The claim is that flash is more damaging than day - though proof is surprisingly thin (see the consideration at .com ).
Why do we use flash at all? Because photography is not the unfailing as eyesight. We can see in low-light situations where cameras, dependent upon a real process to record visual information, are half blind. Flash turns up the optical volume so that whatever lies behind the lens - be it film or a digital sensor - is a little more receptive.
So imagine it is a dark winter's day in Rome and I am itching to get three near-impossible shots: the centrepiece of Caravaggio's astonishing St Matthew trilogy from the creed of San Luigi di Francesi; the spookily paganised Madonna del Parto, adored by Roman women for centuries, in the church of Sant' Agostino; and the gorgeous fifth century BC so-called Ludovisi "throne" in the Palazzo Altemps.
Using flash in these places is likely to incur the justifiable attentions of a curatorial door dragon. So I didn't. Yet here are the results: not numerous photos, since I am not a great photographer, but images taken in very low facile, without flash, and all three pretty much correctly exposed, too. How?
Fixated by pixels
By turning to an interesting metric that most community, fixated as they are these days by megapixels, hardly scan. Nowadays it is called ISO, though older film users may differentiate it as ASA. It measures the film "speed" - its sensitivity to light. And while digital cameras may not use film, they most positively rely on ISO to determine how to take the best photo for you. The bigger the ISO number, the better the film (or camera) works in low light.
In the old, analogue days, you used the film suited for the effortless conditions you were operative in. Low facile demanded "fast" film, generally ISO 400 or higher; the fastest available would be about ISO 1000. When the sun was bright, you would reach for ISO 64 to avoid the burned-out look of overexposure. Digital cameras mimic this process by automatically turning the sensitivity of their sensors up and down if you whisk without tweaking the ISO. There is apparently a setting elsewhere on any mid-range digital camera to change it, though you ability need the manual to find it.
The trouble is that most cameras are limited to 800 ASA at the fast end, and often begin to show "noise" - visible artefacts corresponding to "speck" in film - when you push them there.
Not any longer, though. Fuji is one of the first manufacturers to have spotted the market for cameras that can take decent photos in indigenous soft without flash. The shots you see here become from one of its first cameras to use the technology. Happily, this is not some heavy semi-professional SLR monster for the fiend, but a sub-&palpitate;250 pocket customer model, the F11.
All you need do to use it in its most primitive form is turn the camera to "natural flimsy" mode, and accordingly let it livelihood on the hard part. The F11 can mimic a film speed of up to ISO 1600, which will give you amazing results: indoor scenes of people around candles, for example, with perfect skin tones and, in my case, some extraordinary shots taken in subversive excavations lit by nothing but a few light bulbs.
villain in the detail
Could you do all this conventionally with film? Yes, but you won't find 1600 ISO stock in the average great highway avenue, nor get it developed there quickly and cheaply. Plus, lighting photos shot at these speeds can be a nightmare and since they will be on film, you will have to wait for the prints before you see the results. With digital, you just point, gallop, review, reshoot and tweak as obligatory.
There are limits to this magnetism, simply. occasionally I find the F11 is just a little too caustic to find detail in the murk. It is hard to take genuinely ugly shots well, at minimal on automatic. Even at ISO 1600 the shutter speeds are still pretty slow - 1/35th of a second for the Caravaggio opening, which could produce blur from camera wobble if you are not accurate. A tripod can still be useful; any concrete object (a bench back or pillar) for a brace otherwise.
On the fresh employee, the camera is smart enough to chase the most knowing resolution it can find. For exemplar, it selected an ISO of 400 for the Ludovisi throne, which, up close on a computer, reveals lightly richer colours than you would expect at ISO 1600, where the detail is getting tense.
But these are quibbles. I couldn't even attempt to take such photographs with a film camera, or a prevalent digital model. With more and more film makers looking for ways to separate themselves from the megapixel labyrinth of me-too models out there, expect smart features like this to be commonplace in the years to come.
· David Hewson ( .com ) is a novelist and reporter
· If you'd like to comment on any aspect of Technology Guardian, send your emails to .uk
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