Blue hour in the Upper Town
The gas lamps in Zagreb's Upper Town are still lit by hand every evening. I had known this for years and never once been there at the right moment with a camera, so this summer I made a point of it.
In early July the useful blue light lasts about twenty minutes. Before that the sky is too bright for the lamps to matter; after that it goes black and the street turns into a few bright dots. On film, with a slow lens and no autofocus, twenty minutes is about six frames if nothing goes wrong.
What went wrong
My travel tripod is too short. On the cobbles near St. Mark's I had to choose between a frame from knee height and balancing it on a low wall. I chose the wall, and the first two exposures have a soft double edge where the camera shifted when a tram went by further down the hill.
Exposure was easier than I feared. I metered the sky just above the rooftops, opened up a stop and a half, and let the lamps blow out. Exposures ran from two to eight seconds at f/8. Reciprocity failure on HP5 is mild at those times, so I added about a third more and stopped worrying.
What I would do next time
- Arrive thirty minutes earlier and pick two spots, not five
- Bring the taller tripod even though it is heavy
- Use a cable release; the self-timer is not enough on a wall
Of the six frames, two are good and one is the best night picture I have made so far: the lamplighter walking out of frame, slightly blurred, with the lamp behind him just catching. I did not plan it. I just did not move fast enough to stop him walking in.