificial light. Might as well go out on a moonlit night so you can have both when you can. But don't let the moon or lack of a full moon hold you back. As your image shows there's lots of opportunity in areas like Crissy, or the Presidio, at night with or without a moon.

Speaking of the Presidio at night, seen these?

http://www.charityvargas.com/photography/photos/photograph.php?GID=5
 
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