Arizona Treks

A reader posted a question about how the shot of the storm the other night was done.  I was going to respond with a comment but the comment started getting a bit long and I thought it would be best to make another post with a couple more shots from the series.

Several previous attempts have been made leading up to this one negative, which os not the final one.  Some of the attempts were strictly learning how to meter and guess about the exposure and some were failures.  I have tried several of the walkways and this is the only one that has really caught my eye.  

About 3 in the afternoon I set up the camera.  Did the focusing framing, etc.  Then exposed a couple of sheets of film to make sure it was all good to go.  In retrospect it would have been better to use instant film, but that did not occur to me at the time.  Once all was set up, I put a plastic bag over the camera to protect it from the rain.  Even though it was under an eve, water can splash.  The 2 photos here are from the afternoon.

Once it was getting dark, I metered the scene.  It was dark enough that the brightest point was EV1 so I calculated it would take a 2 hour exposure with the ISO 50 film I was using.  So I put a film holder in the camera, removed the dark slide and opened the shutter.  The camera was left unmolested for 2 hours.  About 15 minutes before the end I turned on the walkway lights.  But unfortunately, the camera was moved during the exposure so the image is not sharp.  The gate also moved so there is a ghost gate in that exposure.

After the 2 hour exposure I metered with the walkway lights on and decided a 32minute exposure was appropriate.  That is the one in the first post.

Unfortunately, the shots with standing water all had sharpness issues.  That is one of the things I wish to correct next time.  The other is, the 32minute exposure should have been 45 - 60 minutes.  Parts of the negative have very little texture and no detail.