(ABOVE: The medieval quarter of Gerona, Spain, 2 A.M., using Ilford 3200 ISO black-and-white film.)
They say never look back. But there are times when I do with great fondness, especially the days – or, rather, the nights – when I would prowl the streets of European cities after dark with whatever camera I happened to be packing for that particular travel assignment along with rolls of Ilford Delta Pro 3200 ISO black-and-white film.
Not to sound like a dinosaur, but for those too young to have ever had the pleasure of working with a film camera, 3200 ISO is extremely light-sensitive film. So sensitive, in fact, that you could walk around a city at night without a flash (or a tripod, for that matter), shooting images using only available light (in Europe that typically means gaslamps and flickering candles on sidewalk café tables), and wind up with wonderfully evocative, moody and sensual, damn-near ethereal images. Because of the light-sensitive nature of 3200 ISO film, the images typically possessed a mild to moderate grainy quality that photographers like myself absolutely love.
Sure with today’s professional-grade DSLR cameras you can set the ISO to 3200 (or 6400) and shoot to your heart’s content under identically low-light conditions. But cameras such as these manufactured by companies like Nikon and Canon boast of how little digital or electronic “noise” is visible in images taken at high ISO settings. Yet there’s a difference between grain and noise – at least aesthetically. Digital noise is something to be avoided because it makes an image look “dirty.” On the other hand, natural film grain can actually give an image a more artistic look.
(ABOVE: Bride Sasha Jacob offers her ring-bearer nephew Jacob Dejean a few last-minute, pre-ceremony words of support. Shot with Ilford 3200 ISO film.)
I have yet to use or read about a digital camera that can achieve the same artistic aesthetic as a roll of 3200 ISO film. And I’ve yet to find a filter in Photoshop that can approximate the same tonality during post-processing. (But I would be interested to hear if anyone has.)
So far my two favorite shooting sessions using 3200 ISO film was the occasion of the wedding of my wife’s niece Sasha and the streets of Gerona, Spain. Both couldn’t have been more different in terms of subject matter.
Sasha wanted me to capture the kind of spontaneous, joy-of-the-moment images that always make the pre-wedding hours a pleasure to photograph (especially when you’re a proud uncle). My editor, meantime, wanted after-dark, black-and-white photographs of Gerona’s medieval quarter because he knows when in Spain I like to spin my stories around that country's romantic midnight hour.
(ABOVE: In Gerona, Spain, the shadowy, gaslamp-lighted Carrer Sant Llorenc, shot with Ilford 3200 ISO film).
While both shoots had as much in common as a bathrobe and a wrench, I enjoyed both immensely because the 3200 ISO film allowed me to shoot totally guerilla. By that I mean unencumbered by strobes and tripods while relying purely on instincts to make best use of available light (even in the case of Sasha’s pre-nuptial hotel room and, later, the lobby, where lighting was anything but friendly).
(ABOVE: The Jacob sisters, from left, Claire, Sasha and Marie, shot with Ilford 3200 ISO film.)
Gerona at night, conversely, proved a gaslamp-illuminated dreamscape of painterly canvases just awaiting the photographer’s shutter click. (If I remember correctly I think my shutter never varied from 1/125.)
I still have an old Nikon film camera I keep for those times when I think about popping in a roll of Ilford 3200 and hitting the streets at night to capture the world as I often see it in my dreams. But, truth be told, those times haven’t happened in years since I became a workaday slave to the modern-day digital era. Today the camera lives in the top drawer of my dresser alongside another relic from my past: a replica of the compass once used by Thomas Jefferson that a good friend gave me as a birthday present long ago just in case I ever lost my way.
But not a day goes by …
