Reflection Lake Star Trails #3

Long nighttime exposure, with star trails, of Mt. Rainier from Reflection Lakes


My best guess is this is from 2010. This is a one-and-a-half hour exposure at f16 from 2 Hasselblads. These would be the 50mm lenses, and the film is Provia 100F. I don’t remember if I’d planned it this way, or if I later determined I’d gotten the exposure very wrong, but I ended up pushing the film 2 stops which was clearly the right thing to do. (I may have taken a test exposure from another film magazine to make the determination; just don’t remember). I probably had some children’s socks tied around the lenses, with handwarmers inside, to keep the lenses from fogging.

I’m impressed with the color and how blue the sky looks. Well, it is sunlight after all, it’s just getting to the scene via a large reflector in the sky. The moon would have been pretty full here. The challenge with these shots is to get enough light on the trees on the other side of the lake without blowing out the top of the mountain. I do like the reflected star trails in the water.

Reflection Lake Star Trails #2

Reflection Lake Star Trails #2I know what you’re thinking — the thing missing from this folio is some photos of Mt. Rainier.

For at least a couple years now Don Lopp has been bugging me to get down to Reflection Lake and capture this shot under a full moon. The idea is to take an exposure long enough to let the moon light the scene like day and still get star trails.

I shot some other film that night and processed it first. It came out much too dark and in the end I pushed this roll 2 stops. This was a 90 minute exposure. With the push it’s the equivalent of a 6 hour exposure (and star trails could have been 4x as long)! I am baffled by how true the colors look. I see no reciprocity failure.

Shot with 2 Hasselblad 500Cs on a twin bar. Provia 100F at f16.