
How I photograph the Milky Way with medium format film - lelf
https://petapixel.com/2020/04/25/how-i-photograph-the-milky-way-with-medium-format-film/
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thanatropism
The unsaid detail is tha the he’s using E36 (slide; positive image) stock.

I don’t understand why the C41 (negative) process/product became default for
consumer grade color photography. I know there’s professional negative film
that’s tuned for the human skin. But as an amateur that happened to snag a lot
of really high quality (mostly 135) film in bulk on eBay, I’ve always felt
overall happier with my legible developed film, the highly contrasted and
colorful images and the noticeable flavor of different product lines.

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lm28469
> I don’t understand why the C41 (negative) process/product became default for
> consumer grade color photography.

Much better dynamic range, which means you can throw a c41 roll in any camera
with an half working meter and you'll get an usable picture. Over or under
expose a slide by 1 stop and you're already asking for troubles.

Negatives are also much easier to scan than positives, and possibly easier to
print but I'm not very familiar with that.

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ginko
>possibly easier to print but I'm not very familiar with that.

As of now they're pretty much the only way to dark-room print from color film
as there is no more paper or chemicals for color-positive prints being made
anymore. There used to be Cibachrome/Ilfochrome which was apparently highly
regarded, but production of that ended a couple years ago.

Apparently there's a way to reversal process regular RA-4 color paper, but I
never tried it. Essentially you expose your paper, then process it in
black&white chemistry. After that you wash the paper and expose it again with
white light. You then process the paper in RA-4 color chemistry. What's kinda
cool about the second processing is that you can do it in the light.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ry6ycSgT8g8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ry6ycSgT8g8)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNjLzzH438E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNjLzzH438E)

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gorgoiler
Tetenal Colortec has a product for E6. Their C41 chemistry was very smelly at
100F but it worked first time in my kitchen sink. Their E6 kit might be worth
a try:

Random link: <$3 a roll...

[https://www.freestylephoto.biz/102036-Tetenal-
Colortec-E-6-D...](https://www.freestylephoto.biz/102036-Tetenal-
Colortec-E-6-Developing-Kit-2.5-Liters)

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ginko
I was talking about paper chemistry for dark room printing from positive film.
There’s still plenty of e6 kits available.

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gorgoiler
Thanks, my bad. I was clearly overwhelmed with excitement about E6 and C41 at
home to properly read your comment :)

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205guy
My god, it’s full of stars!

Beautiful shots, I particularly like the double-exposure self-portrait at the
end, knowing it was made in-camera. I used to do B&W star tracks because
getting a mechanical tracker to work accurately was so fiddly before. I like
the idea of using pole-finding and star-tracking digital cameras and software,
I know satellites and some planes use it, but I didn’t realize it was
available off-the-shelf.

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joeraut
This. It just seems really special to be sharing the film with photons that
made a journey of many, many light-years to reach it too.

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gdubs
Amazing. I got into film photography in college with Holga cameras — toys,
essentially, which had the wonderful upside of using medium format film, as
well as introducing all kinds of “happy accidents”. It was not a cheap hobby
in terms of developing costs, etc. But film is pretty magical. Waiting to get
negatives back was exciting. (This “lomography” — Holgas, etc — inspired apps
like Instagram in the beginning.)

Really cool to see artists keeping these formats alive. I do a lot of digital
work, and I don’t think format alone defines the art — but again, there’s some
real magic in film.

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Trombone12
> "a star tracker, a mount that precisely rotates your camera at the same rate
> as the Earth"

It's called an equatorial mount! GAH!

Incidentally that setup they post a picture of looks pretty sketchy, looks
like the counterweight will bonk the table if you expose for too long and you
also have to move the table rather than the mount to point in another azimuth.

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helij
I don't see any issues with caling this mount a star tracker that precisely
rotates your camera. It's Sky Watcher Star Adventurer and it tracks
automatically. If you call it just EQ mount you have to add that it does
automatic tracking ;)

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SiempreViernes
Isn’t the actuall star tracker is the little camera on the guide scope though?
Or maybe it’s the software that reads the camera data...

