Night Street Shooting
One form of photography that I enjoy is city street shooting at night. When I upgraded back to film, I feared that this kind of shooting would remain digital: digital has certain advantages for high-ISO shooting. As it turns out, my fears were unfounded; I quite like the look I'm getting with film.
With a digital SLR I normally keep the camera set for ISO 320, only boosting it further if things get really dark. ISO 320 is no problem for film – but the problem is that exposure for negative film is very different from digital. With digital, you expose for the highlights, but with negatives, the best results are obtained by exposing for the shadows. So, negative film can require quite a bit more exposure than digital at the same ISO rating.
The other side of it is that negative film has vast dynamic range, far more than any current digital camera, which gives you more exposure latitude, or margin for error. Since the shadows – the basis of your exposure – don't change much, it's easier to expose negative film. You can pretty much meter off the sidewalk and lock that in with manual mode, only changing if the overall light level changes. Since most of the range is on the high (overexposure) end, the risk of clipping bright lights is minimal. These pictures were shot on Portra 400nc negative film, which is plenty fast enough.
In many ways the results are better than with digital. The film is daylight-balanced, but the odd color of the lights is part of the look, and you can correct color after scanning anyway. It's a different look, less exact, less clinical, but that's the whole point of shooting with film, right?
Living close to New York City is a blessing for a nighttime street shooter: it's the safest city in the country, where walking around late at night with a camera isn't even a little uncomfortable. The NYPD deserves a lot of respect for what they've done here – back in the '80s and early '90s walking these streets was a very different experience. When I would come here as a teenager we had certain routes we stuck to, where we knew the streets would be populated and well-lit. Now, you can poke around on the dark side streets and not even worry about it. I have to adjust my expectations when I'm in other cities, because New York has spoiled me. I've walked the empty streets of lower Manhattan with an expensive camera hanging on my shoulder well after midnight without a second thought. When you walk past an NYPD officer walking his beat, give him a friendly hello. Whatever you may think of police in general, the NYPD is absolutely the best.
The classic Tri-X, as always, is great for black-and-white street shooting. You can push this stuff to ISO 1600 easily, and even if you get the exposure tragically wrong it always seems to deliver.
This image demonstrates that the NYPD can not only do the job, but they can look good doing it. This is Tri-X shot at 800, but 1600 works just as well. I have yet to try pushing it to 3200, but I expect that when I do, Tri-X will deliver.
