Ultra Long Exposures

On June 17, 2026 - Film speed, Light

8 Second versus 240 Second Exposures All Other Parameters Being The Same

Experiment as part of a proof of concept to make film exposures that could last for weeks. The long exposure (on the right) had the exact same setup as the shorter exposure (left) including the use of the same filter and fstop. The 8 second exposure was determined by my light-meter as correct for the r72 filter needed to filter out most of the light.

It has very little to do with the film both sides were developed in same batch. More about that later if I decide to build a special camera. Also if I used a low reciprocity film like Neopan 100 I'm sure I could get exposure times of a year.

I'm looking at the ultra long exposure work of Michael Wesely and thinking how I might do it without necessarily duplicating his methods as referenced in this thread

I'm making use of the fact that at really short exposures time very little light actually falls on the film. Plus reciprocity failure happens the same for short exposures as it does for long exposures as film needs more than one photon withing a certain period to expose a grain.

A 2 hour exposure could have been achieved except for the fact of the bitter cold arctic weather made it too difficult to stand around on a street corner. The baby steps were enough to lead me to believe a month would be no problem while a year is possible but will add some more difficulties. It would be interesting to put an auto shutter on my large format pinhole camera.

Note: it was really really cold and I couldn't get my tripod to lock down solid, so there is some tripod caused camera shake.

film, long exposure

Moved Uptown without a Downtown

On June 17, 2026 - My Photography

New look, Same Old, Same Old

On June 17, 2026 - Update

Misty Morning

In 2005 I started my website as an experiment. Twenty-one years later, a generation older, its more than a bit dated! Still an experiment but with some new candy coating. New rraz.ca front page in a static business card style, new WordPress driven blog, I kept all the old posts as many are relevant to film development, so may still be relevant. New fancy slideshow app accessible from photography.rraz.ca or my vibe code navigation tool. Lastly this vibe coded navigation app. When it comes to nonstandard coding AI has a long way to go. Far from perfect but really frustrating try it on your phone or tablet and let me know?

Note On Scanning Black and White Negatives With Epson V500 Using The Individul Gain Setting In Vuescan

On July 14, 2014 - My Photography

With R, G, B gains set as below with the scan imported into Lightroom and using a custom colour profile

A recent release of Vuescan has new functionality of be able to use individual gain setting:

This allows me make a DNG output scan with each of the RGB channels having different gains.This has been an extension of the single image (hdr) techniques mentioned at the bottom of this introduction to the Epson V500.

Note that depending on the scanner under inspection with the gains being equal one of the RGB channels might be cleaner or have better resolution. One might best use this as the channel with the middle gain.


Same as above plus color has been flattened back to Black and White Mamiya C220 80mm f2.8 TMAX 400 Film D76 1:1 10 minutes 22c

Redscale and Double Exposures as Normal / Redscale Pairs

On November 3, 2013 - Cross processing, Ektachrome, Redscale

Cross Processed Expired Kodak Ektachrome 360T Redscale Shot at Iso 100

As many of you know cross processing is developing a film in a different chemistry then was intended, in this case a e6 transparency film was developed in C41 colour negative chemistry.

Redscale is just reversing the film so light from the lens first goes through the back of the film and exits the emulsion side. This travelling in reverse through the different layers that make up colour film reduces the effective ISO and causes the film to have predominantly red, orange and yellow false colours.

I shot one roll just to try it out and the above was my best shot pretty meh.

This year I participated in an international film swap where a roll of film was exposed twice (one for each participant) the idea is that we would end up with random double exposures from 2 countries. My partner was a student from Italy. To mix it up a bit I asked him to shot a roll at full film speed and take shots with lots of textures. Unfortunately there was a slight language barrier and he under exposed his side. I for my part reversed (inside out) the film in the roll thus shooting my side of the double exposures as Redscale.

The following are some of the results:

So You Have Just Brought A New Camera – Health Care For The Undead

On October 31, 2013 - My Photography

So you have just brought a new camera, consider it as a wake up call that we are mostly mindless consumers of things that we are made to think we need or should desire to own. With the commercialization of social media the brainwashing is almost complete. This is neither a good or bad thing it’s just the reality as it is now.

So you have your: {first; new; cheap; free; expensive; fantastic;shiny; retro… cell; film; consumer; dslr; rangefinder; pro; (2/3rds, c, full frame) and/or …} camera so what now? Each one of those cameras as sure as you breath is capable of taking a picture that in the right hands could be a masterpiece.

Now that this new camera is in your hands it’s time to stop for at least a short while being a mindless consumer of photography goods and services and instead learn to take better photographs! To that aim if you haven’t already you may want to evaluate or re-evaluate what your own development goals are and alter your current path to a direction that might result in you achieving those goals.

If it turns out that you just want a shiny new toy then that’s OK. But if you don’t use your brain to effect changes in the way you take photographs then you shouldn’t expect any changes in the results.

Son: “Mom, can I have some pudding?”
Mom: “You haven’t eaten your meat yet.”
Son: “But mom!”
Mom: “Son, you know that: ‘If you don’t eat yer meat, you can’t have any pudding. How can you have any pudding if you don’t eat yer meat?”
Son: “Don’t be quoting Pink Floyd on me again…

Hansa 135mm f3.2 Lens

On October 21, 2013 - My Photography

I have this Hansa 135mm f3.2 lens. Made in Japan it came with an adapter to fit on my Nikon. I bought it for a few dollars attached to a Nikor closeup bellows. Not a bad little performer. Notice the 2 rings at the top. Those are for “stop down metering”. I suspect one should lock so you can preset aperture and then open up for focusing but doesn’t lock. The lightly coated optics are very clean and clear. With a 16 or 17 rounded aperture blades should mean nice out of focus highlights.

