Experiments in film photography: A learning experience, if i'm being generous.

[pipnina]

A few months ago I figured I'd give my dad's Canon Æ-1 Program a dust off after I found out about a film photography shop in my town center. I looked at the data sheets for a few kinds of film and seemingly only Fujifilm Velvia (colour, the same film used to capture the famous windows xp desktop background) and Rollei Infrarot (Black and white) have spectral response at the hydrogen alpha emission line. I figured I'd pick up the rollei.

I am definitely grateful that the cameras and lenses of the day had good focusing marks, or i would not have been able to focus on stars at all without hoping a bahtinov mask would be bright enough. The focusing prism definitely only works in daylight conditions and when hard edges are present...

I stuck it on my star adventurer mount and took some photos. In my notes I took them of Andromeda, Cassiopeia and Cygnus. Either at 35mm or 105mm (my dad used a vivitar 35-105mm lens, so I opted to only use the extremes).

Sadly the best I got from it was this... Not exactly what I hoped... Weirdly enough even normal photographs I took came out very poor, despite using the camera's inbuilt metering system (and setting the ISO on the camera body to the 400 declared on the film can). Maybe some film photographers here might know what's going on, but I am going to mention it to the guy in the store because he seems very knowledgeable (has in-repair cameras all over the store!) and could point me towards user error, dodgy processing, bad scans etc.

So here we go: 6 minutes pointed at Cassiopeia yielded me this. Oh dear. And this was the best one!

It doesn't help that the scans I got back were in jpeg format, and the scanner is not bias frame calibrated (those noise bands!)

This was clearly one of my Cassiopeia attempts at 105mm, as the W takes up most of the frame. Not much going on here though.

 

The rest of the astro snaps plain haven't been scanned (Only got a download of 26) which suggests they were blank and the guy didn't even bother scanning them.

Although it's a bit odd, as other shots that were scanned also appear blank, despite also being based on the camera's metering...

I plan on having another crack at this... But I definitely need to review my process!

Some snaps to judge the film on, or my photographic prowess haha.

[Paul M]

Maybe not the best film for astro images. I'd have gone for something much faster:

https://www.jessops.com/p/ilford/delta-3200-professional-35mm-36-exposure-black-and-white-film-18426

Who's processing/printing the film. Getting the exposure is only half the job, as it is with modern digital imaging. Astro benefits from custom developing and printing. Knowledge of the film's characteristics helps to decide whether it can be "pushed" in the developing stage. 

I used to have an enlarger but really found printing form negatives to be hard work. So preferred transparencies. 

One thing I remember from those days is Reciprocity Failure. Photographic emulsion does not have a linear exposure response and it's a game of diminishing returns on long exposures. That's why hardcore Astro photographers used to "hyper" their film such as Tech Pan 2415, to overcome reciprocity failure.

Whatever the frustrations of modern imaging are, they pale into insignificance when compared with film!!

 

[pipnina]

18 hours ago, Paul M said:

Maybe not the best film for astro images. I'd have gone for something much faster:

https://www.jessops.com/p/ilford/delta-3200-professional-35mm-36-exposure-black-and-white-film-18426

Who's processing/printing the film. Getting the exposure is only half the job, as it is with modern digital imaging. Astro benefits from custom developing and printing. Knowledge of the film's characteristics helps to decide whether it can be "pushed" in the developing stage. 

I used to have an enlarger but really found printing form negatives to be hard work. So preferred transparencies. 

One thing I remember from those days is Reciprocity Failure. Photographic emulsion does not have a linear exposure response and it's a game of diminishing returns on long exposures. That's why hardcore Astro photographers used to "hyper" their film such as Tech Pan 2415, to overcome reciprocity failure.

Whatever the frustrations of modern imaging are, they pale into insignificance when compared with film!!

 

I've done some reading about this Tech Pan but I'm not quite sure what it does differently to normal film, or if the benefit for astro is in the development and processing.

Some local person is developing it, through a local shop dedicated to film photography.

I presume that "pushing" helps to increase the brightness of the film, but is that just exaggerating the contrast already present in the film (can't boost the brightness of something that already has no signal) or is it bringing out chemical differences that otherwise would not affect the transparency?

I'll have a look at this illford film and see if I can try it out on my next attempts, I'll also speak to the guy in the shop as he may stock it and have advice for shooting too

Thanks!

[Paul M]

I did once have a roll of hypered tech pan in my parents freezer.

When I found it again years later I couldn't remember whether I'd even exposed it!

What I remember is that it's a fine grain,  B&W film developed for technical photography that lent itself to hypering. Thereby making it very useful for long exposure astro imaging. 

