Fake Film

Griffin said:
I cannot find words to describe how ludicrous this really is. I've seen people spend hours trying to make their DSLR films look like 8 mm. Hey, I know a quicker way to get that look...
USE REAL FILM
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This forum is for photo 'software' ... good that you could drop in to give us the usual 'use real film' sermon that we've come to expect in these threads!

Try not to slam the door on your way out ... thanks! 😀
 
In silver efex pro I always turned the "grain" to zero because I didn't like this. So SEP was just a quick preset for some bw+contrast+curves corrections. I think I get similar results with the nice Aperture bw option + 2 or 3 slider adjustments without a plugin.
This is a plugin where I regret spending the money.
 
I'm trying DXO film pack at the moment. I think this was HP5
U3357I1316094872.SEQ.0.jpg
 
jimrohrer said:
I know I'm at risk of sounding like a luddite here... why not take the time to learn the craft of photography and just shoot film?
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Who says the OP (or any of us who prefer digital) do not know how to use film (or process or wet print for that matter)? I think this is a very narrowminded misconception of people who prefer digital. I've done everything from cibachromes to c prints to B&W via formats from 110 to large format. I prefer digital. That said, I do not use these fake film programs. I just let digital be digital.
 
There is no method of processing, altering, retouching, editing, or framing an image that is in any way illegitimate. This is no different from choosing one lens over another, or even choosing to frame a shot one way over another. All notions of artistic purity in photography are naive, sentimental, and irrational.

This software is no more fake than film itself.

Fire away!
 
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Man, you kids with your self-capping shutters and celluloid film in factory-made cartridges. Why don't you learn to make exposures with a lens cap and wet collodion plates? People who go out into the field without a portable darkroom are lazy and don't know the true meaning of the art.
 
You losers with your paints. Come on over to my cave, I'll show you some pictures. It's charred stick on granite or nothin', for me. Bring a torch, and tell the sabretooth by the door you're with me.
 
In all seriousness, everybody should read Errol Morris's new book, "Believing Is Seeing." It's one of the best extended essays on photography I have ever read, and it gets at this whole notion of "authenticity" in photography. I should do a whole thread about it in fact.
 
The shot above looks very good, but the unfortunate side of this is that people will look at unmarked "filmerized" digital files and think that's how real film's supposed to look. I've used these plug ins before and they're fun, but no plug in will add dynamic range and make a limited-range digital file cover the tones of real B&W film. Not a film sermon, just life.
 
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+1, though I'm a film guy personally.

I think 1 of the disturbing/liberating aspects of digital is that it doesn't really have much of a "native" look, @ least if you shoot raw. As Pascal Dangin said (in this article http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/05/12/080512fa_fact_collins):

“Photography as we knew it, meaning film and Kodak and all that, was a very subjective process. With film images you had emotions. You used to go out and buy film like Fuji, because it was more saturated, or you liked Agfa because it gave you a rounded color palette.” With a ten-dollar roll of film, he explained, you were essentially buying ten dollars’ worth of someone’s ideas. “Software, right now, is objective. ‘Let the user create whatever he wants.’ Which is great, but it doesn’t really produce good photography.”
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As I've often discussed w/photo buddies, it seems that the film makers like Kodak & Fuji have missed out on a significant business opportunity to leverage their "$10 of expertise," as Dangin called it, by not offering their own software plug-ins (though I'm guessing they get some kind of licensing income from allowing dxo, etc. to use their trademarks?).

jsrockit said:
Who says the OP (or any of us who prefer digital) do not know how to use film (or process or wet print for that matter)? I think this is a very narrowminded misconception of people who prefer digital. I've done everything from cibachromes to c prints to B&W via formats from 110 to large format. I prefer digital. That said, I do not use these fake film programs. I just let digital be digital.
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