Best stock for sunrise and sunset

[Guillem Zamora]

Shooting exteriors on a beach at both sunrise and sunset. Should I stick to a daylight stock but at the risk of losing light at night? Or play it safe with 500T? Interested in what will give me the best colour in those conditions and exposure tips. 

[Albion Hockney]

Are you trying to shoot magic hour or blue hour after the sunsets? no need for 500t unless your shooting faces in magic hour into mid/late blue hour.

for actual sunset/sunrise 50d would be ok.

[Aapo Lettinen]

yes the 50D if you have enough light.

If you are unsure about the light levels and want more headroom for safety, then you can use 250D stock. with fast lenses that will get you pretty far in the blue hour.

I think the 500T would not help much when shooting daylight stuff. if going for super extra blue tone then you can gain a little bit more exposure but if you need the extra blue to be corrected with in-camera or post filtering you would only gain like 1/3 of a stop more light compared to the 250D so it is not worth the extra grain and hassle by my opinion.

[Aapo Lettinen]

good rule of thumb is, at least in this part of the World, that if the sun is visible you can always use the 50D no problem but before sunrise/after sunset time is very limited, you may have like max. 10 or 15 minutes of exposure depending on the other conditions, time of year etc. even if shooting wide open and being ready to heavily underexpose some of the shots.

with 250D you would get more if the lenses are fast. you have lots more headroom to get good exposure. and it enhances the result in the twilight conditions where the 50D really struggles. it does not necessarily give that much more time but the dimmest shots are much better looking than with the 50D which starts to fall apart on those.

none of these stocks is really good for shooting in really dim lighting conditions. film is not good medium for that...very dim and flat is not ideal for film, it is much better for stuff which has contrast in the first place. but you will get interesting results nevertheless. some of the most interesting stuff I have shot was 50D on Cameflex with Super Takumars wide open and in twilight, was not fully planned because we were losing light but it had very eerie look to it when boosted enough in scanning to get anything usable out of it. it was for arts stuff of course.

if wanting good colours you would need to expose the material very well. that often requires more headroom (potentially faster stock if the light levels are uncertain) and the bright-colour parts of the image need to be exposed at least reasonably well. so the 50D might not be the best option because you would need to potentially underexpose some shots. The 500T is not perfect either because it is wrong colour balance. So I would check the light levels and if you are even a little bit uncertain you have correct exposure for all the shots, then choosing the 250D

Edited September 4 by Aapo Lettinen

[steven jackson]

Tungsten film used at sunset gives interesting color as the color temperature starts to align itself to 3200K.  A quick reference would be Cape Light, still photography by Joel Meyerowitz.

[Guillem Zamora]

18 hours ago, Albion Hockney said:

Are you trying to shoot magic hour or blue hour after the sunsets? no need for 500t unless your shooting faces in magic hour into mid/late blue hour.

for actual sunset/sunrise 50d would be ok.

Some magic and blue hour but mostly the actual sunrise and sunset. For context, we'd be shooting on a beach.