What went wrong? Pictures in night setting

joey_tribbiani · Jan 28, 2025

Hey everyone,

I recently started doing street photography in darker settings.

I am using a Zenit-E with a helios 58mm f2 lense. I believe i used 1/30 for exposure with open diaphragm. For film i used Portra 400. My question is, why i get so much general background noise and how do i choose better camera settings or film for this kind of photography? and how to reduce the noise since generally 1/30 seems to work otherwise (picture 3)

Thank you guys in advance!

BrianShaw · Jan 28, 2025

Camera shake and poor exposure and possibly bad focus. 1/30 worked in that frame yet it’s not good to draw a conclusion that 1/30 is a good/useful shutter speed in that application.

Saganich · Jan 28, 2025

Well, the 3rd one has better exposure but shaky. The first two look underexposed but printed to compensate. Night street exposures are tricky and you will need to bracket and maybe carry a monopod.

xkaes · Jan 28, 2025

My guess is that it has something to do with the processing & printing of the photos. I'm assuming you did not do the processing and printing. If a machine did it all, then the "noise" (and drop in contrast) comes from the automatic system being used.

RalphLambrecht · Jan 28, 2025

xkaes said:
My guess is that it has something to do with the processing & printing of the photos. I'm assuming you did not do the processing and printing. If a machine did it all, then the "noise" (and drop in contrast) comes from the automatic system being used.

the question remains why did it work for the third picture but not the others? Is the OP saying that all photographs are taken at 1/30s at f/2 on the same roll of film? If that is really the case, I'm stumped.

Ian Grant · Jan 28, 2025

Don't forget reciprocity failure in low light levels. Probably the combination of lighting and exposure was better in the 3rd image.

Ian

Pieter12 · Jan 28, 2025

Ian Grant said:
Don't forget reciprocity failure in low light levels. Probably the combination of lighting and exposure was better in the 3rd image.

Ian

Reciprocity failure kicks in at very long or very short exposure times. 1/30th is neither.

pentaxuser · Jan 28, 2025

Yes there certainly is a massive difference in the picture number 3. There may be more light anyway than in picture 1 but picture 2 seems to have a light level that is much close to that of 3 and yet the difference in outcome is massive

I hope that this adds to the volume of posts suggesting that something changed in number 3 and is not deemed as being redundant and deleted

pentaxuser

Ian Grant · Jan 28, 2025

It also kicks in with low light levels. 1/30 at f2 with a 400 ISO film is OK if there's enough light, but borderline, but if there's underexposure, that will be exaggerated. Also remember that night scenes are at much lower colour temperatures compared to daylight, that has an effect on the film's effective speed.

Ian

xkaes · Jan 28, 2025

RalphLambrecht said:
the question remains why did it work for the third picture but not the others? Is the OP saying that all photographs are taken at 1/30s at f/2 on the same roll of film? If that is really the case, I'm stumped.

We've got a lack of details. Were they all on the same roll? Were they all processed and printed the same way? Way too many unknown variables.

OAPOli · Jan 28, 2025

joey_tribbiani said:
I am using a Zenit-E with a helios 58mm f2 lense. I believe i used 1/30 for exposure with open diaphragm. For film i used Portra 400. My question is, why i get so much general background noise and how do i choose better camera settings or film for this kind of photography?

My question is, why i get so much general background noise and how do i choose better camera settings or film for this kind of photography?

It's hard to know exactly because there is a stated uncertainty in the exposure parameters. But the simplest answers are: 1) Because of underexposure; 2) use a light meter.

joey_tribbiani · Jan 28, 2025

RalphLambrecht said:
the question remains why did it work for the third picture but not the others? Is the OP saying that all photographs are taken at 1/30s at f/2 on the same roll of film? If that is really the case, I'm stumped.

Yeah, i didn't change any settings that evening. The integrated lightmeter on the camera did not trigger so i chose open ,and lowest shutterspeed (which is not manual shutter).

joey_tribbiani · Jan 28, 2025

xkaes said:
My guess is that it has something to do with the processing & printing of the photos. I'm assuming you did not do the processing and printing. If a machine did it all, then the "noise" (and drop in contrast) comes from the automatic system being used.

haven't thought of that. No i bought a scanner yet (but planning to). The Lab did it for me

joey_tribbiani · Jan 28, 2025

Ian Grant said:
It also kicks in with low light levels. 1/30 at f2 with a 400 ISO film is OK if there's enough light, but borderline, but if there's underexposure, that will be exaggerated. Also remember that night scenes are at much lower colour temperatures compared to daylight, that has an effect on the film's effective speed.

Ian

Thanks for the answer! Do you advice where to learn about the dependencies of colour temperatures ect. on effective film speed?

AnselMortensen · Jan 28, 2025

joey_tribbiani said:
Yeah, i didn't change any settings that evening. The integrated lightmeter on the camera did not trigger so i chose open ,and lowest shutterspeed (which is not manual shutter).

There's your answer.
Under exposure, except for one lucky frame.

joey_tribbiani · Jan 28, 2025

xkaes said:
We've got a lack of details. Were they all on the same roll? Were they all processed and printed the same way? Way too many unknown variables.

