Category: Sunsets

Different Film Stocks

The Moose on

I spent some time in December gathering film in abundance in an attempt to get a full view of the 120 negative landscape. This began with blurry pictures of surfers and the thought that a faster film might buy me a couple of stops to get sharper waves and moving things. Maybe the significantly larger negatives might mitigate some of the grain issues I remember from my 35mm film days a quarter century back and I don’t always need the very finest grain, regardless.

There really aren’t a lot of options these days. From what I have seen of pictures on the internets posted by fellow photographic luddites, each film has its own qualities. And what most intrigues me is that Portra 400 and Portra 800 seem to be different than the Portra 160 I have already tried. The only film stock I didn’t much care for in the samples I’ve perused was the Fuji 400H, which seems even worse with shadows than the Kodak offerings I’ve tried, but I have been interested in the Fuji Pro 160NS. It isn’t imported to the US market, but a few people seem to be getting cases and reselling them on ebay. Luckily, I found one seller right here in town and got a 5 pack from him.

So, my experimental films:

  1. Ektar 100
  2. Portra 160
  3. Portra 400
  4. Portra 800
  5. Fuji Pro 160 NS

Alas, I only have two backs, so I wasn’t able to really do apples to apples with all of them. And film and processing is so damned expensive I am not going to waste film on nothing but experiments, so I just kept a different film in each back and when I had time and the light looked interesting I went out to shoot.

For apples to apples, I got Ektar and Portra 160

Portra 800 and Ektar

Portra 400 and Fuji Pro 160NS

When I say Apples to Apples, the Portra 400 and Fuji are a little farther off than the other two. Both were loaded in the field as I ran out other stock and the images were captured more than a few minutes apart, so it was a little darker when the Fuji was shot. But the other comparisons were back to back1 and as close to the same exposure as I can get.

I uploaded a couple of shots super large. All I did was make them 90% jpeg so the file size is manageable, no color correction or sharpening. The idea was is get an idea of just how grainy the films are. Right click and view image for the monster sized version.

Portra 800 — fast enough the birds are sharp
Fuji Pro 160NS
Portra 400
Ektar 100

I have my favorites so far. Not going to say which ones, or why, but I have an idea now of what I might try in different situations. And I know the 800 is definitely grainier, and noticeably so, but not to the point of distraction. I might have to try to get some surfers after all.

I have been editing the crap out of some of these scans just to see what I can get. And have been experimenting with filters, though my filter holder is too small for the 50mm lens. I have to hold a filter in front of the camera while opening the shutter, and then hope the scan doesn’t come back with my fingers in the frame. My 100mm lens has relatively petite 82mm filter threads, so I have experimented there with success, but the wider lenses are 95mm and 112mm threads.

This isn’t the real problem, though. The real issue I had with many of these exposures is a byproduct of how reflective the water is near the reeds in the Bataquitos lagoon. There, the sky was only a stop or a stop and a half above the reflections in the water, but my reverse GNDs are 2 or 3 stop, and my hard GNDs are 2 and 2.5 stops.

In this case, if I want to get the reeds in the middle exposed with any detail the sky is 4 stops up and the water is 2.5 stops up. Using a 1 or 2 stop soft GND the border darkened the reeds and not the water in front of them. Using a hard GND at 2 stops brought the sky down to the same or even below the water. I tried using a soft 1 stop flipped upside down, which worked great to tame the sky, but that’s a cheap Formatt Hitech filter and it has a magenta cast so the sky ends up redder than the water. Every solution is suboptimal.

I need to ruminate on this, but it seems like a 1 stop hard or medium might come in handy. Or I could stop being an idiot2 and trying to tame an overly contrasty scene. I’ve been reticent to get one because 130mm filters are stupid expensive, but I could still hold a cheaper 100mm with my fingers, and I could use it with my 100mm holder on the tiny little baby Nikon cameras that only have 77mm threads as well.

Enough ruminating. I’m just going to post edited images now by film type.

