Film Like

[Bill Pierce]

Once upon a time in film days, if you wanted to print your work yourself, and thus interpret it, you probably shot black-and-white. Think of the “pre digital” photographers you admire. Probably the majority of them shot black-and-white. Printing color was simply far more complicated and expensive than running a conventional black-and-white darkroom.

With digital, that has changed. It’s easy to shoot and print color. But often black-and-white doesn’t quite match our memory of those wonderful silver prints of the film world. Why? There are a lot of reasons and a lot of steps that can be taken to rectify the situation. I’ll toss in one reason and one rectification that most people don’t think about, but, between all of us, we should be able to come up with other suggestions that might make our digital black-and-white a little more “silver like.”

Digital images, like transparency film, can completely lose detail in overexposed highlight areas. It’s the digital equivalent of a clear, detailess film base. On the other hand, it’s the shadow areas of black-and-white negatives that can fall into detailess film base. While many of today’s digital cameras can capture a greater range of printable tones than conventionally processed negative film, their blown out highlights can never recover detail that would be present and printable in a properly developed b&w film.

So what do black-and-white digital shooters do? I’m going to suggest something extremely simple - underexpose. Whether you use a highlight oriented incident meter, just set the auto exposure down a stop or watch out for the blinking highlights that some digital viewfinders offer isn’t important. Just be aware of the fact that the generous exposure you learned to love in the b&w film world is now your enemy. Protect your highlights. Does this mean that sometimes you will lose shadow detail? Yes. But you won’t be losing any more than if you were shooting film. (As a matter of fact, sometimes that b&w film look is just a matter of using a slider to drop the lowest values of your beautiful image into the abyss. You just have to learn to live with the pain.)

OK, your turn. What can you do to make black-and-white digital images more film like?

 

[markjwyatt]

I do tend to underexpose, and sometimes even throw-away deep a shadows (this one is a litle extreme):

Small Rock Group by Mark Wyatt, on Flickr

But then again, we can still shoot film, too.

Sloped Rocks by Mark Wyatt, on Flickr

 

[Darthfeeble]

Under exposing is the digital way. Either color or B&W. I've been told that ontrast is to B&W what saturation is to color. So second to under exposing I would recommend higher contrast.

 

[Timmyjoe]

When Leica came out with the Monochrom, I thought I'd died and gone to heaven. Of course I couldn't afford one. But I did read everything I could about it, and I remember numerous reviews said the best way to emulate B&W film is to underexpose (protect the highlights). Many years later when I finally could afford a used Monochrom, I saw that the reviewers were right, underexposure sure seems to do the trick.

The other thing that I've been doing is using legacy lenses, in particular a group of Nikkors and Canons from the 1940's and 1950's. Been a lot of fun.

But I still find most of the B&W that I print digitally originated as B&W film scanned with a Nikon Coolscan. Just went from a wet darkroom print to a dry inkjet print.

Best,
-Tim

 

[Ronald M]

Film grain in Photoshop. USE THE BLEND IF SLIDERS SO IT SHOWS IN MID TONES ONLY. hold the option key to feather the stops so as not to get grain / no grain abruptly.
Caps are on purpose.

I can just use a film Leica or Nikon F2 (own 6) and make real prints.

 

[John Bragg]

I wonder if any film photographers ever complain that their images don't look digital enough ?

 

[peterm1]

Once upon a time in film days, if you wanted to print your work yourself, and thus interpret it, you probably shot black-and-white. Think of the “pre digital” photographers you admire. Probably the majority of them shot black-and-white. Printing color was simply far more complicated and expensive than running a conventional black-and-white darkroom.

With digital, that has changed. It’s easy to shoot and print color. But often black-and-white doesn’t quite match our memory of those wonderful silver prints of the film world. Why? There are a lot of reasons and a lot of steps that can be taken to rectify the situation. I’ll toss in one reason and one rectification that most people don’t think about, but, between all of us, we should be able to come up with other suggestions that might make our digital black-and-white a little more “silver like.”

Digital images, like transparency film, can completely lose detail in overexposed highlight areas. It’s the digital equivalent of a clear, detailess film base. On the other hand, it’s the shadow areas of black-and-white negatives that can fall into detailess film base. While many of today’s digital cameras can capture a greater range of printable tones than conventionally processed negative film, their blown out highlights can never recover detail that would be present and printable in a properly developed b&w film.

