Night Photography

JesusFreak6

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I'm not sure if this is where I should ask this but anyway, can I do night photography with a film camera? I just got a Nikon FM2 from my grandpa and my family will be going on a camping trip next weekend, I was hoping to possibly get some pictures of the sky later at night, but I'm not sure if that is actually possible (Also this is my first camera ever. I've been using my iPhone camera for the last year for photography)
 
Yes, sure you can.

But if you never used an SLR before, you will need to do some reading about night long exposure settings, you will need a tripod, a shutter cable release, a wide angle fast lens (lenses with low mm, like 35mm/24mm/14mm, and low f/#, like f/2.8, f/2, f/1.8, f/1.4), and a high ASA film (at least ASA 800, but if higher it will be better, to cancel star trails in the night sky).

If all that reads like a foreign language to you, Google night sky photography, Milky Way photography, long exposure techniques, SLR film ASA, etc...

It's easy, once you know what you're doing. If you don't know about these things above, you can end up frustrated.

Good luck. Night star field photography is pretty nice and rewarding with SLRs, film or digital.
 
Yes, sure you can.

But if you never used an SLR before, you will need to do some reading about night long exposure settings, you will need a tripod, a shutter cable release, a wide angle fast lens (lenses with low mm, like 35mm/24mm/14mm, and low f/#, like f/2.8, f/2, f/1.8, f/1.4), and a high ASA film (at least ASA 800, but if higher it will be better, to cancel star trails in the night sky).

If all that reads like a foreign language to you, Google night sky photography, Milky Way photography, long exposure techniques, SLR film ASA, etc...

It's easy, once you know what you're doing. If you don't know about these things above, you can end up frustrated.

Good luck. Night star field photography is pretty nice and rewarding with SLRs, film or digital.

Yeah, that did kind of read as foreign language lol Thanks for the answer. I can't do it though, I don't have a tripod or a shutter release cable I don't think I have that lens either. Oh well, I should probably practice other stuff before I move on to this kind of photography.
 
The first photograph of an astronomical object - the Moon - was taken in 1840.
The first photo (a daguerreotype) of a star other than our Sun was made on July 17, 1850 by William Bond and John Adams Whipple at the Harvard College Observatory. They photographed the star Vega.

But it wasn't until the late 19th century that advances in photography technology allowed for detailed astronomical photography.

With only a few exceptions, astronomical photography requires long exposures. Both film and digital imaging devices can accumulate and sum light photons over long periods of time.

However, many film emulsions have a property known as reciprocity, or reciprocity failure, that limits how long the film will respond to more photons hitting the light sensitive chemicals in the film emulsion. Exposing film for longer than the reciprocity failure time serves no purpose since the light sensitive chemicals are no longer recording light falling on them.
 
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