Raiders of the Lost Dark

Flip Through the family album and you get the impression that your 19th Century ancestors were a bunch of stiffs. Were the Victorians really that stilted and joyless? Hardly. Primitive photography technology meant that subjects had to hold steady for long exposures. It was only when film grew more sensitive and lenses more receptive to light that action shots became feasible. Photographic progress has continued and that lucky old sun doesn't have to roam the heavens to enable you to take pictures. The moon will do just as well. And the message you leave for your descendants is that your generation had plenty of fun where there wasn't any sun.

Mind you, we're not talking about the use of flash. Flash is a good, utilitarian resource when illumination is the objective, but illumination is not always the same as lighting. Lighting refers to the rays that are actually there, caught natural and unadulterated. A flash brightens the scene, but all from one angle and in one intensity. It's good for showing what's present in the scene. But the low-light photographic systems considered here let you depict what the scene is like.

The operative term is photographic systems. Those are combinations of ingredients that make you successful in levels of light lower than ever before--indeed, in levels unthinkable five years ago. High-speed color films, ultrafast lenses and automatic cameras with expanded light-metering capabilities all conspire for results that can be revealing, dazzling and outright breath-taking. Any camera using any lens can improve its low-light performance with ASA 400 film, but when we're discussing the ultimate in low-light capability, we are talking about full-approach systems. Those systems supply two ways of going about low-light photography: pursuing action shots in the dim and making long-time exposures of stationary subjects with an ease and a razzle-dazzle you'd never have expected.

In analyzing the photographic systems, let's consider the films first. Only a few years ago, the term ASA 400 was whispered in tones reserved for the holy, because it described a miraculously high sensitivity to light when it appeared in black-and-white films. Today it is routine and abundantly available in color. Kodak, Fuji and 3M all make ASA 400 color films, available for either prints or slides. All exhibit fine grain (sharpness) and excellent color reproduction. In addition, 3M has introduced an ASA 640 transparency film, which, though its grain is visible, adds a little more than a 50 percent increase to the light sensitivity of ASA 400 color films.

As for the lenses, nearly all the major manufacturers now offer optics that can open as wide as f/1.4, and several even go to f/1.2 (Leitz produces an f/1.0 lens, but it is for use with its non-single-lens-reflex cameras; this article confines itself to SLR automatic cameras). What do those lens figures mean? Well, 20 years ago, a lens that could open to f/1.8 was considered a really speedy model, capable of working in the weakest light. Let's say that f/1.8 permits 100 units of light to get through to the film. By comparison, an f/1.4 lens lets about 140 units of light pass and f/1.2 gets 200 units to the film. More light reaches a film that is more light-sensitive to begin with--a double bonus.

And now, the cameras. Their automatic-exposure systems present an expanded range over which they can compute and control the length of exposure. The longer the camera keeps its shutter open, the more light can build up on the film. Long exposures are easier than ever to create, a theme we'll develop below. For now, let's stick with action photography in low and tough-to-measure light. You still need a minimum shutter speed of 1/30th of a second for photography when there's much movement or when you're handholding the camera. But thanks to the on-board metering systems of the automatics, picking off shots in low levels of light is as automatically simple and accurate as photography at high noon.

What is the outcome of this low-light action photography? Let's begin early in the day, even before the sun comes up. You remember that lighting from the last time you got up early to go fishing or--more likely--from the last time you meandered home from a party, holding the hand of your choice. The sky has just begun to adopt a tint, and a bluish hue is cast, with everything pastel and muted. It is a soft and romantic time, this dawning; and whether the subject in your view finder is a pickerel or someone more snuggly, the good news is this: With your fast lens and fast film and automatic camera, the delicacy of the moment is recorded where once a photograph would have shown only darkness.

