Any old school imagers out there?

[hobbit]

Hey folks.
I'm going to be heading down to kosziosko in a couple of weeks and want to try some nightscapes with the 6x17. Unfortunately the fastest film i can get is 400.
Now I can stick it on a skytracker and do a longer exposure but reciprocity failure will kick in pretty quickly or I can get the lab to push the film a bit or a combination of the two.
Can anyone recommend the best way to go about this?

Cheers

[Peter Ward]

Used a lot of film cameras in the past...but...What's a 6x17 ???

[hobbit]

A panoramic camera
6cmx17cm is the frame size. Only get 4 shots on a roll of 120.

[mostschaedel]

Hi Hobbit!
You can hyper the 400 ASA film with a mixture of Hydrogen and Nitrogen.
See:
http://www.astropix.com/HTML/I_ASTROP/FILM/HYPERING.HTM

In Addition you can ask the labor to push the film from 400 to 800.

In the old times - in the 70thies in the last millenium - i used
Ektachrome 400, pushed it with the above linked method,
did long exposures as long as possible (up to 1 hour depending on tracking errors and sky background dark enough) ,
and let the lab develop the film with 800 ASA.

These are the 3 methods i know and used to push film results

Gerald

P.S: Today i would use fullframe DSLR and do mosaics...

[DavidTrap]

What f-ratio is your 6x17??

Last I saw one if those used it was at f64.... Admittedly that was for depth of field in landscape work, but how wide does it open and how distorted are the corners.

DT

[hobbit]

Hey David.
It can go between f8 and f45. I usually shoot around f16.
The corners are usually pretty good although on a couple of shots buildings on the edges were tilting inwards.
While a bit under exposed, you can see the sharpness and distortion here.
http://500px.com/photo/43605476/harbour-lights-by-peter-broomhead?from=user_library

[hobbit]

Thanks mostschaedel but I don't think me + hydrogen + nitrogen is a good combination.

[Poita]

Don't be a wuss, we used to hyper film all the time in the 80s :)

However, I think you will find the results disappointing, whatever you do with the film, especially at f8 or higher. CCD has come so far now compared to the results we used to get from messing around with film and chemicals.
That is a nice big plate though...

[strongmanmike]

Never thought I'd see the day but...I only just (finally) threw out a complete Lumicon hypering kit as seen in that link Gerald posted :doh:..been carting it around for years, move to move...had to be brutal :shrug:

Mike