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1-Fast
Films | 2- Alpenglow | 3-Tripod | 1-Night
Films | 1-Time of Day
6- Direction of Light | 7-Concerts and Stage Shows
8-Push-Processing |
9-Extended-Range Development
10-Night with Detail
You can
capture the beauty of existing light on your film-here are some good ways to
do it
While many wonderful photographs
have been created in the studio, you don't need a studio and lots of lighting
equipment to make beautiful images. Nature has given us a "studio"-the world-complete
with all kinds of sets and light, from harsh, direct sunlight to the soft, diffused
light we find on an overcast day or coming in through a picture window. And
man has given us wondrous light to work with, indoors and at night. Here are
some tips on how you can put available light to good photographic use.
1-Fast Films
Fast films help you capture
the essence of the available light, even when the light level is low-and even
when the subject is moving. Fujicolor Super G 800 and Kodak Gold Max produce
image quality nearly equal to that of the best ISO 400 films, but with an extra
stop of speed. In really dim lighting, Konica SR-G 3200 (ISO 3200) is the fastest
color film available, yielding amazingly good prints for its speed. Superfast
color-slide films are very grainy, so it's best to shoot color-negative film
when such speeds are needed, and have slides made from the negatives if you
need slides. In black-and-white, Kodak T-Max P3200 is the speed king-you can
expose it at 3200 or EI 6400 with very good results, and push it all the way
to EI 25,000 or even 50,000 for surveillance photography. When speeds of ISO
1000 or so will do, the chromogenic black-and-white films (Ilford XP2 400, Kodak
T-Max T400 CN and Konica Monochrome VX400) will yield excellent results.
Important note: Slower films
produce better image quality than faster ones, so for best results use the slowest
film that will allow you to get the picture.
This shot of a great egret
was made on Fujicolor Super G 800 with Canon's EF 300mm f/4L IS image-stabilizing
telephoto lens in early morning light. Back to top
2- Alpenglow
Sunsets appear orange or
red because the atmosphere scatters shorter (blue, cyan and green) light wavelengths
more than longer (yellow, orange and red) ones, and the sunlight has to go through
more of the atmosphere when the sun is low in the sky, leaving mainly the longer
orange and red wavelengths to come through. When the sun is just below the horizon,
its light on mountaintops gives them a pink or even red cast known as alpenglow.
You can take advantage of this beautiful effect even if you don't live in an
alpine community-it occurs on cloud formations, too, when the conditions are
right. Keep an eye out for it just after sunset or just before sunrise. Back
to top
3-Tripod
If you use a tripod, you
don't need fast film and fast lenses for low-light photography of stationary
subjects. So you can take advantage of the sharper, finer-grained films, with
their richer colors. And you can produce some interesting blurred effects when
there are moving and stationary subjects in the scene. Back to
top
1-Night Films
Night scenes are often illuminated
by a variety of light sources, so you can use either daylight- or tungsten-balanced
slide film. Daylight films yield warm (orange) renditions, while tungsten films
yield cooler (bluer) renditions. Try both types, and see which gives you the
effect you like best. Back to top
1-Time of Day
In the studio, you can put
your lights where you want them. With available light, the trick is to position
your subject relative to the existing light-or in the case of scenic photography,
to choose a time when the sun is in the right place relative to the subject.
SunWhere (Clear Day Software, 1622 Woodstock Ln., Reston, VA 22094; 703/318-9818)
is a computer program that will tell you just where the sun will be at any time
of day and year, anywhere in the U.S.-so you can figure out just when to photograph
that famous landmark (or any subject). Or if you're already there, and don't
want to do any figuring, just check the subject out at different times of day.