The day goes on and Mother Nature becomes provoked. The sky moves with charcoal clouds hurtling past like box-cars in an express train. Filtering to the ground is the meekest of light. From beneath your umbrella you observe something remarkable: The colors of things still exist, yet they move toward the monochromatic in this grayness of light. That seething sky with its bloated clouds, that subtle color, all add up to tones that are sometimes described as painterly. They are yours for the plucking.

Nature clams you with a dusk of glorious richness and vivid contrasts. Shadows become elongated mimics, and foreground shapes emerge three-dimensionally as they are placed against the descending sun. The sun finally dips below the horizon, leaving a sky lava red in its lower section, deepening purple above. Color opposites play against each other, and though they are not strong, they are sufficient for nuances of hue and details of objects to stand out prominently in the photos.

It's night again, and you've been up all day, but who can sleep knowing that another world awaits, well known to you but a stranger to your camera? Down the avenues you go, observing the neon blaring here and there, the people made stark and mysterious as overhead street lamps cast odd shadows across their faces. Choose the hubbub of evening theater-goers; the solitude or the desolation of the abandoned financial district. Which-ever interpretation you care to make of the city after hours, your equipment is now prepared to record it.

You've shown the camera around town, and at last you've earned a relaxing dinner by candlelight, wine at the hearth-side, with a friend of special importance. Yet even now your low-light camera partakes of the moment, flattering portraits of your companion resulting from the orangey warmth, the soft edge cast by the light of open flame.

If you can see it, you can almost certainly get it on fast film with a fast lens. What do you have to do to photograph these provinces so recently inaccessible? Just aim and shoot.

Low-light situations improve photographs almost by definition. A picture of your companion at high noon may be noteworthy for its banality, because the old sun-behind-your-shoulder school of photography suddenly starts to look bland compared with the dramatics, the razzles and the dazzles of low-light colorations. Your snapshot albums and your slide shows will snap to life with their depictions of skiers silhouetted against a purple sky as they go schussing down white slopes; of friends convivial around the light of the campfire; or of gatherings of chums in the living room, caught candidly.

But action photography is only half the story in the low-light revolution. As mentioned earlier, most modern automatic 35mm SLRs are now capable of metering and controlling long exposures. The champ at this is the Pentax LX, which can keep its shutter open for 125 seconds. The Olympus OM-2N is a close second at an even two minutes. The Canon A-1 supplies a 30-second maximum, while the Mamiya ZE-X can master 22 seconds. The solar-powered Ricoh XR-S automatically goes to 16 seconds, as does a radically shaped newcomer, the Rolleiflex SL2000 F--shaped more like a Hasselblad than like a 35 and sharing features of the 2 1/4" format such as interchangeable film magazines. The Minolta XK-Motor can automatically meter and control an exposure of eight seconds, and the on-board meter can be manually set for 16 seconds. Two Contax models--the same except that one contains an integral autowinder--as well as the Yashica FXD use quartz timing controls for a maximum 11-second automatic exposure. A large mass of cameras, including the Leica R4 and the Nikon F3, can accurately meter and (continued on page 222) Raiders of the Lost Dark (continued from page 128) control exposures up to eight seconds, several others up to four. A new Minolta model, the X-700, when fitted with a Multi-Function Back accessory can control (though it cannot meter--a separate meter is required) an exposure of up to six hours. Indeed, theoretically, the X-700's Multi-Function Back (which has additional uses) could control an exposure of more than 99 hours (that's four days), but the batteries controlling the operation would expire after about six hours of uninterrupted use.

With so many cameras offering such extravagant long-time exposures, all produced automatically, it may seem curious that the manufacturers have not played up this capability of their products. But from a promotional standpoint, 35mm SLRs are easier to explain in terms of their ability to function quickly and to take command of spontaneous action. It might confuse the issue to say that a camera that is fast also is slow. Anyway, more people are interested in noontime snapshots, so why belabor the issue? Why? Because you can do some fascinating things with long exposures.

