Albert Bridge, London by night - Critique Please

[lewismalpas]

Hi TPF,

I recently got back into film photography and took a walk down to Albert Bridge to practice night photography, something I have never done before. I got the film developed yesterday and I am quite far away from getting the correct exposure so I would appreciate some advice.



FILM: Ilford FP4+ 125 ISO
ISO: 400 (Forgot to change ISO after loading the FP4+ roll)
APERTURE: F5.6
SHUTTER SPEED: 1/8 SEC



FILM: Ilford FP4+ 125 ISO
ISO: 100 (Forgot to change ISO after loading the FP4+ roll)
APERTURE: F5.6
SHUTTER SPEED: 1/4 SEC

As the bright is extremely bright, how would I go about exposing the bridge and surrounding scenery correctly? All of my exposures which were much longer, e.g 30 seconds, exposed the landscape correctly but massively overexposed the bridge itself. I am also surprised at how short/quick the shutter speed is, would EV8 be the correct exposure value for this type of landscape?

Also I am bit confused as to why the two shots are relatively close in terms of exposure yet the first shot was shot at ISO400 by mistake? Surely if I had correctly set the ISO to 100 or 125 this shot would be hugely underexposed?

Many thanks,
Lewis.

 

[Murray Bloom]

With such a broad contrast range, your options were limited. You could have bracketed your shots and hoped for a better single exposure, or possibly merged them with HDR processing or using layers to isolate areas of different brightness. However, as I illustrated in a thread I started yesterday, even very underexposed areas may have plenty of detail lurking just below the surface. Here's a link to that thread, which has been pretty much ignored until now:

http://www.thephotoforum.com/forum/graphics-programs-photo-gallery/337699-finding-light-darknes.html

 

[lewismalpas]

Thanks Murray B, I am reluctant to do a lot of work in post as I think this ruins the purity of film photography. That said, I will open one of the above images in Photoshop and see how much detail I can bring out of the shadows. I think your right though, I should of bracketed a lot more than I did.

Now I have a better understanding of how long I need to expose for I may pop down to shoot another roll to see if I can get a better exposure.

Thanks!

 

[BlueCobalt]

not sure if its just me but it seems the images are not straight