At 22:27 12/10/01, Wayne Culberson asked:
Can anyone give me a rough guess as to how long a time exposure should
be used for outdoor night photography of a house decorated with
Christmas lights? I am using an OM1 with Kodak 800. Wayne
Yes . . .
Scenes of this type have a typical "brightness value" (BV) of about -1 (in
EV units). Add to that a "speed value" (SV) of 8 for ISO 800 film (also in
EV units). The EV required for the camera exposure settings is 7. The
following combinations of shutter speed and aperture settings have an EV of
7 (time value plus aperture value):
1/60 @ f/1.4 (6 + 1)
1/30 @ f/2 (5 + 2)
1/16 @ f/2.8 (4 + 3)
1/8 @ f/4 (3 + 4)
1/4 @ f/5.6 (2 + 5)
1/2 @ f/8 (1 + 6)
You didn't state what lens you are planning to use, nor what apertures you
might want (for DOF). Use the meter in your OM-1 as a sanity check. This
is certainly within its range (@ ISO 100, the EV is 4). YMMV by as much as
a stop. Not certain why you would want to use ISO 800 unless you must do
this without a tripod, or if there's some kinetic object in the display and
you want to freeze its motion in the photograph(s). If you have a tripod
and cable release, I recommend using ISO 100 or 200. (Exposure times are
still short enough to avoid reciprocity failure.) Did a number of these
using Kodachrome 64 with an 80A filter (a two stop hit; EI=16)! Not a
perfect correction, but much closer than using daylight film alone. Trying
to focus through the filter was a RPITA. Finally took the filter off,
focused and carefully put it back on. This year, I'm trying some
Ektachrome 160T to see how well that works. Should be about the same.
-- John
P.S. The typical BV was taken from a reference containing brightness
levels of various, common existing light situations. I've used it for
estimating night scene exposures and it's fairly accurate.
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