The claim is that flash is more damaging than day - though proof is surprisingly thin (see the discussion at .com ).
Why do we use flash at all? Because photography is not the consistent as eyesight. We can see in low-light situations where cameras, dependent upon a physical process to record visible lore, 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-unthinkable shots: the centrepiece of Caravaggio's awesome 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 sumptuous fifth century BC so-called Ludovisi "throne" in the Palazzo Altemps.
Using flash in these places is likely to incur the reasonable attentions of a curatorial door dragon. So I didn't. Yet here are the results: not great photos, since I am not a celebrated photographer, but images taken in very low easy, without flash, and all three pretty much perfectly exposed, too. How?
Fixated by pixels
By turning to an readable metric that most family, fixated as they are these days by megapixels, rarely consider. Nowadays it is called ISO, though older film users may know it as ASA. It measures the film "speed" - its feeling to light. And while digital cameras may not use film, they most surely entrust on ISO to decide 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 facile conditions you were operative in. Low light demanded "fast" film, frequently 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 hurtle without tweaking the ISO. There is doubtless a setting somewhere on any mid-range digital camera to change it, though you might need the manual to find it.
The trouble is that most cameras are precise to 800 ASA at the fast end, and repeatedly make to show "noise" - visible artefacts corresponding to "modicum" in film - when you push them there.
Not any longer, though. Fuji is one of the first manufacturers to outwit spotted the market for cameras that can take decent photos in sincere mild without flash. The shots you see here originate from one of its first cameras to use the technology. Happily, this is not some lumbering semi-professional SLR beast for the maniac, but a sub-&pulverize;250 pocket customer model, the F11.
All you need do to use it in its most basic form is turn the camera to "naive effortless" mode, and then let it work on the hard part. The F11 can mimic a film speed of up to ISO 1600, which will allow you amazing results: indoor scenes of nation around candles, for example, with perfect skin tones and, in my case, some extraordinary shots taken in underground excavations lit by nothing but a few light bulbs.
Devil in the detail
Could you do all this conventionally with film? Yes, but you won't find 1600 ISO stock in the average elated street aperture, nor get it developed there quickly and cheaply. Plus, lighting photos bullet at these speeds can be a nightmare and since they will be on film, you will enjoy to wait for the prints before you see the results. With digital, you just point, shoot, review, reshoot and tweak as necessary.
There are limits to this magic, naturally. occasionally I find the F11 is just a little too clever to find detail in the murk. It is hard to take genuinely gloomy shots well, at least on automatic. Even at ISO 1600 the shutter speeds are still pretty slow - 1/35th of a second for the Caravaggio shot, which could produce blur from camera wobble if you are not careful. A tripod can still be utilitarian; any solid object (a bench back or pier) for a brace otherwise.
On the other extremity, the camera is smart enough to chase the most sensible clarification it can find. For example, it selected an ISO of 400 for the Ludovisi throne, which, up close on a computer, reveals slightly richer colours than you would assume at ISO 1600, where the detail is getting unnatural.
But these are quibbles. I couldn't even attempt to take such photographs with a film camera, or a ordinary digital model. With more and more film makers looking for ways to separate themselves from the megapixel morass 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 writer
· If you'd like to comment on any aspect of Technology warden, deliver your emails to .uk
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