Your secrets & tips ... Creating ‘Dirty’ jpgs/dngs

This is a fairly quick conversion from digital to having some film characteristics, Helen. Shot on a Sony A7III with 50 macro lens at ISO800 as a raw file, then grain added in Lightroom 4 thanks to a person who has made free presets for grain and curves for Kodak films.
LR presets: https://www.andreruiter.nl/downloads/kodak-film-presets/
U51008I1603281982.SEQ.0.jpg

John Mc
 
peterm1 said:
Do you plan to shoot in RAW and then convert to black and white in post? Speaking personally I had little luck shooting JPG either in black and white or any form with CCD lenses (including those on my old D70s) - the dynamic range was so limited it made it difficult to shoot outside especially where bright sky etc tended to produce a lot of blown highlights. I had much better luck when shooting in RAW then converting after. If you do plan to shoot in jpg / black and white only you may like to try dropping the exposure compensation to -1 or thereabouts to restrict this - of course this may crunch your shadows but I find that looks less objectionable than blown highlights.
Click to expand...

Hello Peter, yes I was planning on shooting in RAW then converting to monochrome. I had had success doing that with my M8u and was hoping to get similar results using a CCD sensor Nikon. We will see if it works out but given the low cost of the D70 body I felt it was worth a try.

Thanks for the advice!
 
There’s nothing wrong with using digital “grain”, or “grit” as I like to call it. It isn’t film grain, but so what? It is its own thing, with its own aesthetic. Figure out a way to make it work for you.
Let digital be digital and film be film. Both mediums can do things the other cannot.
We are lucky to live at a time where it is still easy to use both!
 
oldwino said:
There’s nothing wrong with using digital “grain”, or “grit” as I like to call it. It isn’t film grain, but so what? It is its own thing, with its own aesthetic. Figure out a way to make it work for you.
Let digital be digital and film be film. Both mediums can do things the other cannot.
We are lucky to live at a time where it is still easy to use both!
Click to expand...

Agreed. If want film look I just shoot film.
 
I created a preset in On1 Effects for sharpening film photos scanned with my (underwhelming) Epson V550, it's a few of their contrast and sharpening filters stacked with tweaks to each. It makes the grain very strong but pulls more detail out of the soft looking scans. Recently I tried applying it to a couple digital files, from my Panasonic GX85. I don't mind the results. Digital grain really doesn't look bad these days, most of the time. I'll post links, as I'm on a mobile device and can't get embed links off Flickr.

https://flic.kr/p/2jHFCeP

https://flic.kr/p/2jDLtrw
 
I spent the last 8 years shooting digital (after the previous 12 shooting film) and feeling that something was sorta missing. I was trying to tweak my files to get a more filmic look to them. Not overtly emulate a specific film but just to create a bit of atmosphere. Sometimes successful, sometimes not.

About a year ago, I started shooting film again. Mostly Portra, mostly medium format and having them developed and scanned by a local lab here in Brooklyn that is reasonably priced and does a nice job. In my former life I would have scanned everything myself and tweaked etc.

Have been very happy with the results and the process and my M9 and GR are sitting in the drawer. One thing I've noticed, looking at my instagram feed, is that my work has a much more consistent feel to it and as my 20-something niece would say, a good flow.

Just another perspective.
 
Great thread! Here's a few from the street shot with a Ricoh Gr Digital. I find it liberating at times to let go of the worry about
sharpness, blur and grain and concentrate on the moment. Cheers jc





 
gamma1m1 by fiftyonepointsix, on Flickr

Gamma 1.0 Minus 1 DNG-16 conversion by fiftyonepointsix, on Flickr

Low-light with a Classic lens like the Nikkor-PC 8.5cm F2, wide-open, ISO 10,000, 1/25th second shutter speed, pan with the subject:

Nikkor 8.5cm F2 by fiftyonepointsix, on Flickr

I wrote my own DNG processor for the M Monochrom. The code adds a Gamma curve and changes the setting of the definition for "Black" level. Essentially it stretches out the histogram, brings up the mid tones. I turn off Sharpening in Lightroom for high-ISO shots as it magnifies noise. The DNG code batch processes all of the files, has sets of Gamma curves that can be added. The values are scaled to the full 16-bits using the lookup table for the Gamma curve. After that, import to Lightroom and export to Jpeg.

I can select a different set of values for the Gamma function and rerun the code if I want a different effect. I compare this with using Polycontrast Filters back in my darkroom days.

Converted 5058 by fiftyonepointsix, on Flickr
 
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