Fuji Pro 160NS

Portra 400

Portra 800

Portra 160

Ektar 100

The first Ektar shot shows the value of a real holder, an easy horizon, and an appropriate filter. There’s 2.5 stops of reverse GND on that sunset and the clouds in the other shot (not posted) that don’t have the filter lack detail while the foreground is very dark. That’s an 8 second exposure a bit after the sun was down and I exposed for the grey bridge support on the shady side. Those cacti are a darned good substitute for middle grey and they were down maybe 1/2 of a stop as I have learned to fudge up, not down, when shooting Ektar. The others were just frustrating, either the sky was too bright, too dark, or had a magenta shift from that crappy filter and all the post editing to get the exposure balanced top to bottom doesn’t make the reflections the same color as the sky.

I took some digital shots while I was at these sites as well. I’ve posted the ones from the late sunset over the bridge, but I don’t think I shared the ones from the bird sanctuary. Taken after the film was gone as the sky just didn’t want to give up.

1. Literally. I took a photograph, swapped on a different film back, adjusted to get as close as possible to the same exposure, then took the other photograph. I can’t always get perfect exposure parity as ISO 160 is only 2/3 of a stop faster than 100 while the camera only adjusts in whole stops.

2. We all know that’s not going to happen.

Surf’s Up

The Moose on

There was a substantial swell over the weekend. Head high waves with way bigger in some sets. It seemed like every surfer in Southern California was trying to get a piece of it. I knew the tide was high at 1PM, so I headed down a little after, and as I was driving down the coast highway there were absolute rocking monsters throwing spray off of every jetty.

Except, the tide was lower than I expected. Because high tide was two hours before. I looked at the tide tables, saw 11, and my pea brain registered 1. Dammit!

Oh well. Stopped at the first open spot, which was next to the cold water jetty, so I climbed out on the rocks until I was almost getting sprayed by the bigger waves and started playing with the gear.

I first used the time to work out my video tripod with the 300-500 lens. Alas, I took 30-40 minutes getting set up, learning how to make the tripod move properly, then learning how to make the VR1 on the camera work properly for what I was trying to do. By the time I got around to still photos the tide had ebbed too far and the waves were significantly smaller and choppier, losing their grandeur. They had so much power when I first arrived, it was disappointing to not get them a their largest.2 That’s what I get for misreading my tide chart. I still enjoyed the afternoon very much.

The surf, and the linup:

North of the Jetty. Before I sorted it I was using too slow a shutter speed and having focus issues. I later bumped the ISO and changed focus to wide area S and continuous and got much sharper results. Here’s the first burst I tried:

There was a guy on a standup catching some monsters north of the Jetty, and when I was first there a couple of folks were making the right as well as the left. But by the time I was done futzing with gear everything was farther north, left, and running behind the north jetty rocks.

South of the jetty was into the sun, so the light wasn’t as good. And the waves there weren’t as steep and were getting smaller as the tide ebbed. But it was less crowded and there were a few pretty good surfers there trying to avoid the mobs to the north and at Terramar.

Basically, I shoulda got there earlier. Next time I’ll have my camera set up right, and I have the tripod tuned now, so taking video will go more smoothly as well, if I feel the desire. Another swell mid week and over the weekend, with higher tides later in the day, so maybe I’ll get to try again.

I ended the day over the lagoon watching the sunset. Since I had the ginormous lens on, I gave it a go. Nothing extra special here, just playing with exposures.

1. Vibration Reductions. Nikon’s brand of in-lens image stabilization.

Note to self: For video go with Internal Stabilization OFF, lens VR ON, Sport mode. This seems to smooth out the minor jumblies, but doesn’t introduce weird artifacts or cause strange lags when trying to pan the camera.

2. That’s what she said.

Reflections on 2020 and the New Year

The Moose on

This isn’t some introspective blog post or anything. You might get that from the title, but that’s not what it means. I literally was taking pictures of reflections a couple days ago, and then this afternoon at sunset.

