K40 and Twilight

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tfunch24
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Joined: Tue May 28, 2002 5:38 am
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K40 and Twilight

Post by tfunch24 »

The header's a bit misleading, but here's my situation. This weekend I shot a quickie short on K40. One of the last shots I did occurred right before twilight. It was overcast and gray. There was enough light outside to drive without headlights. I was shooting closeups of my radio and me pounding the steering wheel inside my car. The car was parked outside. I used a Leicina Super with a 1.9 lens and the daylight filter engaged. I got the exposure using the internal light meter and underexposed by half an F-stop. In both cases, the camera was located 1.5-2 feet away from the filmed subject. The aperature opened up all the way. Using my DC-AC power inverter, I put a 75-watt kicker in the passenger side footwell to try and get the aperature to close down. It did not budge.

What I'm wondering is, is it going to come out all shadowy or will there be enough light to ascertain some detail? I've only shot K40 in pure daylight or in interiors with enough light to expose the subject. I've never used it in twilight.

Tom
Lucas Lightfeat
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Post by Lucas Lightfeat »

Hi Tom

What is a tad worrying is that the kicker didn't bring the needle up to read for the widest apperture, so it will definately be underexposed, but that's OK. My guess is that it will come out dark and moody, and will look like a classic "dusk for night" shot - famously the best way of shooting a nightime scene. The "magic hour" of dusk is great for night shots, but you must avoid shooting the sky (isn't that a film?), as it is clearly too bright for night-time. In my experience of K40 in the dusk, it will look moody, muddy (brownish), dark, but cool. It should be useable, even good, I think.

Lucas
tfunch24
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Post by tfunch24 »

That's what I suspect--but one of the things I don't like about Super 8 is (for me, anyway) its unpredictability. I'll shoot something with one of my faster cameras and what I think is enough light, and the film comes back black. Other times, I'm sure I'll get a dark roll back and a week later I am pleasantly surprised with well-exposed images. The car was flooded with daylight and a 75-watt kicker added some light, but the aperature still remained wide open...as if I were shooting in a nighttime living room lit only with two dim practicals.

I'll find out in a week or so (I sent the film off to Dwayne's because I'd like to get it back quicker than Kodak's three weeks.)

The day-for-night look wasn't what I was aiming for--I started filming in the early afternoon and some shots took longer to get than I expected. However, as this is all for a one-joke S8 short comedy, it's not the end of the world.

This is not part of the Tri-X project upon which I have been working, off and on, since December.

Tom
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