"Pushing" was/is a standard darkroom technique whereby the film is developed slightly longer than the prescribed time to increase image density on the film. Easy to overcook it though. Bit of a dark art. And if film processing goes wrong then the whole imaging session is lost. 

To say that digital cameras and image processing were a revolution in astrophotography is a huge understatement. 

That Ilford film I linked will likely give you better results. Faster film generally means courser grain but on star fields you probably won't be too worried. 

It would be interesting to see what results can be a achieved with a film camera that is guided on a modern mount. Because as guided mounts arrived, film was just about ending. Hand guiding was perhaps the most dedicated of dark arts in a niche corner of a niche hobby.

[pipnina]

5 minutes ago, Paul M said:

I did once have a roll of hypered tech pan in my parents freezer.

When I found it again years later I couldn't remember whether I'd even exposed it!

What I remember is that it's a fine grain,  B&W film developed for technical photography that lent itself to hypering. Thereby making it very useful for long exposure astro imaging. 

"Pushing" was/is a standard darkroom technique whereby the film is developed slightly longer than the prescribed time to increase image density on the film. Easy to overcook it though. Bit of a dark art. And if film processing goes wrong then the whole imaging session is lost. 

To say that digital cameras and image processing were a revolution in astrophotography is a huge understatement. 

That Ilford film I linked will likely give you better results. Faster film generally means courser grain but on star fields you probably won't be too worried. 

It would be interesting to see what results can be a achieved with a film camera that is guided on a modern mount. Because as guided mounts arrived, film was just about ending. Hand guiding was perhaps the most dedicated of dark arts in a niche corner of a niche hobby.

I guess I can only give it a shot and see what happens! My first thought was that I'd try another Rollei-IR film shot but stick it on my guided HEQ5 and do some half hour to hour+ shots and see if they come out better. I think I'll try the Illford film though as you suggest as you have prior experience. What sort of exposure times might one manage there before over-exposing it? My skies are around mag 3-4.5 NELM depending on where I'm facing.

Funny you should mention a modern mount and a film camera together, as that's what inspired me in the first place to give this a go: https://petapixel.com/2020/04/25/how-i-photograph-the-milky-way-with-medium-format-film/

This shot in particular!

[wulfrun]

23 hours ago, pipnina said:

...Weirdly enough even normal photographs I took came out very poor, despite using the camera's inbuilt metering system (and setting the ISO on the camera body to the 400 declared on the film can). Maybe some film photographers here might know what's going on...

The AE-1 has a centre-weighted metering system, in the daytime photos you have a lot of bright sky and I'd bet that's fooled it. In the days of film cameras, modern evaluative systems didn’t exist and you'd learn to think about when to accept its readings and when to "interpret" them (i.e. override and correct it!).

[pipnina]

3 minutes ago, wulfrun said:

The AE-1 has a centre-weighted metering system, in the daytime photos you have a lot of bright sky and I'd bet that's fooled it. In the days of film cameras, modern evaluative systems didn’t exist and you'd learn to think about when to accept its readings and when to "interpret" them (i.e. override and correct it!).

So if I wanted the ground to be properly exposed, I should get a meter reading with the center of the frame pointed at the ground, then frame my shot? Works for me if that's the case, I was probably exposing for the sky.

[Paul M]

2 hours ago, pipnina said:

Funny you should mention a modern mount and a film camera together, as that's what inspired me in the first place to give this a go: https://petapixel.com/2020/04/25/how-i-photograph-the-milky-way-with-medium-format-film/

This shot in particular!

Very nice image by that fellow.

As for exposure times, it's a game of trial and error. Try a bunch of exposures from a few seconds upwards to a minute maybe. See how that goes! 

Maybe someone with real experience will join in. I only ever read the book and watched the film. I've still got some slides I did through my 6.25 Newt somewhere but i think they were mostly the Moon.

[wulfrun]

1 hour ago, pipnina said:

So if I wanted the ground to be properly exposed, I should get a meter reading with the center of the frame pointed at the ground, then frame my shot? Works for me if that's the case, I was probably exposing for the sky.

That's about right, yes. Assuming your subject is "typical" (not a black cat or a white sheet etc), you need a reading where it occupies most/all of the central region in the frame. Either lock that exposure or note the settings it says and set them in 'M' mode.

I admit never having done Astro (beyond once or twice lying an SLR on its back and leaving the shutter open for 30 mins or so for star trails) so I can't offer suggestions for it. Reciprocity-failure is very real though, if you can actually get some sort of metered reading (the built-in meter won't do it), expect to use double and upwards.

One thing to mention, alluded to above...regular (automatic) printing processing is geared to "normal" photos. Meaning they expect a shot to be 18% grey on average. Any astro shot, which should average to almost-black, will get blown out to a grey average in printing unless they know not to.