Night Time on the Boardwalk

I haven't done a lot of night photography of late even less in black and white. I met up with my friend John Meadows, do click through and check out his blog, I love his photography, anyway, wandering off topic a bit. He wanted to test out a film for night photography on the boardwalk in the Beaches, I came along for the ride.

Shooting night photography with film is done 98% of the time on a tripod, a decent one like a Manfrotto, Gitzo or Vanguard and avoid the cheapie stamped aluminum jobs you used to find at Black's Photo. I chose Ilford HP5 400, I've shot kilometres of the stuff over the years and I know it behaves in my go to developers and it has great reciprocity characteristics. What does that mean? Say if I wanted to expose a shot at night the light meter says 15 seconds at F11, in reality, to get what I want, I have to expose for 50 seconds. Film manufacturers have tech sheets for reference here's an example from Ilford's HP5 400

I got great results in 35mm but I have to do more black and white night photography, especially in medium format, the results are even better.

Camera: Nikon FM, Nikkor Ai 50 f2 lens.
Film: Ilford HP5 400, HC110 B

Night Time on the Boardwalk Two


Location: The Beach, Toronto, ON, Canada

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