Re: Night photography

[mk@netstra.com.au (Michael Kurkowski)]

erk_cartman_RESPECT_MY_AUTHORITAH@yahoo.com (Eric Cartman) wrote in
<391d18fa@news.iprimus.com.au>: 

>What is your experiences in night photography? I have found success
>recently with 800 ASA film where I did not need time exposures or flash
>or a tripod under even station lighting.

In the past month, I've been following a couple of the sleeper discharge 
trains around Melbourne. Found that with the standard lighting I could get 
handheld shots while the sky was pitch black, using Fuji Provia 1600. I've 
only done one roll, and out of that, two exposures. Roughly 1/100th of a 
second at f2.8. Results were reasonable. I have another roll doing the same 
thing at the moment, in my secondary camera. 

Once my video camera is fixed, future night chasing will be accompanied by 
a video camera and IR light. This way, it doesn't bother the drivers, but 
the video cameras CCD is IR sensitive. If anyone has done this before, let 
me know what sort of results you've had from this...

Most, if not, all of my night photos are done as time exposures however. I 
get pretty good results from Fuji Sensia 100 which I use mostly, but I am 
in the process of trying out Kodak E100VS under a number of conditions 
(tripod landscapes at F22, normal daytime train photos, and as of last 
night time exposures at Dynon). I have only once taken time exposures using 
Kodachrome 64. It was crap.

>To see some examples, visit my website's ErkTrans section and click on
>the Funny Trains and Stuff Link (I'm still waiting for my domain name to
>be relocated so it may appear that the name is not working correctly/)

Aah, it would be nice to have normal lighting down here - Nup, they 
insisted on sodium vapour lights for the stations. May be bright, but it's 
rather uncomfortable to sit with while waiting for a spark that may be up 
to 29 minutes away. 

I don't have many online examples of night photography, but here are a 
couple anyway:

http://www.netstra.com.au/~mk/scans/rch-derail-9.jpg
Taken about 8 weeks ago on Fuji Superia 100 print film. This event was 
about the only exception to my rule of only taking photos on slide film (:

http://www.netstra.com.au/~mk/assets/images/Flinders_Street_Station-28-2-
98.jpg
(You need to paste both parts of the URL together) Handheld shot taken on 
Kodak Gold 400 using an instamatic Pentax Espio 115. Way back in my 
beginning days of photography (: Have taken far better time exposures of 
this since then...

Regards

Michael

(Note: usual copyright disclaimer, do not use/copy/edit images without my 
permission).