The tide has been very low right at sunset this last week, and a low, ebbing tide tends to expose these shallow waves and wet sand flats that reflect the clouds. A couple days ago on my walk the clouds came out a wonderful stripey pattern that made blue and pink in the waves, and today it looked like it might do it again, but we ended up with nothing but cirrus. Still worth it, and I wasn’t the only one there to witness it. Hundreds of people lining the blufftops from the village to south of Terramar, where I decided to watch it myself.

First, the sunset from two days ago. I took a bunch, all handheld, at different exposures, to see what I would get. The tide had ebbed by this moment, and was beginning to turn, so it was a fun game of walking out to the waterline for a shot, then having to scramble back up when a wave came in. Like an enormous sandpiper.

Behold:

Today’s was far less colorful. And, frankly, I got there late. Probably had a lot of really good golden reflections half an hour earlier, but even the more sedate light was beautiful in person. Just far less spectacular than the clouds above. I’ll post them anyway, because it’s 2021 and these are the first photos of the year. Frankly, 2020 can just fuck right off. Good riddance.

My favorites are the single man standing in the reflections. The somehow reflect the mood of the season.

Bataquitos Sunset

The Moose on

It never quite went off tonight. The clouds were perfectly set, but too much scud rolled in before the sun got below the clouds. I was worried about that, so I went to my spot underneath the bridge, hoping the extra mile inland would help. At first it looked like it was going to be great, as you can see in the first photo. But it wasn’t enough. The clouds kept rolling in and. I held hope as the sky started going light and for about a minute there was a lovely reflection and some lit clouds, but then the vibrancy died off and it was just a spot of glow and grey.

Alas, at the same time, the east was lit up with spectacular pink and purple. But, being beneath the bridge with all the water to the west of me, that did me no good. The last photo is what’s behind me at this spot, a bridge, a freeway offramp, and some bushes. Far less dramatic than still, reflecting waters.

Might have been a good night to take this lagoon from the other direction. I should scout the overlooks up the road. I’ve avoided them because the background is a mall and a wal mart, but maybe there’s some creative framing to be done for evenings like this.

Exmas Eve Sunset

The Moose on

Lots of clouds, lots of wind. Offshore wind, though, which is very strange with these clouds. I never got the perfect light I was looking for, with some clouds and smoke obscuring the horizon, but a half hour after sunset taking 15-30 second exposures was kind of interesting.

I’ll just dump them all here. They should be in chronological order.

Some more film

The Moose on

Just a few shots I took looking for challenging metering. I pretty much lost half of each roll doing this, but I think I am learning some. Taken over the course of a week in Early December. I’ll just leave them here without further comment.

Birds In Silhouette

The Moose on

This afternoon there was a lovely, broken, high cirrus with no scud on the horizon and little possibility of the marine layer blocking a glorious lighting of the high clouds. It was going to be a perfect sunset for photography.

I put the ultrawide on the film camera, and camped on a spot where I saw several strings of pelicans flying by at low altitude, and where I expected plenty of options for subjects beneath the spectacular glow. Then I watched the sky as the clouds dissipated, leaving me with nothing above the horizon. Instead of a firmament of ping, purple, and yellow I got mostly blue, with the only color being right where the sun hit the horizon. And the pelicans never again flew past. That’ll teach me to get excited for the weather.

At least I had the digital with a 24-70 lens, so I spent some of the time experimenting with powerful backlighting. The tide was extremely low and the breeze was out of the north. Plenty of seagulls were using the jetties for lift, at some moments congregating in groups a dozen strong, and I got a few cormorants heading north for variety. It wasn’t what I was looking for, but at least it was a fun way to spend an hour outside on a chilly evening.

I dumped a smattering of the images to jpeg and I’ll just leave them here.

Film Tests

The Moose on

I have been burning through some film stock, trying to see what’s what in negative film. The recent tests have been on Portra 160, Ektar, and PanF 50.

