Self Portrait Low Light Conditions

Eye-level

Banned
OK I made this one shooting the Eye-level with 50mm/1.8 Series E wide open Fuji 200 drugstore film (I am sort of disappointed with it) prefocused the best I could no meter post crop and post processing using the timer function...

It was meant to be a study of low light...

Give me feedback if you please... :)

Edit..lots of noise with the photobucket image tag...I suppose I need to refine it further...

SelfPortrait.jpg
 
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Eye-level

Banned
I must be a crazy man to use ASA 200 in the dark...hahahaha

It looks like I have some sort of disease but I bet you I can cure it with the GIMP!
 

Marcel

Happily retired
Staff member
Super Mod
With all you had to work with, I guess you were still lucky to have been in the picture at all. Things we don't know: Exposure length, what light did you use. Did I read right that you don't have a light meter? If you don't, I admire you but I don't see how you will be gaining anything from experience. You would just be going from luck to luck or bad luck. Was this a slide film or negative, how did you process it?

But the picture is still interesting as it is very intriguing. The crop is very unusual for a portrait (you usually want more space in front of the nose than what you have now.

This is about all I can say for now. Thanks for posting it.
 

Eye-level

Banned
Hello Marcel...thank you for responding and I'm grateful for the nice comments!

I will try and answer some of your questions...Exposure length was 1/15 fstop 1.8 I was sitting in a small laundry room just off the dining room and kitchen and the only light was from a computer screen and a light over the stove in the kitchen...read basically candle light I would guess an EV of maybe 5? F2 with Eye-level finder...meterless...no ASA (ISO) to set just whatever the film is rated...200 in this case...400 or 800 would be a wiser choice I guess. Often I use another camera to meter with when I use the the F2 DE1 but I am also one of these Sunny 16 fools...lol Color Negative cheapo deapo Fuji 200 processed at Walgreens...get this - 1545 X 1024 very low quality scans and look at how good it crops...imagine a real good scan! Imagine using slide film with a real good scan!

I am going to try and recrop it using your suggestion of putting some more space in front of the nose...in the above case I was trying to do away with the light blob...perhaps I should just photoshop it out...

Thanks again Marcel! :)
 
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KWJams

Senior Member
The noise gives the shot character. I agree with cropping it so it looks like you are looking into the darkness instead of looking at a wall. Not too much to where you have to crop your neck off.
 

Eye-level

Banned
Thanks Robin! I hope Costello isn't a Nikonite because he might send you a profanity laced PM...LOL

Today it looks like I am going to be kind of slow here at work I may try to rework this picture....
 
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