Here is the situation: In September I expect to make a trip to Taiwan, and start with a side trip to Bali. I want to take some pictures of the southern sky for which ISO 1600 film would be best. I’m told that is unlikely to be available in Bali. I can carry some with me, and maybe security won’t x-ray it to death, but maybe they will insist on doing that. The possibility of buying a fresh roll in Taiwan would be a nice backup plan to have. ISO 1600 film is something a well supplied, serious camera store might have, but not the average quicky market. I expect to arrive at night in TPE, stay CKS Airport Hotel, and get a morning flight to Denpasar. No time for shopping around.
So the big question is, as stated in the title, is there a good, well supplied camera store that is very close to CKS Airport?
You might be able to find it in Taoyuan, but likely as not you’ll have to make a side trip into Taipei…
You could push the hell out of some 400ASA print film and have it specially processed once you got home…
Lastly, it’s going to be a grainy mess if you get an image worth enlarging…Might I suggest a slower film, some beach chairs, a few margaritas, tripod and shutter cable?..
Thanks, Michael. At least it helps to know not to waste time looking for what’s probably not there.
I have a cable release and a Slik Compact XL tripod. However I want to keep my exposures down to less than 15 seconds to avoid obvious star-trailing.
I probably need to do more experiments locally to see how well ISO 400 film will perform. I’m sure it will pick up more stars than the naked eye can. The thing is to see how much faint nebulosity it will pick up. The Milky Way in Cygnus and the Andromeda Galaxy would be good test objects.
Push processing probably wouldn’t help. That usually makes the highlights stronger but not the shadows or faint details. Higher ISO may not be that much better. It often shows little or no shadow detail when the highlights are correctly exposed for it.