Some Night Photos from my AE-1

I tried something I seldom did those last years… I took my Canon AE-1 out by night, loaded with a roll of Ilford HP5+ pushed to 3200 ISO. Yes that’s three thousand two hundred!

I first wanted to set it at 1600 but thought what the heck, why not go all the way…. not to 6400 though, can’t do that! Or can I?

No, I settled for 3200 and did some stand development in Rodinal. In fact, Massive Dev Chart on my iPhone gave me a development time of 54 Minutes in Rodinal at 1+50 dilution, so I thought an hour in 1+100 and stand development will be OK.

The results are grainy and show very nice contrast (OK, I tweaked the pictures a bit in Lightroom,  but the original scans were already looking good).

What I like with stand development is that any hard edges between light and dark areas are enhanced and thus give the impression of increased sharpness.

This has shown me that night photography without a flash is really no problem with film. another modern myth (only digital has high enough ISO for this) has fallen! It’s certain that the newest digital sensors have enormous capabilities with noise free files nearly up to 5 digit ISOs, but nothing replaces grain for me.

A night photograph is supposed to be grainy! That’s a fact!  …..for me

Thanks for reading.