REAL high speed?

M like Leica M6 · 12-02-2004

Soon I have to take some pictures at night - flash, tripod etc. are taboo, I have to use my Leica without these accesories.

The situation will be in a street, my light meter tells me something like 1/2 second at 1.2 aperture at ASA 400. So, I have to go for at least 6400 ASA to get 1/30 second.

I could use a Tmax 3200 or similar and push it using my standard developer XTOL, but I expect high contrast due to city lights and am worried about higher contrast due to longer development.

What are your experiences, what can you recommend?

rover · 12-02-2004

What's all that pushing for? Have at it with a 1/4s shutter speed and see what you get.

http://www.rangefinderforum.com/phot...cat/652/page/1

Roman · 12-02-2004

TMax at 3200, Calbe A49 1+1, 20 Min at 20°C (oops, I think I already told you that at the Phototec forum) - you can see some examples (indoor portraits) in my gallery here.

Roman

Brian Sweeney · 12-02-2004

Well, now you have my curiousity up with the F1.2 aperture.

I can think of : Canon 50mm F1.2; Noctilux 50mm F1 stopped down; Modified Canon F0.95 stopped down; Nikkor or Zunow stopped down;

OR

The Leica Noctilux 50mm F1.2 Aspheric!!!

Oh. F1.2. BTW, what lens are you using... Do you know about our Camera and Coffee Thread?

M like Leica M6 · 12-02-2004

It's a Voigtländer 1.2/35mm with Leica M mount on my M6. Big, heavy, somewhat ugly and covers the bottom right corner of the finder due to its size, but a great lens.

Dont know that tread,, but as I am a serious coffee addict I will look for it :-)

oftheherd · 12-02-2004

People used to shoot Tri-X at 6400 in 4x5 with surprisingly good results. I think modern Tri-X pushes better. But, with a 35mm negative size, I don't know. Do you have time to experiment?

Pherdinand · 12-02-2004

"1/2 second at 1.2 aperture at ASA 400" -Damn that's dark. That's EV -0.5!
Watch out - in these scenes the contrast is indeed VERY high, film will not cope with it so you'll have to decide if you want to have correct highlights or shadows or what. I hope you are using a very sensitive incident meter or you bracket or...or your sunny-16 technique is very very good

I haven't used TMZ yet, but i do like how Delta3200 works at 3200. It's quite a low contrast film so *i've found it* perfect for these scenes, while daytime outdoors it sucks even in 120-format. Should depend alot on the development, of course.

Pherdinand · 12-02-2004

Here's 120-format delta3200 rated at box speed, however the light allowed for f/3.5 and 1/15 s ...

dmeledon · 12-02-2004

I've had very good results shooting Delta 3200 @3200, souped in DD-X. In 35mm the grain is just starting to peak out in 8x10, and it really starts showing over 11x14, but it's not ugly. In 120 grain is the same, so you can make it that much larger before it starts showing. I have also had good results shooting it at 1600.

Just recently I shot a roll of TMAX P3200 @1600, souped in TMAX and it has way more grain. Looks like it holds a little more shadow detail, not more than 1 stop, but at 5x7 it's showing grain like Delta does just over 8x10. Both of these films excell in high contrast lighting.

I have also shot Neopan 1600 @1600 and @800 souped in DD-X, the negs are thin, and print best in the 4-5 filter range, but the look is amazing, very little shadow detail and amazing skin tones. The grain is the smaller than Delta.

All films were devloped at 68 deg. using the times listed on the bottle, adjatating based on the film manufactures data sheet directions.

(ps, sorry, no spell check)

CleverName · 12-02-2004

I shoot Ilford 3200 @ 3200 all the time. Almost all the B&W photos on my webpage are 3200. Most of the bands were shot at Arnie's, my local pub, and it's really dark in there. They were all shot with aperatures from 1.4 to 2.8, (wide open, depending on the lens) with shutter speeds from 1/8th to 1/60th. I usually guess on the exposure, and the focus too, it's really too dark to in there to focus well. It's also difficult to focus after a few pints of Guinness

CleverName · 12-02-2004

By the way, I don't usually do anything in photoshop except crop, and try not to even to that.

Here's a Ilford 3200 shot done with a canonet f1.7 and probably 1/30th.

jlw · 12-02-2004

Don't go too much by what your meter tells you in this type of situation. Unless the street is unusually well-lit, you'll have some fairly light areas where you can pick up some subject detail, and murky dark areas away from the lights, where you can't get any detail at all and there's no point in trying.

As long as you compose the images so the important info is in the light areas, you may be able to get away with a less drastic ISO increase.

I've used T-Max 3200 in T-Max developer at up to 6400, but shadow detail drops off and grain increases noticeably for each step above 1600 (which is roughly its "natural" rating in this particular developer.) So, my preference would be to stick to rating it at 1600 (or better yet, 1250) and try to concentrate on the areas light enough to allow survivable shutter speeds. As it says in the "Low-Light Photography" chapter in the old Morgan & Morgan Leica Manual, "the secret to low-light photography is not a special lens or a special film. It is a way of seeing."

To see a few examples in practice, you can visit my cheesy little website and see some photos I shot a couple of years ago under streetlights (and worse):

http://homepage.mac.com/jlw/drags/

These were all shot with a Canon 7s and 50mm f/0.95 lens, but given the modern coatings on your Voigtlander lens (which I envy) the actual effective aperture probably isn't much different from what you can get.

dmeledon · 12-02-2004

jlw, your photo essay was a great read, thanks for the link!

M like Leica M6 · 12-03-2004

jlw.... thank you! I like these pictures... tonight is the night... for a few rolls.... :-)

oftheherd · 12-03-2004

jlw, that is a nice photo essay. And great photos! Thanks for sharing.

Laika · 12-03-2004

I remember reading threads on fast pushed B&W on photo.net awhile ago. I just did a quick search and found this thread. The images posted by Skully (TMZ @ ISO 12,800!!) looks very nice. It would be worth doing some more searching there and on google for real fast stuff. I think you’re stuck with high contrast even at 6400 so you will have to pick your shots carefully.

http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-...?msg_id=005YQM

Good Shooting