Astrophotography on Medium Format

Just a quick little video about my experience trying to catch the stars on medium format film!
Social:
Instagram: / db_exposure
#astrophotography #mamiyarb67 #stars #space
Gear Used:
Fujifilm XT30ii: www.bhphotovideo.com/c/produc...
Mamiya RB67: www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from...
Music:
All music licensed from Epidemic Sound

[@ZachACameraGuy]

you got me with that stop-suddenly-look-back-see-a-pair-of-red-eye part holy fuck straight out of the worst nightmare

[@JaseFilm]

This is such a nicely made video of your experience trying out astro on film. If you want to take some milky way shots with a little more instant gratification I have a few tips! Try some Kodak P3200 or Delta 3200 - black and white I know but you can get some impressive detail for such grainy film. 30 seconds at f/2 or f/1.8 is a good reference point but make sure there's no moon out. You can also try Portra 800, it will need to be pushed a stop or two and f/1.4 makes really helps. Fast wide lenses are pretty necessary so this is more relevant to 35mm.

[@MattWeddis]

That’s a great video. I’ve wondered about trying to get some star trails on 4x5. I’ll try it one time when I’m out of the city. Thanks for posting the video.

[@patrickrostker6693]

Astonomical captures! Love to see what you learned from the experience, thank you for sharing. I have always had the idea of using slower films for star trails but also not having to wait overnight for probably less images is appealing. Man, I really want a mechanical camera now. Great work, awesome story.

[@dbexposure]

Aw thanks Patrick!

[@ZachACameraGuy]

btw to close the shutter safely in T mode you can cover the lens first with lens cap then proceed to mess with the camera.

[@lilkngstr]

also, the minute movement after a mult-hour exposure is not going to show up on your image.

[@Larpy1933]

Yes, there’s an old astrophotographer’s trick: hold a black hat in front of the sky end of the lens, open the shutter, move the hat out of the way. When you’re ready to close the shutter, first hold the hat in front of the lens. It’s “the hat trick”.

[@TrungNguyen-uf8cv]

Me, 35mm, 50mm, f1.4, remote shutter, 30s at the galactic core, instant result

[@yixuanniu5482]

just happened to see your video, I like your attitude when you talk, very positive! Keep going!

[@alexburke2287]

Loved this video man!

[@mirkopaiella]

Nice video, surely I'll give analog astrophotography a try! By the way, the glowing centre at 7:48 happens to me too when I try to shoot on my phone: I think it's more of a lens thing than a moonlight thing, depending on the focal length you shot it with, that is.

[@adversity3248]

These intros are so cool

[@HermanntheGerman]

Super geiles Video! That's what I would say in German! I really love your Work and I'm exited to see the next Video! And yes, i agree space is pretty cool!

[@dbexposure]

I think you’ll like the next one! You make a small appearance!

[@mz5376]

Im new here. I just wanted to say I thought this video was awesome. Very first video I"ve ever watched on this topic. It won't be the last.

[@Larpy1933]

Acros 100 has no reciprocity failure until after 2 minutes. (b&w). From 120 s. to 1000 seconds, add 1/2 stop.

[@anzaeria]

I liked the brighter star trail image over the farm with the hey bale in the foreground. Would be great to put the Mamiya RB67 on a tracking mount. Though I guess you'd need an insanely expensive tracker to deal with the huge weight of that camera. I have a Yashica TLR I could try which is reasonably light but I have no tracker. Will definitely be shooting star trails with it. Although you say that digital is better for astrophotography, I think that film is more convenient in a sense. People who do image stacking with digital and astro must go through a very lengthy and drawn out post production process. And I found that quite overwhelming and more complicated than I expected. At least with film (whether you're using a tracker or not) you have one single image which is finished and complete when you pick up the film from the lab.

[@dbexposure]

I suppose thats true, most of my digital star photos are unedited so it really depends on how complicated you’d like to make it. A tracker would certainly be a huge help for film photos, but keep in mind there’s still a little bit of post processing that goes on in film as well, especially since most scanning equipment’s ways of handling dust usually eliminates stars (at least that’s what I found in this case) and noise reduction gets rid of them as well. So you have to manually paint out a lot of dust specs. Let me know if you do something with the TLR, sounds super interesting!

[@anzaeria]

@@dbexposure Ah valid points. I don't recall seeing dust on my medium format slide films when I pick them up from a pro lab after developing. Though I guess there's always a chance of dust creeping in. I once went to a different lab than normal to get some 35mm slide film developed and I was surprised to see the amount of dust that was on the slides. Unfortunately, I'm not fond of the boxes that most of my 35mm slides are kept in as they tend to accumulate dust in them. These are the boxes that are provided by the lab.

[@YeahItsThatBad]

Nice video, very illuminating. I've been experimenting with taking pictures of the stars after reading your previous comment about the 500 rule. I'm surprised to see that you didn't try that here, instead opting for longer exposures. I wonder if some one has made an online calculator that has the optimal exposure times for astro photography. I'm playing around with 400 iso film because that is all I have and I am starting to think that my test shots are probably going to come out underexposed. In regards to the focus on the photos, were the shots of just the stars set to infinity? I just watched another person's video about astrophotography on film and he also had difficulty focusing on the stars.

[@dbexposure]

So with film, reciprocity makes it a little difficult to follow the rule of 500 to a T, so I opted to try for some longer star trail pictures. If I had followed the 500 rule it would’ve been an 11 second exposure which pretty much would’ve shown nothing. The final two shorter shots were more experimental just to satisfy curiosity. As for focus, it’s just difficult to nail. I’d say infinity is the safest bet and sometimes even a little under infinity works as well. Stars by nature always look a little blurry since they’re just glowing balls in the sky so I’d say the most important bit is the composition itself. For all the time lapses on digital I was was obeying the 500 rule and that’s why there’s no star trails in those. Hope this is helpful!

[@xvtal]

im super late with this!! but my Bronica has a similar issue of closing the shutter. Whenever I do long exposures of the night sky, I just use a black sheet of paper or a hat to cover the lens, then I close the shutter, and remove the hat and it's worked great!!

[@LeeRatcliffe]

This is great. I really do like shooting my Milky Way/tracked stuff on digital whilst my film camera is doing a star trails exposure. I do only shoot 35mm film though right now but I have got some images that I really like! One day I might look into a smallest/lightest MF film set up.

[@jocknarn3225]

I'm resurrecting film photography after long hiatus since late-80s. Flm photography in 2023 means the cool gear i salivated over then is now vintage & needing TLC. Also severe shortage of 100ASA film in Oz .. so shooting expired stock isa new feature. I have Pentax LX & MX and Zenza Bronica SQ. Curious how 2 set up what i have 4 astrophotography. Wondering how adaptable vintage lenses might b on astro-cams like Player One series .. or adapting the digital MX-1 (with flip-out screen) + vintage lenses + Strar-Tracker mount

[@musa7606]

You need a dew heater and/or dew shield.

[@kalikiller1771]

Try an equatorial mount

[@musa7606]

I've been wanting to get my med format cameras on my mount. When I get around to it :) Maybe then take a bunch and stack them...

[@pablovi77]

Don’t fret a movement of less than a second to close the shutter, after an hour long exposure is not even noticeable, not even a minutes exposure.