Ouachita Mountains

Here is one I thought I would share from the Ouachitas.

Nice cool blue tones Tim. I like the fact that (at least on this monitor) it is impossible to tell if some of the distant ridges are hilltops or cloud formations. Well executed shot!

Great shot Tim. You captured a spectacular scene at just the right moment. I recognize Forked Mountain. Where did you make this shot from?

Thanks, This was shot from Flatside Pinnacle, facing to the west. This was in the early morning hours long before sunrise, exposed for around 10 minutes. The moon was bright or it would have taken even longer. I did some film exposures too that I haven't sent in yet.

By the way, today is the last day to buy your copy of the Bryant Times that has my son on the cover.

How did you get the tripod to hold still that long - the wind is always blowing hard up there!

Really nice, Tim - I love the receding hills!

I normally wish I had a lighter tripod but I have seen times I thought it was going to blow over at this place.
The night I took this was the calmest I have seen. The wind was coming in from the North and I could hear it but mostly it was blocked from me.

I love the clouds! Those far hills on the upper left take a few seconds to pop out at you! Thanks for sharing!

Tim, really nice shot. I assume you used a low ISO and were stopped down pretty good for a 10 minute exposure?

I looked at the meta data, it was 13 minutes at f8 with 100 iso with a 5d at 235mm focal length. 100-400mm

Someone smarter than me needs to do some math for me. Lets say I want to shoot something like star trails with a foreground subject. Lets say an hour exposure to make it simple. I want to shoot it with a film camera so I dont have to worry about batteries. But I want to see how bright the forground object will be by shooting with a digital camera first. To decide if I need to add some light or not. I want to shoot at say f11 for an hour with 100iso film. I set my digital to f22 and 3200iso, how many minutes will it take to equal the f11 for an hour?

Very nice shot, Tim! I would have thought the exposure time to have been much shorter.

I could be wrong, but I don't think digital f stops and ISOs are the equivalents to film. Close maybe, but not the same. In addition, you will probably have some degree of reciprocity failure, especially if you use Velvia. If you're thinking B/W I might recommend Fuji Acros 100.

Ignoring complications like reciprocity failure and the difference between film and digital media, f/22 at 3200 iso is the equivalent of f/11 at 800 iso, which is 3 stops faster than 100 iso film; so the digital exposure would be 7.5 minutes. But of course if the idea is to make your test shot as short as possible, why wouldn't you open up your aperture on the test shot instead of stopping down? If you went with, say, f/5.6, you would gain 2 stops there (over f/11), and combined with the 5 stops difference between 100 and 3200, you could get your test exposure down to less than a minute.

Tim, really like this one love the fog between the hills.

Thanks Randy, I was just thinking, Why was I stopping down? Maybe I just haven't done enough long exposures but reciprocity failure has always seemed negligible. I'm going to read that a few dozen more times and maybe I will retain enough of it to use it later. What does f5.6 3200 digital come to in film?

Bill I have another 50 rolls or so of E100g in the fridge and freezer that I have been trying to move for a while now so night shots seem like the perfect use. You just can't beat slide film! Well unless you count speed, ease of use, expense and other insignificant factors.

I'll have to defer to Bill on the difference between film and digital iso, Tim. I'm afraid I don't know anything about that. My aim was to answer your question based on f stops and iso speeds without taking into consideration the possible complications that Bill mentioned. I do know that Velvia would hit reciprocity failure pretty quickly, at exposures of as little as 15 seconds or so, if I recall correctly.

Tim , here is a simple formula I use for determining Long Exposures. It is very similar to Randy's formula:

Test ISO divided by final IS0, times your orginal shutter speed equals final shutter speed.

Assume F2.8 aperture.

Test Exposure at IS0 3200 is 30 seconds ( turn noise reduction off for the test but back on for final exposure)

If final exposure is ISO 200

3200 divided by 200 = 16

16 x 30 seconds = 8 minutes for final exposure

So if you want ISO 100 the final exposure would be 32 minutes assuming your test was correct, otherwise adjust the formula accordingly.

Great shot, Tim! You have captured one of my favorite Ouachita spots quite well. And a math lesson to boot!