Digital BW, The Print

Sanders asks:

> Anthony, or anyone else using Portra b/w 400:
> What was your experience with reciprocity failure
> shooting the film at night?

There isn't any.  According to Kodak, Portra 400BW doesn't require any
compensation at all for exposures between 1/10,000 and 120 seconds.  I just
exposed by the book without worrying about reciprocity, and the results were
excellent.  I can't imagine going outside these exposure-time limits in any
of the shots I take, so reciprocity failure isn't an issue for me.  In this
respect, Portra 400BW is just like my beloved Provia 100F, which also shows
virtually no reciprocity failure.

The color Porta films are not quite so tolerant, but they still require no
changes between 1/10,000 and ten seconds ... except for the Portra 800 film,
which starts to drift a bit beyond 1 second (then again, one second is a
long time at ISO 800).

> If I take a few midtone readings off of my Digisix
> in streetlit night shots and dial them into my
> Rolleiflex, how much do I need to bracket?

I'm not sure what kind of meter a Digisix is, but I metered this with a
Minolta Spotmeter F, carefully metering the darkest and lightest parts that
I wanted to capture, and then estimating the best overall exposure to get as
much detail as I could.  I didn't bracket at all; just one exposure, and it
turned out fine.  In fact, the broad range of the film captured a lot more
detail than I expected to get (I guess I shoot too much slide film, eh?).  I
could coax a great deal out of the shadows and highlights, and it was a
pleasure to be able to get detail in practically every spot on the image,
despite the sharp nighttime contrasts.

> If, on top of the other things you've mentioned,
> Portra is more predictably exposed at night, you may have
> converted me.

Unless you have exposures longer than two minutes, you don't need any
correction.  Meter carefully and the first shot should also be the last.
This is indeed an advantage when shooting expensive larger formats.

Because of my experiences with Portra 400BW, it will probably become my B&W
film of choice for night shots.  The same slight flatness that results
during the day from the panchromatic response of the chromogenic films turns
out to be an advantage at night.  Sharp contrasts and widely variable light
sources all get rendered nicely.

Now, if I just had a nice B&W printer, I could try some big enlargements of
these images.  With proper printing, I bet they'd look pretty good hanging
on my wall.  The detail just goes on and on, so I could cover one wall with
them and they'd still look good, I think.