The origin of the lens is veiled in the mists of time. Some say they were made for Hansa Japan rebranded from another still to be determined Japanese lens manufacture maybe Cosina. Others say it might be a house brand for Hansa Foto in Cologne. Another even remoter idea is that it was a Nikkor lens made for Hanson Canon imported into the USA under the Hansa name.

Once you get use to the stop down aperture control it is a nice little performer.

Cellphonography Love/Hate Relationship

On October 5, 2013 - My Photography

Digitally Monitoring The World

The things I hate about my cell phone camera:

Poor Optics
Glare
Poor image quality
Many too many Pixels for the resolution
Shutter,Timing and Focus Uncertainty: STFU and take the shot now!
Results only look good if printed small
Fixed wide angle view of the world
No bokeh
Strange motion artifacts
Weird HDTV aspect ratio
The awkward ergonomics for photography
The tacky fake special effects and instant post processing
Instant posting of images many which I will regret in the morning

The things I love about my cell phone camera

All of the above!

A Note On Long Exposures, Reciprocity Failure For Kodak Ektar And City Night Shooting

On August 13, 2013 - My Photography

Kodak Ektar

City Streets At Night

General for a city light scene you can ignore reciprocity failure and expose at ISO 100 f8 or f11 to capture car light trails. These f stops work with almost any ISO 100 film when trying to capture slowly moving light trial. It does depend a bit on the lens and the angle and speed of motion. I usually use f8 for wider angle lenses and f11 for standard lenses.

Exposure time depends on whether or not you want to blow out street lights and how bright you want mid greys to be.

Reciprocity

Without going into the The Gurney-Mott Theory or subsequent rewrites the standard characteristic curves can be used to accurately predict how much compensation is needed for what part of the image. Of course you have to do conversions to put it in terms that you can use it on the different zones of your image.. When you do long exposures you are effectively working in the lower part of the curve how much of the image and by how much depends on where each zone lies on the curve and where you want it to end up in terms of density.

Note that each colour curve (blue having lower failure) has a different shape hence explaining the inconsistent colour balance in the lower extremes of the chart.

To form a stable latent images multiple photons (light as a particle) must impinge on the same area of the film within a very short time frame or the latent image doesn’t form and the crystal site decays (relaxes) back to it’s ground state. When the number of photons per second goes down to a low enough number the chances of the next photon hitting the crystal before it relaxes starts to decrease. No amount of pre-flashing or witchcraft will bypass reciprocity failure except maybe for processes like hypersensitization.

Reciprocity Failure For Ektar (1)

metered time — adjusted time
1 —————– 1.4
2 —————– 2.9
4 —————– 6.3
8 —————– 14.1
15 —————– 29.7
30 —————– 68.4
60 —————– 159.0
90 —————– 261.2
120 —————– 371.7
240 —————– 871.5

(1)Table came from Lee (see comments) measured by his standards and should be considered as a starting point where adapting exposure to account for reciprocity failure is important.

Toronto Nights Old Style
10 second exposure at f11 in a 1953 Kodak Retina IIa
Efke KB21 Expired April 1977

First Look A Day With The Sony ZL Cameraphone

On July 26, 2013 - My Photography

I had to replace my old Motorola cell phone because of planned obsolescence as it decided to go crazy and send a continuous stream of empty text message to the first land line on my contact list (sorry about that).

I replaced it with a Sony Zl “smartphone” The camera is 13 megapixels, sigh now we have got that out of the way on to important things. The screen is ultra high resolution with a more natural colour rendition which makes what you see more of a what you get then most of the flashy high saturation tablet/smartphones.

Interesting aspect ratio in portrait mode if you tire of the normal 4:3 of a DSLR

The camera has many creative modes that differ from the normal after the fact as you adjust them by touching the screen before you take the shot and not in post. This I find even if the mode is sort of gimmicky (like the image below) it makes me think more about the composition before I take the shot.

Actual like the selective colour mode even though normally I’m not a big fan of doing it after the fact. You select the colour by using your finger tip to brush in the colour before you take the photo.

The next three were taken with a deep red Infrared filter held over the lens. Infrared sensitivity with the new sensors is not as good as the older less sophisticated sensors.

Automatic in camera HDR mode works as long as the subject doesn’t move. Normally either the top would be blown out or the bottom would be too dark

On the fly hand panoramics are also an interesting feature except when as in this case there is a moving object.

I can see the high speed burst mode could be useful for capturing action. The below annoying gif is made from a 81 photo burst mode.

Shoot in burst mode
Drop shots in MS Movie Maker (free)
Set zero inter frame transition time
Set duration of every photo 0.1 seconds
Make a short movie clip
Drop movie into Microsoft Research Cliplets (free)
Fool around in Cliplets
Export final product
Have fun driving people crazy

Because I shoot mainly medium format film I use a lightmeter so as a possible travel light replacement I tested many of the android light meters apps and ended up with this one play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.dq.fotometroNa

From 1 ev to bright sunlight both in incidence and reflective mode it was within 1/2 of a stop when checked against 2 different Gossen meters plus a Nikon and Canon film camera.

The accuracy IMHO has a lot to do with what model of cell phone you have yet some software was clearly better than other software. The spotmeter function is quite useful.

Ryan's Photo Blog