Night Photos and a bit of nostalgia

[remrf]

For several months now I have been "meaning" to head to downtown Tucson at night to shoot some time lapse shots in and around the tall building in the area. I started out a few times only to find that some event was going on there and the whole area was blocked off and full of people. Now that's fine if you want street shots of people but lousy for what I had in mind. I wanted little or no pedestrian traffic and a medium amount of traffic to get the light streaks.


Well tonight I tried again and scored!

Not only did I get the shots I had wanted but I got a bonus as well. There is an old movie theater in Downtown Tucson called the Fox Tucson. It has been closed for many years now but I grew up going to see movies at this wonderful 30's era theater. There has been a project going for about 5 years now to restore the theater and it had its grand re-opening on New Years eve. The seats were $100.00 each for that night.

However. Tonight was open house night and the Fox Tucson was open to the public . I got time lapse shots from two angles with milling crowds under the grandly lit marquee and traffic rolling by.

I was shooting with the Rolleicord using Ektachrome 100 with an 80A filter. This combo called for 30 second exposures according to my Luna Star F meter.

So I got my night shots and I got to see and shoot one of the better theaters in Tucson lit up for Saturday night.

The chromes will go in for processing Monday. 🙂

 

[w3rk5]

Can't wait to see the shots. 🙂

 

[remrf]

Correction. I was speaking to a friend today and it came up in the conversation that I used the incorrect term in my description of my activities last night.

I was not doing "time lapse" photography. Perhaps you could call it "elapsed time" if you stretch the point. I was shooting long exposures at small f-stops. I.E f-22@30 seconds.

Sorry... 🙄

 

[Andrew Touchon]

The terms you used to describe your technique dosen't matter. It's the photographs that count. I'm looking forward to seeing your results.

 

[jano]

I've just started getting into long exposure photography 🙂 I've got a few shots in my gallery here that go 18 minutes or so. It's a lot of fun.. well.. the results are, anyway. Sitting around waiting for the exposures to complete can be dull if you're alone. I haven't tried color yet, hopefully yours come out well 🙂

How does ektachrome 100 deal with reciprocity failure?

 

[Pico]

Good for you! At the other extreme, I had a wonderfull time shooting wide-open with the first Summilux 35mm F1.4 It has a great shadow-filling glow at 1.4 at night. Sold it during hard times.

Man, if I could find another...

 

[kaiyen]

18 minutes! wow. What film are you using? You might consider using one of the delta or tmax films, or neopan 400. All of them have phenomenal reciprocity characteristics.

allan

 

[remrf]

I've just started getting into long exposure photography 🙂 I've got a few shots in my gallery here that go 18 minutes or so. It's a lot of fun.. well.. the results are, anyway. Sitting around waiting for the exposures to complete can be dull if you're alone. I haven't tried color yet, hopefully yours come out well 🙂

How does ektachrome 100 deal with reciprocity failure?

The last I read on that was for asa 64 Ektachrome and reciprocity does not become an issue until over 1 minute of exposure. I gues I will find out on this roll because some of my ealier shots metered at 2 minutes and I did not extend the exposure to deal with it. I also had a few that metered right at 1 minute.

 

[remrf]

Good for you! At the other extreme, I had a wonderfull time shooting wide-open with the first Summilux 35mm F1.4 It has a great shadow-filling glow at 1.4 at night. Sold it during hard times.

I thought about doing that after I got back of course. :bang: I had one shot left on the roll and I wish I would have shot one at f-3.5 while I was at it.

I remember doing some long exposure b&w night shots with a Yashica Mat 124 G in Germany when I was stationed there. The Yashica lens did a wonderful job . The aperture blades produced perfectly formed stars at the points of light.

 

[jano]

Allan: I used Fuji Acros, which has excellent reciprocity failure as well. Have a look here. I went out on no-moon nights, with the intent of doing long exposures. It's fun 🙂 Plan to give some color film a try later, and I'm trying to go for as long exposures as I can (I had a few at 38 minutes, but they were either overexposed or the "darkness" quality was lost).

The first three pictures and the spooky door are all long exposures.