I originally thought to just try one black and white and one color film, and chose Ektar and Ilford XP2 to start with. The Ilford was chosen at random as a 400 speed black and white that has been around forever, so I figured it was a standard. The Ektar because I saw some great landscape images on the website of a photographer I like1. Both are reputed to be forgiving, so I got a box of each.

But I ended up with a large variety before I even shot my first frame. The gentleman I bought the camera from said he’d toss in a “couple rolls of film to get me started,” which I thought was awesome. But his definition of “couple” was quite expansive. He actually gave me a two boxes of Portra 160 as well as a bunch of Ilford black and white including PanF 50, Delta 100, and Delta 3200. Quite a variety!

Ektar is supposedly the more saturated negative film, and I’d thought to do some saturated landscapes when I decided to try film. The first rolls I shot that came out showed that it is, in fact, super saturated. Enough that skin tones get a little ruddy and golden sunlight gets a touch of red in it. The roll I got back today, however, was shot into a sunset with wild colors reflecting on calm water and it was beautiful.

This shot was the last frame of Ektar I had — I took three shots, the other two as lovely but I like the ducks in this one. I shot Portra before this for comparison, and was about ready to pack up and head back to the truck, but this was a sunset that never wanted to give up and a few minutes after I ran out of Ektar every cloud lit up an amazing pink, and even the ones overhead were reflected on the still water in front of me, so I slapped on the back with Portra 160 and gave it a go.

In all cases I knew the reeds in the middle were going to go black. The sky and the water only had a stop or two difference, but the reeds were several stops down, so I metered for the water and let the sky take care of itself. From what I’ve sussed about these films, you can go down a stop or two then it gets noisy, then black. You can go up way more and the highlights won’t run out of information even if they’re four stops over.

Well, the Portra definitely fits that bill. It’s amazeballs, and even the reeds in the foreground, which are down two stops, show the weird pink glow everything had in real life. The second shot is a four or eight second exposure3 and I can’t tell you how happy I am it came out like this.

Another roll of Portra had some night shots I’d done the week after Thanksgiving, including shots of Baba. The less saturated colors are even more pleasing than the slightly over-the-top Ektar shot of the same scene, and the dynamic range is beyond impressive.

Baba Coffee — shot on Portra 160
Baba Coffee — shot on Ektar 100

The same shot in Ektar is also lovely, but I’m a fan of the Portra. The colors are spot on, and the dynamic range is even better than the Ektar, which already handles the lit sign better than digital by far. Note how much more influence the streetlamp has on the color cast on Ektar as well, coming up a little green, but also note how much extra blue it adds to the sign and the umbrellas.

Even though I metered the same way, the Portra shot might be slightly more exposed. It is 160 speed film, compared to Ektar’s 100 speed, and having come only a few minutes later in the evening I’m guessing it wasn’t a whole stop darker even though I corrected up a full stop, but the highlights are still beautifully handled. The information in the dark areas is lovely, too, and you can tell the building above is a deep ruddy brown.

As for the PanF 50, I don’t know what to make of it. Every single image I took the camera barked at me4, even when I thought I was doubling the meter reading. I’ve learned two things here, first that PanF has a lot of reciprocity failure and needs quite a bit more than the meter says, and second, that the Fuji really doesn’t measure well at ASA50 so sometimes you just have to let it beep at you and tell it to suck your balls. Both of these shots were called underexposed and, though not exactly perfect, were not so dark I’d expect them to be more than two stops down.

I also took some experimental artsy5 shots of some bridge pilings where I had deep shadows and brightly lit concrete. All three had the camera beeping and flashing lights like a pissed off R2D2, yet I’m not convinced that they are too dark. The darkest one is underexposed, sure. But at very least least the brightest one has to be within two stops of adequate, regardless of the disapproving minus sign.

That said, I printed out a reciprocity chart for Ilford films and tossed a copy in each of my camera and gear bags. 50 speed film is slow even in full daylight, and the failure on these black and whites is way more than I realized. 4 seconds on the meter translates to over 7 seconds in the real world, and it gets worse from there so this stuff isn’t just meter for the shadows. It’s meter for the shadows then double it.