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pedrovhb
Admirable dedication! It feels like a crime to go so far with medium format
and not show large resolution scans, though. Maybe it's to avoid hurting the
sale of prints?

Understandable I guess, but considering the amazing resolution you can get
from medium format, this just really leaves me itching to see a large image.

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rb808
Its a good time to recommend Southern Hemisphere for star gazing, the milky
way is much more visible its overwhelming.

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frandroid
Thanks, adding this as a reason to visit Oceania. :)

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Finnucane
If you don't mind shooting in B&W, Fuji Acros has relatively little
reciprocity failure. Fuji claims no correction is needed up to two minutes of
exposure (I've never tested that myself, I should say!).

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leejo
Can confirm. Here's a 20 minute exposure of Orion + moonlight over the Grand
Muveran I shot in the village a couple of years ago:
[https://leejo.github.io/images/2018/large_format/36_muveran_...](https://leejo.github.io/images/2018/large_format/36_muveran_1750.jpg)
# this is shot on 4x5 film, and unfortunately Fuji don't make Acros in this
size anymore ( _fortunately_ I stocked up on it).

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LolWolf
Oh my god that is a beautiful shot! The rest of these are also gorgeous... how
do you develop them? / do you do prints at all?

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leejo
Devleoped in my sink using an SP-445 tank. B&W chemistry is pretty
straightforward. I do prints (check my site for contact details). There's a
couple more examples of 4x5 work on my Instagram (ha!) haven't got much of it
up on my site yet.

I'm not the photographer from the article BTW...

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LolWolf
Oh I know, but your shots specifically are lovely! I will check it out :) I
imagined you did it at home... have wanted to do the same but haven’t had
space, so use the mail-in services which are not bad.

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rrmm
I wish I lived in a less light-polluted area. Was out in the country a few
months ago and the view was amazing.

If you have the opportunity avail yourself of it.

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gizajob
That's what I'd call a photographer...

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jbverschoor
I love how these timelapses let you experience the fact that we’re all moving
in something bigger.

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microdrum
Does anyone know of a similar guide for digital sensors, since they can do
these images with very different exposure times?

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miahi
Most of the guides for digital will concentrate on post-processing, as the
actual shot is quite simple, and you can tweak everything as you have instant
feedback. If you can see the milky way with the naked eye, you need: tripod +
wide lens (24mm on full frame is ok) with wider aperture, manual focus (using
the display zoom function for best results) as autofocus on stars doesn't
always work, manual exposure for something like ISO 1600-3200, around 20
seconds exposure on f/2.8, 10 second timer exposure, press the shutter and
leave the camera to stabilize on the tripod.

The key is to find the places where you can see the milky way and to plan
ahead - a moonless and cloudless night is important. There are websites[1] and
tools[2] or that.

Some results based on the above, with minimal post processing (as I'm not good
at it):
[https://miahi.ro/photos/perseide-2017/](https://miahi.ro/photos/perseide-2017/).
The first series is at ~1500m altitude and 70km distance of any large city.

[1] [http://darksitefinder.com](http://darksitefinder.com) [2]
[https://stellarium.org/](https://stellarium.org/)

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glup
Adding to that: at least historically, full frame DSLRs took better low-light
pictures; smaller sensors had more noise because of the density. Not sure if
this is still true.

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snazz
It's definitely still true, but the difference is getting smaller as sensor
tech improves. My DSLR is a Nikon D80 from 2006. While it's not full-frame,
its sensor is much bigger than the one on my iPhone 8, yet my phone works far
better in low-light conditions. The highest non-expanded sensitivity on the
D80 is ISO 1600, which is already very grainy. Bump that up to the highest
possible ISO 3200 and you're in for a lot of touch-up work.

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m3kw9
I think taking the photograph yourself vs just looking at one makes a big
difference in wow factor.

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gerikson
I love that to be able to take these images he uses a digital camera +
software (the pole tracker)

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Stratoscope
In fact, _two_ digital cameras, a QHYCCD PoleMaster for polar alignment, and
an ASI120MC-S with PHD2 software for more precise guiding.

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pcurve
(deleted)

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bagels
You are in the Milky Way Galaxy.