For example, you can shoot in the dead of night with virtually any lens. Those f/1.2s and f/1.4s are remarkable for their light-gathering capabilities, but they come only in the "normal" focal length of around 50mm. If you want to use wide-angle, telephoto or zoom lenses, you find your maximum aperture getting bumped up into the f/2 to f/4.5 range and even higher. Also, the depth of field--the zone behind and in front of the point of focus within which objects come out sharp--reduces as apertures get larger. Even at f/1.2, that doesn't matter much for shots where the subject is 15 feet or more away. But there are times when you want clarity on widely separated foreground and background subjects. That means stopping down to increase the depth of field, and that, in turn, makes a longer exposure necessary.

Very few people can adequately handhold a camera at exposures longer than 1/30th of a second, so it becomes obvious that an exposure lasting seconds or minutes requires a good, steady tripod under the camera. Thus equipped, the common man can treat himself to the spectacular results--or plain fun--achievable with long-time exposures.

Nighttime cityscapes can be quite dazzling, either as distant skylines or as individual buildings glowing in the night. If yours is an area that has illuminated suspension bridges, you can photograph them with an ooh-and-ahh nighttime look you've never before been able to capture. Subjects like those can be recorded majestically on ASA 400 film at f/4.5, with exposures in the five-to-ten-second range.

But skylines and pretty bridges are almost the clichés of time exposures. Any terrain or structure worthy of picturing by daylight adopts a new and otherworldly quality when lit by, say, the light of the silvery moon. At two minutes or at three hours, a landscape or even the interior of a forest could be illuminated by starlight. Those would be dreamscapes and magical forests, because the quality of the light--softer and whiter--would transform those familiar places into something human senses rarely perceive.

Are you beside a lake or a river or an ocean as the moon comes up? You can get a moon-over-the-earth shot that resounds with cosmic connotations. But as the moon is reflected in a streak from the surface of the water, another magic appears in the photo. The moon is clear, the shores are clear, but the reflection on the surface is made vague and mysterious to the extent that waves had broken and blurred its lines. Rather than seem a reflection of anything, the lighted water appears to be glowing with its own radiance. Call it an enchanted pond--you'll accomplish a photographic effect that makes people stare.

Indeed, it often develops that the time exposure shows things the human eye cannot see. Our vision has its limits of light-sensitivity, and a time exposure sometimes surpasses our own limitations as the photons collect on the film. That doesn't require a very long exposure, either. The five-to-ten-second exposure mentioned earlier, on ASA 400 film at f/4.5, will distinguish the edges of buildings against the black of the surrounding nighttime sky with a contrast and a detail invisible to you when you trip the shutter.

A funny thing about time exposures is that they needn't be taken at night. They do have to be taken in circumstances in which very little light reaches the film. But that is something you can arrange in broad daylight.

Light-blocking filters, such as polarizers and neutral density filters, are inexpensive and, combined in sufficient quantity with a lens stopped down to f/22, can require an exposure of minutes or hours during the brightest day of the year. Why would anyone want to make exposures so vastly longer than necessary? The answer is determined by the degree of tomfoolery that lurks within the photographer's imagination.

Of course, we have all seen at least one variation of the guy-comes-out-of-the-coal-mine-and-finds-everybody-missing movie. Want to show Times Square the day nobody was there? Set up a long enough exposure and nothing that moves will register on the film. That's because figures are long gone before the film has had time to "see" them. Presto! Vacated city. Was it the bomb? Was it your breath?

It should be obvious that the use of time exposures is something that appeals more to the photo hobbyist than to the now-and-again snapshooter. Yet many a snapshooter has found himself seduced by the potential of photography and has unexpectedly become more committed and more involved as the prospects unfolded before the mind's eye. Whichever level you now occupy, whatever level you may grow into, the course of technology has almost made photography a misnomer. Photography translates to "drawing with light," and as you can see, that reference to light is becoming less relevant.

"Nighttime cityscapes can be quite dazzling, either as distant skylines or as individual buildings."

Playboy's Guide to Low-Light Cameras