So what do black-and-white digital shooters do? I’m going to suggest something extremely simple - underexpose. Whether you use a highlight oriented incident meter, just set the auto exposure down a stop or watch out for the blinking highlights that some digital viewfinders offer isn’t important. Just be aware of the fact that the generous exposure you learned to love in the b&w film world is now your enemy. Protect your highlights. Does this mean that sometimes you will lose shadow detail? Yes. But you won’t be losing any more than if you were shooting film. (As a matter of fact, sometimes that b&w film look is just a matter of using a slider to drop the lowest values of your beautiful image into the abyss. You just have to learn to live with the pain.)

OK, your turn. What can you do to make black-and-white digital images more film like?

Yes I agree. I have learned the hard way to underexpose by a stop (maybe even a little more in really harsh contrast) and to ALWAYS shoot in RAW format. BTW having more modern CMOS sensors and better firmware helps too of course as of course does having sensors with larger pixel pitch.

I used to shoot in JPG format and always shot at metered exposure and as a result I always ended up with ugly blown highlights that were uncorrectable in post. Then I started shooting in RAW. That helped but did not entirely solve the issue. So I began exploring the possibility of underexposing. When I raised this online I would always get lectured that "this is the opposite of what you should do - you must shoot to the right" By which they meant over exposing to move the histogram to the right side. While shooting to the right is OK in a studio and admittedly it maximizes the data recorded in theory out in the field where you cannot control your dynamic range (unlike in a studio where you can) you need to take account of the reality that this will produce blown highlights.
The tools in Lightroom are especially good at recovering highlight and shadow detail. By pulling the highlight slider to the left it will often allow recovery of most if not all detail in the highlights. Then if a bit more is needed I can always move the exposure slider to the left a little too, then adjust the blacks and shadow sliders to the right to compensate. BTW the Lightroom "black" and "shadow" sliders are nearly as good as the "highlight" slider at recovering lost details. They are the best in any software I have used.

I then convert to black and white - usually in Nik Silver Efex. But sometimes using the Lightroom tools which are pretty good too. My reason for using the Nik converter is that I like to give the final image a small tweak using the silver toning slider (near the bottom of the plugin's menu). Not enough to be too obvious unless I am specifically trying to warm the image a bit but otherwise, just enough to get rid of the slightly blue tone that often results. In the third image below however, there is a kind of blueish tone which I left in as somehow suited the mood better than a warm tone which the others have.

I still struggle getting images that really match a good black and white film print. I like black and white images that have a lot of emphasis on the mid tones where with care subtle greys can be produced to create lovely tonality. but often I do not really succeed and still find I prefer film based black and white though I no longer really shoot it as digital offers so many other advantages. I especially like the effect I used to get from films like Ilford XP2 when shot at ISO 200 - very smooth tonal gradations and no grain more so than the more harsh blacks and whites produced by some of the silver based film.

Here are a few of mine I quite like though I have gone beyond converting to B/W to the extent of also adding some texture etc just for effect. So bear that in mind. Also being portraits I have tended to add some pretty strong vignettes as I like the dramatic effect with this kind of photo. Bear that in mind - the images were not "naturally" this dark even when they were underexposed in camera till I made them so in post.

Have I really replicated something close to B/W film? I will leave that to others to decide as it was not really my explicit intent when I processed them - I just kept on adjusting until I got a result my eyeball liked.

Cafe Colombia - Adelaide Central Market 5 by Life in Shadows, on Flickr

Bus Stop, Rainy Day by Life in Shadows, on Flickr

A Moment of Quiet Reflection by Life in Shadows, on Flickr

Woman's Portrait in Monochrome by Life in Shadows, on Flickr

Portrait of a Selfie in the Making by Life in Shadows, on Flickr

 

[Ulophot]

A little off your point, Bill but I recently watched an interview with Salgado, produced by Canon after he had been won over to digital. He said he had spent two years(!) working with Canon technicians to reproduce exactly the grain of Tri-X.

 

[markjwyatt]

I wonder if any film photographers ever complain that their images don't look digital enough ?

If you start shooting med format or large format (esp. w/fine grained film/dev) you might see parallels.

 

[markjwyatt]

A little off your point, Bill but I recently watched an interview with Salgado, produced by Canon after he had been won over to digital. He said he had spent two years(!) working with Canon technicians to reproduce exactly the grain of Tri-X.

Fujifilm put a lot of effort into the Acros sim. Apparently, they manifest noise as grain using some algorithm. I kind of question adding grain to digital (I do it sometimes...). In film the image is a manifestation of grains (like pointillist paining). In digital, generally grain is noise (quite the opposite of the image).

