For years during my shoots, I kept wondering if I should be using more equipment. Whether my preference for natural light might be too minimalistic. I questioned if I should dare to use negative fill more often for targeted shadowing. And whether my decision to keep a Tiffen Glimmer Glass permanently on my lens was really the right way to go.
And then cinematographer Phedon Papamichael comes along and shoots a Hollywood film following exactly this philosophy. With minimal lighting setup, high ISO, and the deliberate goal of escaping the sterile digital look. He even went so far as to transfer the finished film to analog material and digitize it back again — just to create that certain soul in the images.
Working with ISO 12,800 opens up quite practical advantages: It allows you to work with higher f-stops and thus achieve greater depth of field. More elements in the background remain sharp without requiring additional lighting. The minimalist approach to lighting creates a more authentic atmosphere. It's also much faster and more cost-effective in production.
But 12,800 is quite a number. For my pinball series, I only worked with ISO 6,400. Already quite bold. But without grain, the images somehow look too artificial, soulless, and bland. Here's an example with a denoised subject.
It leads me to thoughts about grain in images, which I've discussed frequently in blog articles here before. What makes grain special? Does it trigger a nostalgic feeling that only those of us born before the year 2000 can experience?
But what makes imperfection so special?
The answer goes deeper than pure nostalgia: When we see grain in images, it instantly triggers a kind of authenticity reflex in our brains. Over decades, we've learned that grainy images represent real, unfiltered moments. In an era of AI images and super-clean Instagram feeds, this technical "imperfection" acts like a certificate of authenticity.
And grain does something else to us: It forces our brains to participate. Similar to a slightly blurred painting, we have to fill in the fine details ourselves and that's exactly what pulls us right into the image. This subtle veiling plus the timeless quality we associate with film grain somehow elevates the subject beyond the everyday. Away from perfect digital reproduction, towards something more emotional.