This was a fun bunch of data. Not in the least because I am still very uncertain about how to meter for a lot of situations and having a few frames come back nice, not just recoverable, is quite a relief.

The next batch will be both better and worse. I tried some crazy long exposures, which I’m almost certain won’t be good but will give me data on how far off my assumptions are. And I shot some tonight that included a spectacular sky and some pretty reasonable subjects, so I’m confident the incident metering in conjunction with Portra’s dynamic range should give me a usable shot or two.

1. alexburkephoto.com — I don’t know the cat, he just posts beautiful landscapes and explains things like metering and filters in a way that I find very easy to understand.

2. After carefully exposing several shots, bracketing the meter, and recording my settings for test purposes, I pulled this roll out of the camera and dropped it, at which point it sprung open and ruined the whole roll. I now keep a rubber band in my pocket to put on exposed film and keep it from unrolling, just in case.

3. It was very dark and I had put my notepad away already, so I don’t remember exactly. Which is foolish, as the whole reason for this was to test film and practice exposure in challenging conditions.

4. Being state of the art in 1997, this camera does metering through the lens. But only while you’re taking the picture, not before hand. If it doesn’t think it got enough light, or got too much light, during your exposure it will beep annoyingly and flash all the LCD screens in a fit of disapproval. Strangely, it makes it extra satisfying when it doesn’t beep and the “EXP” is shown on the screen instead of the flashing lights and a + or – sign showing that you over or underexposed that last shot.

5. This just means they’re crap shots. But if you act like they’re great art filled with hidden meaning and anyone who doesn’t understand them just doesn’t get it, maybe you’re avant-garde.

Random sunset shots

The Moose on

Went to the cold water jetty as there were clouds all day but they started to break right around 3:30 or 4. I expected the view to the south to be good, as that’s where it has been the last few times I’ve been out on days like this, so I climbed out on the south jetty and pointed toward the surfers and the power plant.

I was wrong. It just kept getting more socked in south, but north it was opening up so I took shots of the north jetty, and the sky did not disappoint. Alas, I should have been on top of the seawall behind me, so I could get the surfers and both jetties in the frame, but I was really there for the film camera, the digital was just an afterthought.

Here was the view south that I began with.

I got a couple with people riding waves as well, but as the light died off I had to turn around and set everything up facing the other way:

I have NO idea if any of those film shots came out. My Z6 was routinely telling me a way faster shutter speed than my light meter. so while I guessed exposure trusting the meter, I have no confidence.

Meanwhile, while I was setting up the film camera I had the digital on an intervalometer, so I wouldn’t miss the sunset to my left, which did not disappoint. The gentleman in these shots had a brand new Panasonic Lumix camera with him he was learning to use, his daughter had less patience and was doing a lot more running around. She was strangely fascinated by my messing with the film camera, it seems. But this is common, children often stare. Byproduct of being weird looking, I guess, but Cats and children have always flocked to me, though I much prefer dogs to either one.

I had framed the sunset and the boat, and the people sort of came along later. Asked if they were in the way and I just said “Nah, go out there. It’ll make the pictures better.” I just framed it then set it to fire shots every 15 second and see what I got, then when it was done zoomed in and did it again. I didn’t want to pay too much attention to the digital, since my real attention was needed elsewhere. They are nice snapshots I guess. I like the one with the bird the best.

Sunset kept going to well after dark. At one point it just lit up like fire for a minute or two. Then ten minutes later the clouds got tinged with pink in the deepest dark of blue hour and I did a few 15-30 second exposures to see what would happen. Did 3 long exposures on film, too, as well as two that are guaranteed black since I didn’t understand how the bulb mode worked on the camera. Sometimes you learn the hard way.

I’ll see how the film shots come back later in the week. Not sanguine that I captured the deep reds after dark, though. I went out there looking for a challenging light situation to practice metering, but this is still a little over my head. The Z6 does a lot of the heavy lifting for me, exposure wise.