 

[arseniii]

In both film and digital it all comes down to lighting ratios. Even with underexposure (digital), if the ratio between the darkest dark and the lightest light is high the details will be lost somewhere.
The other alternative I can think of is to use a speedlight (whenever possible) or HDR mode (whenever possible). As an alternative one can just accept the faith and live with blowup highlights, I would not destroy a good picture and sometimes might even enhance it.


I also normally never underexpose, quite the opposite I more often overexpose by +0.3 / +0.7 stops. The more information the sensor can gather the better it is for PP. I do have to be careful about the highlights and sometimes I do blow them. But I'd rather have a saturated file with blown up highlights than an underexposed file with proper details only in highlights. May be new sensors are better but this above works well with my M9M.

 

[Ko.Fe.]

I don't turn my digital BW to film like. But I have seen good digital BW images.
Nor I have highlights problems with Olympus E-PL1 which I paid 50 USD for used.
My more expensive Canon DSLR and Leica M-E 220 does blow it easily. Leica digital M exposure metering is primitive by the nature of cameras. What was surprising is review of X2 (if I'm not mistaken with X number) where three photographers reported their experience and highlights blowing was well present.

I guess it is how well exposure metering part of the firmware is written. And how many and well measuring points are distributed on the sensor. And maybe sensor. E-PL1 beats Canon, Leica I have for dynamic range and quality of exposures, colors.

My main problem is sky and darker lower part. I could easily deal with it by S16 with Leica M-E or with LV on E-PL1 screen. But darkroom prints... Contrast split takes as long as masking. It is much more easier to get no highlights in the sky blown digitally comparing to darkroom print. Scanning is just another digital.
I was printing in DR two days ago, BTW. Have to print twice most of the negatives with sky.

 

[Archlich]

During the early years of photography, great effort were spent to make photographs look like paintings. Most died out in the opening of the following century.

For me it's simple. If I pursue the digital look I shoot digital. For the film look, I shoot film.

 

[Rob-F]

During the early years of photography, great effort were spent to make photographs look like paintings. Most died out in the opening of the following century.

For me it's simple. If I pursue the digital look I shoot digital. For the film look, I shoot film.

Conversely, some of Degas's ballerina paintings seem to me to imitate photographic composition!

I don't think Bill is suggesting we make our digital shots look like film, though. I think he just wants us to avoid those blown highlights. I often do dial in a minus 1/3 EV when shooting in sunlight.

 

[RObert Budding]

Exposing to preserve highlight isn't necessarily underexposing if the contrast range is fairly normal. High contrast, on the other hand, may require underexposing the main subject to preserve highlights. But that isn't too different than N minus developing with B&W film to fit the entire tonal range onto the negative.

 

[markjwyatt]

Exposing to preserve highlight isn't necessarily underexposing if the contrast range is fairly normal. High contrast, on the other hand, may require underexposing the main subject to preserve highlights. But that isn't too different than N minus developing with B&W film to fit the entire tonal range onto the negative.

With the Fujifilm XT-2. I do underexpose a little to not lose the sky. When I view the [presumably jpeg] histogram in Post, I can move the entire histogram to the right if I want without losing any significant information. Usually I correct the exposure (usually < 1 stop, often < 1/2 stop), then bring up shadows a bit, and I am good.

 

[robert blu]

I wonder if any film photographers ever complain that their images don't look digital enough ?

I sometimes include both film and digital in the same project (I know many among you could be horrified 🙂) and this is why I use Delta films, both 100 or 400 which in my opinion are the most similar to digital.

With digital generally speaking -2/3 exposure is a standard in my settings, but of course it depends very much on the circumstances and light.

 

[kbb]

Every photographic record/reproduce system has limits on the brightness range it can capture in a single, non-blended exposure. It's up to the operator to know the limits and exploit them to satisfaction.
I'm currently on a Nikon (Sony) 2012-vintage sensor camera. It has a greater capability to salvage shadows than the previous 2007-vintage sensor I used.
Progress in widening the capture-range capability has apparently slowed since 2012, but hopefully it will not stop.

 

[John Bragg]

I sometimes include both film and digital in the same project (I know many among you could be horrified 🙂) and this is why I use Delta films, both 100 or 400 which in my opinion are the most similar to digital.

With digital generally speaking -2/3 exposure is a standard in my settings, but of course it depends very much on the circumstances and light.

Good observation Robert. I was thinking about Delta film as I wrote that.

 

[grouchos_tash]

I've been trying to keep the look for my images more consistent over the past year with colour across digital and film. With black and white I seem to try to make film images more 'clean' and digital more 'grainy' haha!