Shooting neon lights at night

Post by **Paul L.** » Sat Jul 13, 2002 12:21 am

Any tips for shooting neon lights at night? 85a filter or no filter? Anyone try using a 4008 at 2, 4, 8 fps with neon lights to get background detail? Would the neon be overexposed?

Post by **mathis** » Sat Jan 04, 2003 10:36 pm

while reading thru this forum i stumbled across this never answered thread.
since i was shooting neon lights today at night iÃ‚Â´d like to know your experiences. i had the same questions and did it by experiment now. but i have to wait for the results.....

Post by **focusgroup** » Sun Jan 05, 2003 1:03 am

I suggest you view the threads from the masters of cinematography at cinematographer.com. They have tons of threads from pro's covering every imaginable lighting condition.

Post by **supa_ate_sixteen** » Sun Jan 05, 2003 1:31 am

Roger's website has some example frames from his website of some beautiful looking neon lights at night. Roger ? I would imagince wide open gets the most detail, also it would take a lot to wash out Neon on some K40.

Post by **nik-super8** » Sun Jan 05, 2003 1:54 pm

Last year I shot 2 cartridges of Ektachrome VNF 7240 with my Nizo S 56, at 18 fps, at night.
I did not use the camera`s buit in 85 filter. The results were very different.
It depends on the type of neon tube used in the lamp.
Unfortunately, you cannot necessarily distinguish this with your eyes.
The neon tubes emitting a warm, daylight type of light are quite nice on film. They are sometimes used in shop windows.
The cool white neon tubes are very worse and they are often used.
I shot a scene with a tram passing by. The people sitting in this train seemed to come from a horror movie. They all were very pale and the whole light had a strong cold blue touch.
Afterwards I read in a book that you should always use the 85 filter if there is neon light in your viewfinder.
But the 85 filter does not eliminate the blue-green cast of some neon tubes. You should use an additional FL-D or FL-W filter. But I haven`t tried this yet.

Manual exposure control is the best way, if you are shooting a single light source in the dark.
Fix the lens at the lowest f-stop possible or otherwise you will get a correct exposed light source in the complete darkness.
You can use automatic exposure control if there is enough light, for example in front of shop windows.

I have noticed something new to me when I was projecting these two films:
I have shot several historic buildings which were illuminated with floodlights containing sodium steam bulbs. They give this characteristic very bright yellow light.
In the projected image, this light is flickering very clearly on my screen.
Did anybody have the same experience?
I think the flicker is caused through the mains voltage`s frequency of 50 Hertz here in Germany. The sodium lamps emit light of this frequency.
The frequency of 50 Hz cannot be divided by the frame rate of 18 fps or 24 fps and therefore this interference flicker will occur during the projection. Am I right??

Niklas

NasQ_ · Post by **NasQ_** » Wed Jan 08, 2003 1:56 pm

Yeah you are right. 18fps or 24fps aren't flicker-free speeds, although 25fps is. But I think it's impossible to get flicker-free images without crystal sync.

Post by **Old Uncle Barry** » Wed Jan 08, 2003 2:36 pm

Back in the old days (that would be the sixties to most of you) we only had Kodachrome25.Very slow but very fine grain.
We also had lots of ambitious christmas light displays in our towns and cities.
We also wanted to film them at night.
We did.
How?
Open the aperture fully and shoot.
Result:perfectly exposed pictures,shop window displays being particularly colourful.
Filters? No chance.Just straight slow K25! at 16fps.So with todays film emulsions there are no problems.

Post by **jukkasil** » Thu Jan 09, 2003 4:08 pm

Here is one example (mpg-file) shot with K40 during 70's somewhere in USA:

http://www.sorb-i-tol.com/holidayinn.mpg