# long exposure, metering and manual camera



## den9 (Mar 7, 2012)

i do alot of night shots in the city, my old cameras always metered down to 30 seconds, my current camera is only good for 1 second and bulb, is there any trick or general rule of thumb? i assume ill have to hold down the shutter and use a stop watch or count in my head and buy a hand held meter.


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## ann (Mar 7, 2012)

buy a cable release and a stop watch and experiment


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## snowbear (Mar 7, 2012)

Like Ann said, remote, stopwatch and bulb setting.

edit: I got curious on this (as usual) - both, the D50 and the 1N have shutter speeds of 30" according to their prospective manuals.


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## SCraig (Mar 7, 2012)

According the owner's manual for the D50 the shutter speed is adjustable from 1/4000 second to 30 seconds.


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## snowbear (Mar 7, 2012)

duplicate post - sorry


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## Helen B (Mar 7, 2012)

Is it the D50 you are asking about? You've posted this in the film section.

What light level do you need to meter down to - ie what typical set of ISO, aperture and shutter speed are you talking about? That will tell us how sensitive a light meter you would need. What camera were you using before and what speed film were you using?


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## Proteus617 (Mar 7, 2012)

den9 said:


> is there any trick or general rule of thumb?



Rules of thumb at the Ultimate Exposure Computer.  Don't forget about reciprocity failure.  Like Ann said, it's more a matter of experimentation and experience than anything.  Bracket liberally and take notes.  I did an experiment in my neighborhood last year.  I would load TriX 120 in an old box camera and pick four subjects.  All were shot at the same aperture and bracketed 1sec, 10 sec, 30 sec.  Then I would run home and develop the roll, giving it some push with Rodinal 1:100 semi-stand.  After a roll or two I get pretty good at estimating light values for that particular set-up.


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## den9 (Mar 7, 2012)

i should edit my signature, im using a nikon fm10 now


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## den9 (Mar 7, 2012)

Helen B said:


> Is it the D50 you are asking about? You've posted this in the film section.
> 
> What light level do you need to meter down to - ie what typical set of ISO, aperture and shutter speed are you talking about? That will tell us how sensitive a light meter you would need. What camera were you using before and what speed film were you using?



well whenever i did night photography it was always around 3-30 seconds

i usually did f/8 with 50-160 iso film

using nikon fm10


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## Helen B (Mar 7, 2012)

30" at f/8 with ISO 160 isn't all that dark - it's EV 1 at ISO 160 (f/8 is Av = 6, 30" is Tv = -5), so it's EV 0.3 at ISO 100. Most light meters, but not spot meters, should be capable of reading midtones at that lighting level. It is, however, just below the metering range for the FM10 - but only just below, if you have a fast lens fitted. That means that most of the time you could use the FM10s meter (especially if you meter off something light like a white card) then adjust the aperture and recalculate the shutter speed. Get a locking cable release, as already suggested.


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## den9 (Mar 7, 2012)

well today i learned about EV tables. how do you calculate all this if you are shooting at different iso's?

i have the tripod and shutter cable ready. ill be shooting lit night scene, neons and such


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## Proteus617 (Mar 7, 2012)

den9 said:


> well today i learned about EV tables. how do you calculate all this if you are shooting at different iso's?
> 
> i have the tripod and shutter cable ready. ill be shooting lit night scene, neons and such



EV takes into account ISO, LV does not.  LV = EV at ISO 100.


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## Mike_E (Mar 8, 2012)

Proteus617 said:


> den9 said:
> 
> 
> > is there any trick or general rule of thumb?
> ...



Follow the link if you haven't.

Also a metronome app on your phone will help you when using Bulb.  https://www.google.com/search?ix=seb&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=metronome+app

Set to 60 bps and count.


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