Film Emulation

I like blonds. I like brunettes. You can keep the bleached blondes for yourself however. I have no interest in them.
 
I did an experiment once, tri x and digital same subject (white church),same time and place.

I placed a mild contrast increase curve on the digital file so the tones matched film . Then I added some grain. PS allows you color or mono grain, large or small. Then use "blend if"
to confine the grain to the middle tones. Do not forget to split the sliders so there is not an abrupt transition.

Remember this for when you run out of film or you made a digital file and later thought film would be better.

This works with a digital file if you decide the plastic look is not appropriate. Save as an action and you can recreate in 3 seconds anytime. Digital can look too perfect.
 
bmattock said:
I like film. I don't see the point of trying to recreate it artificially.

Film has grain, for example. I'm fine with grain, but it's not the reason I like film.

I think these digital film emulators are the incorrect answer to the question. Like a youngster thinking it must be the clicks and pops that vinyl lovers find important about vinyl, so hey, let's emulate it.
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I use the film simulations that Fuji offers and well as several LR 3rd party simulations. For me they are all just starting points, time savers, helping me get a look I want in the shortest possible time at the monitor. At best, the ones I've used are suggestive of certain film qualities, the degree depending on subject matter and light. I've found I like certain ones for certain things, like Fuji's "Classic Chrome" for music shooting and "Astia" for outdoor events in early and late light. But like I say they're starting points, that's all.

Example of "Classic Chrome" (Paul Carey Organ Trio wsg Kimberli Wright, vocals):

20160102b-094-web by Mike Tuomey, on Flickr

I like CC's way of dealing with mixed lighting, also how its contrast curve compresses blacks.
 
patrickjames said:
I like blonds. I like brunettes. You can keep the bleached blondes for yourself however. I have no interest in them.
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Oscuro said:
Never, ever, discount the girl that is trying. Have you ever listened to Robert Johnson?
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This kind of appreciation tends to come with age ... but you are so right. Bless those who do with what they got.
 
Intersting discussion with many good points. As for me what I like in film is the "process" slower than digital. Exactly as it is when I listen to my Vinyls, I seat down and listen to the music, when with CDs or digital files I tend to play them and do,something else meantime.
Now the aesthetic, being myself an hybrid photgrapher I feel the digital too perfect, to clean.therefore I accept a little compromize to obtain the look I desire when shooting a digital camera.
robert
 
MCTuomey said:
This kind of appreciation tends to come with age ... but you are so right. Bless those who do with what they got.
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Dear MCTuomey,

Thank you!

Hubby showed me this thread. When we met, some forty years ago, I was a chemical blonde. There is an expression in my native tongue that roughly translates to the English as, "both sides and all the way down".

Coarse, but in my case, applicable. I wasn't compensating - my natural shade is a deep coppery red. I was simply enamored with the look. The fascination lasted a year and when Monsieur O saw my natural coloring I couldn't get rid of him! I still can't.

I suppose the metaphor is content over form.

Best,

Mme. O.
 
E.M said:
It makes me think of the latest Triumph Bonnevilles , they have injection since 2008 , but they still make it look like having carburators , just to keep it having the classic look , it 's like cheating , it looks like something it isn't .
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Have to agree with you on this. Had one of the earlier Bonnevilles, one of the carbureted, Made in England, models, before they moved production to Thailand. But even that didn't work for me, so I sold it. They tried to make it like the 1960's bikes, but those bikes were the way they were because that was the technology of that period. To "dumb down" a motorcycle design in 2006 to look like something from another period, just didn't make sense to me after a while.

I'm fortunate to still be able to shoot and process film (although some of my favorites are no longer with us, APX-100, Ektachrome EPP-100, Plus-X), so I can get the authentic item, not a software created copy.
 
I find the discussion here, and the question at hand, very interesting. It is one which I always ask myself as an artist. In fact, that's what made me bite the bullet and make a RFF account! So on that note, hello everyone! 🙂 This is my first post here:

As I'm sure many would agree, the use of different formats allows for different creative freedoms; the sheer detail of large format, the movements common to LF cameras and some MF cameras, the lower cost of shooting MF colour to LF, the speed of digital, etc. The list could go on and on, but this best relates to the formats I use in my own body of work. That means I'm using digital and film (especially 6x6/6x9) in my workflow, which inherently have different image qualities/appearances/whatever you wish to call it.

The point is, digital and film generally look different, but I don't want photographs amongst a single body of work to look different from each other in that respect. I want them to compliment each other aesthetically, and film emulation software allows me to do just that. However, that's not to say I want every shot from my A7R to mimic 35mm Portra. I will play with the colours and tonality of an image - any image; film or digital - until a "look" is achieved that adheres well to the body of work as a whole, irrespective of its "film-esque" appearance in the end.
 
Nice to have you here, and welcome from another LF photographer (as well as this small stuff). To me, the Fuji XE-1 film settings are just labels that they put on "color modes" or such. I don't like Photoshop work, so it lets me quickly get the look I want for most snapshots. For serious work, I mostly like the different affects and results that lenses give me in large format. I always find it ironic that 35mm/digital users want perfect corner resolution and extreme resolution - on a postage stamp sized film/sensor. Then LF users want swirl, shallow depth of field, soft focus, and other aberrations a lens applies to their giant sheet of negative!

Back to film emulation (but there are plenty that try to emulate the look of lenses with software). Another related effort is the "wetplate plugins" that attempt to make an internet viewed digital picture look like a physical....wet....plate....on.....steel or glass. Kinda weird. Or the billions of Instagram facebook shots with "old lookin" affects applied. Geeze, I don't remember our film shots at parties and attractions looking SO BAD back then!
 
Thanks for the kind words goamules and Robert! I too find the differences in desires of many large format photographers, versus small format photographers, interesting to say the least. 😉
 
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