Back to top
6- Direction of Light
As you can see in the two
photos of a lake shoreline, you can achieve quite different effects at any day
just by shooting in different directions-the shots were taken moments apart
in the late afternoon, from a light airplane circling the subject. Early morning
and late afternoon are great times to shoot scenic and aerial photos, because
the low-angle light casts long shadows that emphasize texture and form, and
you can use front, side- or backlighting by moving around the subject. Back
to top
7-Concerts and Stage
Shows
It's tough to get great
shots at big-time concerts and plays, because only credentialed photographers
can get close to the action, and often photography by others is prohibited.
If photography is allowed and you have to shoot from your seat, a fast zoom
lens and fast film will provide some compositional versatility and allow you
to shoot at fast enough shutter speeds to get sharp images hand-held. If the
stage lighting is pretty even across the image area, your camera's multi-segment
or average metering will provide good exposures; if the lighting is uneven,
take a spot reading of the main subject (many current 35mm SLRs have a spot-metering
mode). At smaller community theaters, you can sometimes arrange to shoot during
a rehearsal, and thus gain access to good vantage points-and great images. That's
how the shot of the actress on the phone was made. Exposure was based on an
incident meter reading taken from the stage. Back to top
8-Push-Processing
Sometimes a film's rated
ISO speed isn't high enough for the task at hand-in the existing lighting, you
can't use a fast enough shutter speed to hand-hold the shot, or to adequately
freeze a moving subject; or you can't stop the lens down enough to provide the
necessary depth of field. In such cases, the best solution is to switch to a
faster film. If you can't do that, though, you can expose the film you're using
at a higher ISO speed, and compensate for the resulting underexposure (to a
degree) when you process the film (or have it processed by a pro lab). This
is called push-processing, and it basically involves underexposing and overdeveloping
the film. The results are increased grain and contrast with decreased shadow
detail and sharpness, but you will be able to use a faster shutter speed and/or
a smaller lens aperture in a given light level. You can extend development in
a normal developer, or use a speed-increasing developer such as Super Speed
or Acufine (the speed-increasing developers produce better results). The shot
of the sprint car racing at night was made on Kodak T-Max P3200 pushed to EI
6400 in Kodak T-Max developer. Back to top
Note: A film's
ISO speed is the speed printed on the cassette. Any other speed at which you
rate the film is known as an exposure index (EI).
9-Extended-Range Development
Extended-range development
is the opposite of push-processing: You overexpose the film to record detail
in the dark areas, and underdeveloped to keep the bright areas from becoming
too dense on the negative. Normally exposed and developed black-and-white film
will reproduce a scenic brightness range of around seven stops-that is, if the
brightest thing in the scene is seven stops brighter than the darkest, and you
expose the film correctly, you can make a print with detail throughout the scene.
If the brightest thing in the scene is more than seven stops brighter than the
darkest, you'll lose detail in at least one of them. However, if you overexpose
the film and then use an extended-range developer, you can record detail through
a scene in which the brightest thing is 10 or more stops brighter than the darkest.
This night scene was exposed for 10 seconds at f/5.6 on Kodak Tri-X film, which
was then processed in XR-1 developer. Back to top
10-Night with Detail
A night scene basically
consists of lights and the areas lit by them, and dark, unlit areas. The scenic
brightness range-the difference between the brightest and darkest areas of the
scene-is too great to record on film. Generally, we expose for the lit areas
and let the dark areas go black. However, it is possible to record detail throughout
a night scene. One way is to make a double exposure on a single frame of film-the
first shortly after sunset to record detail in parts of the scene that aren't
going to be lit, and the second after dark at least two hours later, to record
the night lights. With this method you have to wait hours between the two exposures,
and must make sure the camera doesn't move at all during that time (recock the
camera carefully), or the two images will be off-register and your photo will
be unsharp. The second way-extended-range development-is really applicable only
to black-and-white. The third way is to cheat: Shoot at the twilight "magic
hour," that time when the city lights have come on, but the natural light isn't
completely gone from the sky. Back to top
Mike Stensvold
Petersen's PHOTOgraphic
Annual, 1998
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