Photographing in low light conditions

Under conditions like these we mainly consider photographing concerts or similar events where the use of a flash would only ruin the atmosphere or where its use is forbidden; such as concerts, sport events and theatricals. At the events like these make sure you use highly sensitive films, 800, 1600, 3200 ASA with higher light sensitive lenses (f2.8). You can also increase your 800 ASA films to 1600 ASA.


When shooting fireworks use tripod with a cable release.


At the theatricals flash would only ruin the atmosphere.
Film sensitivity here is 1600 ASA and exposure 1/60sec.

Exposure needs to be minimum 60sec or 125sec, so that people movements turn out somewhat sharp. It all depends on the tempo of the play. Sharpness of the photographs won’t be top quality because with the film sensitivity the grain gets bigger. If photographing at night it’s best to do it after the rain because wet roads reflect street lights.


When shooting this kind of locations, you will be sorry you didn’t take a tripod with you.

Little stars and circles:

On the photograph they occur during light deflection on the edges of a shutter plates, and only when we use small shutter aperture. Using shutter aperture set on f 5.6 little star around the light is barely visible, however, using shutter aperture set on f 8 it’s already getting visible. The more we close the shutter, the more visible the little star is.

Exposure:

- Short exposure will outline only the lights and we will get too much blackness on the photograph.
It’s better to expose something too much then too little, because it’s easy to darken the photograph later in the process.
- Normal exposure will give us a negative where the impression of the lights will be as real as if we were out there.
- Over exposure (Too long exposure) will give us a negative with all the details and shadows that will outline even those things we cannot see with our own eyes, that is more than what we need out of a night photograph.

Of course, where there is no light, not even the long exposure will help get it on film. Exposures longer then 5 minutes will usually burn the light parts, and for the parts in a shadow we won’t get any improvements.


Picture #1: Exposure here was one and a half second long.
You can see the car lights are quite short.


Picture #2: Exposure here was four seconds long and the car lights are much longer, but you must also change the shutter aperture.

Photographing Stars

The best time is the night without a moon and a sky without clouds. Close to any source of light, you won’t get the right sky image like millions of shining stars. You can shoot them easily, though. Place your camera on a tripod, point it towards the biggest group of stars (if you manage to capture a part of a ground, even better). Set the sharpness on the infinite (4) and expose the film at least for 30 minutes until you no longer have patience. The longer the exposure is, the longer the stars light print will be. Mandatory equipment is a stronger tripod, highly sensitive film (when shooting at night 400 ASA film will do) and a pocket torch so you can see what you’re doing.

Drawing with a light

As the car lights leave tracing on a negative, so will any other source of light. Drawing with a light can be done by holding a pocket torch in a dark, and in front of the open lens moving it in a form of different shapes. These shapes will outline themselves on the photograph and this way we can end up with a negative which we can use for editing and/or combining with other negatives.