Thanks for the reply! It's the same roll with the same settings. I gave them to a development lab. I don't know how standardized the process is

jimjm · Jan 28, 2025

It's very easy to underexpose nighttime images, especially when there are bright artificial light sources in the scene. Your first two are definitely underexposed, with muddy blacks the result. The third is much better, but the available lighting is different than you have in the first two.
Keep in mind that your deep shadow areas are likely to be very dark, compared to the highlights and illuminated areas. High contrast is just a given with night photography. Film reacts quite differently to what you see with your eyes in these situations. You'll have to determine what elements in the scene are most important, then get a reading off those areas. Let the extreme shadows and highlights fall where they may, but highlights are often easier to recover with print film.
If you're just guessing at the exposure and using the same setting for all scenes, you're going to get a high percentage of failures. It helps a lot to have an accurate/sensitive in-camera meter, or even better a hand-held or spot meter.
Having a camera with full manual controls is almost a must. Being able to use longer shutter speeds (and bulb) on a tripod will allow you to stop down the lens and get adequate depth of field.

For this shot, I metered off the face of the upper arch and based the exposure off that. I suspected some of the shadows would go black, but it was reasonably easy to print in the darkroom.

Ian Grant · Jan 28, 2025

joey_tribbiani said:
Thanks for the answer! Do you advice where to learn about the dependencies of colour temperatures ect. on effective film speed?

Films have changed over the years, it's probably better to experiment and learn by trial and error. Use a tripod and err on the over-exposure side. Colour films have a lot of latitude in daylight, but not in low light, at night..

@jomjim above gives a B&W example, B&W films have a Daylight ISO and a Tungsten ISO, although the latter is no longer published. FP4 was 125 ASA/BS Daylight, 80 ASA/BS Tungsten.

Meters differ, and you are using a Zenit E. I used one until I wore it out, I had my first newspaperfront page image, and also magazine cover with mine 1970/1. There's a knack to using the camera's meter, point the cell down slightly away from light sources. Thinking back, I did use my Zenit E for night shots in London the summer of 1970.

Ian

koraks · Jan 28, 2025

Welcome to Photrio @joey_tribbiani !

I agree with the people above who indicate your images suffer from dramatic underexposure, and also with the Reddit user who said the same: I do not agree with what you've been told on dpreview, where you also asked this question (https://www.dpreview.com/forums/thread/4792426) and one member argued it's a case of overexposure. This is evidently not the case, as anyone who has scanned or printed under- or overexposed negative film will tell you (overexposure by the same degree would in fact not hurt all that much with CN film).

There's at this point no reason to suspect the lab. 400 ISO at f/2 and 1/30 is likely just grossly insufficient for some of the things you attempted to photograph that night.
Overall you may find that night-time exposures work out a little better if you photograph in situations when there's a little more ambient light. This can be either scenes where there's some artificial light to illuminate some of the buildings etc, or picking a more opportune time at dusk or dawn when skylight fills in some of the shadow areas.

MattKing · Jan 28, 2025

Welcome to Photrio.
As others have said, you need to either start with more light, start with much more sensitive ("faster") film, or use exposure settings that provide the film with more exposure. In the case of that film and lens combination, that means a much longer than 1/30 of a second exposure, which in turn means a tripod or something else to hold the camera stationary while you take the photo - something more than hand held.

Pieter12 · Jan 28, 2025

f/2.0 at 1/30th second is an EV of 7, low light but not extreme. Seeing the different results from the first post, I would question the accuracy of the camera's shutter.

xkaes · Jan 28, 2025

joey_tribbiani said:
Thanks for the reply! It's the same roll with the same settings. I gave them to a development lab. I don't know how standardized the process is

Thanks for the information. As everyone else has said, it's obvious under-exposure. Since you used the lens wide open, your first option is to use a slower shutter speed -- which is difficult with the Zenit-E since the slowest speed is 1/30. You could use the B setting, but you'll need a tripod.

In any case, with the Zenit-E, you have to guess at the correct exposure since the meter is selenium-based, and useless in low light. There are tables on-line for night-time exposures that you can use, but in these circumstances it's a good idea to bracket the exposures.

Perhaps a better approach would be to use a faster film -- but your meter will still be useless. As someone above suggested, get a hand-held meter that is not selenium-based -- and still difficult to use in night-time city shooting. With a meter, and faster film, you can use the shutter speeds that your camera offers.

xkaes · Jan 28, 2025

Pieter12 said:
f/2.0 at 1/30th second is an EV of 7, low light but not extreme. Seeing the different results from the first post, I would question the accuracy of the camera's shutter.

Good point, but the Zenits are well built, and if the shutter is inaccurate, it's probably slower than normal.

Pieter12 · Jan 28, 2025

xkaes said:
Good point, but the Zenits are well built, and if the shutter is inaccurate, it's probably slower than normal.

But is it consistent? A slower speed hiccup could lead to the different exposure of the third image.

xkaes · Jan 28, 2025

Consistently inconsistent. That defines just about all of my shutters -- but not so much that I notice.

What went wrong? Pictures in night setting

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