I always have my camera on me, so whenever there’s an opportunity, I have something nice to snap a few pictures. The weather is starting to get nice, and I got off work early (by early, I mean on time. I usually work longer than the standard 8-hours). I was antsy to do some things outdoors, so pictures it was.
Now on to the main focus of this roll, astrophotography. I never done this before, and there’s a new factor I have to take into account: reciprocity failure. When you get into shutter times over a half second, film sensitivity start to deviate from a relatively linear response to exposure. You have to compensate for that effect by increasing the exposure, which usually means decreasing the shutter speed. My camera was measuring 4 to 8 seconds for proper exposure. I took several pictures of the sky starting with 4 seconds, going all the way up to 15 seconds (2 stop range).
I like both of these, even though they’re completely different. It like the look of the first one utilizing the sky as a faint light source that is blocked by the trees on the side. The second one brings you attention to the stars themselves.
I’m not entirely sure of one thing. I did NOT see this many stars in the sky. I’m hoping the camera was able to pick up more stars and that these aren’t fluke accidents where something got on the film. However even if it is an artifact on the film, it at least looks the part.
Overall, super cool!
Development Details
- Film: Kodak TMax 400
- Camera ISO setting: 400
- Developer: Kodak XTol
- Development Time: 6.5 Minutes
- Development Agitation: Kodak Style (5x inversions every 30 seconds)