Palmhenge

The Moose on

That result is never as good as when your exposure is damned near perfect in the camera

My porch has a view of a tiny peek of the ocean. With the 500mm lens you can just get a glimpse of it through these two palm trees that are about 1000 yards away along the lagoon, but if you move a few inches left you catch the corner of the house, and move an inch right and you’ll run into the post on the corner of the porch. There’s not much latitude for movement, but at the end of the summer I noticed the sun setting closer and closer to those palm trees, and really wanted to try and get a picture of them, the peek of water, and the sun. I figured I had two days to make it work, no more.

I mean, I could make it work other days. Get a ladder, climb on the roof, whatever. Just rig something so I can move the camera off the porch and still get up high enough to see over the neighbor’s fence and the avocado tree, but these are the dark days of 2020 when there’s fuck-all to do so this is the game. Gotta take it from the porch, or not at all.1 For the next month I tracked the sun a couple days a week, watching it setting a little farther south each day.

Mid October the sun was almost there. I practiced exposures a bit so I could get it perfect on one of the two good days. I figured the best days would be around the 14th, but we had some clear afternoons in the week leading up. Here was the 11th:

As you see, there were some clouds rolling in. The next two days were cloudy, I didn’t even get a sunset on the 12th, but it cleared up just before sunset on the 13th. I was rushing, and I had to crop a bit of the rain gutter out of the upper right corner (which is why it’s 4×5 ratio), but got this shot:

Still not quite perfect. Maybe one stop underexposed. I could bring it up in the photoshops, but even if I had that program or something like it that result is never as good as when your exposure is damned near perfect in the camera. A weak Santa Ana was forming so the next night was good for one more shot:

Bam!2 Money, baby! This is straight from the camera, as shot.

Proof: No edits, just dump to jpeg from CaptureDX

I did cheat some. I bracketed the exposure and let it fire five times, though the setting I chose in the middle was the best, identical to the previous night then up 1.3 stops. More exposure blew out the sun and less lost details.

The setup from the porch looked like the picture inset. Note I have an inch or two to move right before I hit the post… almost enough to get the sun centered. I don’t remember if those were the final camera settings. If you care, this was 1/40th at f/22, and I got there with spot metering, preserve highlights, and cranked the middle exposure +1.3. At least according to the exif data in NikonView.

The very narrow room for composition

Since film is free in the Z6, I also took a bunch if brackets from before the sun hit the palms until it was beneath the horizon, and there were a plenty of really nice shots. I even had one in the middle of the trees… but I am not going to show you any more.

This is my favorite. I like it slightly to the side, and just kissing the water. Something about asymmetry speaks to me these days. It’s more aesthetically pleasing, especially when cropped to an 8×10 print, which I do just by lopping 2 inches off the right side.

The next night was cloudy before sunset, so this was my last chance.3 My weather luck held up on the 14th though, so there you have it. October, 2020’s magnum opus.

Go back and look at the money shot again, right click and view file, it’ll expand to 2200px. That’s about 1/3 the original size, and the detail amazes me. An almost impossible shot with technology even a few years ago and, while I shouldn’t call it easy, it was easy enough it feels like cheating.

The three images I sent to test North Coast Photo

This was the first print I made at North Coast photo. That same evening, in fact. I sent it off an hour after the sun set. It looks even better on paper, in your hand. Contact me if you want a print, I’ll make you one in a heartbeat. The one on my wall is 8×12, but It is easily good for up to 12×18 at the original ratio, or 16×20 cropped. If I know you I’ll do it at my cost.

Only like six people have ever looked at this blog, so you probably have my email or phone number.

1. Yeah, I’m full of shit. If I’d missed it I’d totally have stacked some boxes for the tripod to stand on or climbed on the roof the next week.

2. I sure hope you read that as if it was uttered while squeezing a Spice Weasel

3. Pretend with me, or the title Palmhenge isn’t as fun. We can intone “Lo, and the sun shall only kiss the gap on the third week after the solstice,” or some crap like that.