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[digital spoiler alert] This post contains digital images....!
I really like the look of film, however, I am often out with a film camera and see a photo I think would look good on the film I don't have in the camera right now. I'm also often out with my phone, or digital camera and "see" the shot in HP5 or Delta 3200 and don't want to go through a ton of faff trying to find a decent preset that works.
I've tried a lot of "presets" that are Lightroom presets that basically move the tone curve slider and the B&W controls. Grain is often top heavy and looks bad (to my eye) and every black & white photo often needs further adjustments to make it look halfway decent. From freebies, to the expensive VSCO film emulations - all suffered from the same problems. Being a lazy arse, I just want my photo to look nice & grainy - like the look I get from Delta 3200. Or I want a bit of grit & contrast, like I get from Tri-X or Double-X. Or maybe I just want that nice neutral look I get from HP5.
I'll leave you to read the blurb on the website that talks about how they do their "emulations", but I am really pleased with the results. Unscientifically, they just look really good to me.
This is my plant. I was having a go at still life with flash and I wanted to shoot some film alongside it, so I had some Double-X.
Below is the original alongside the edit.
So when you use the software, you have two main controls. The first is the spectral response (or what I call colour sensitivity) and it's customisable - so if you have some obscure film from somewhere and still have the info sheet that came with it showing the spectral response, you can enter your own settings here.
Grain is also really well controlled. One of the issues with the grain slider in LR is that by the time you've finished cropping, every file is different so the grain settings need to be done for every photo. This is slightly different in that the grain is an "overlay" that's applied to the image, and you can control the size of it. As far as I can see, it's used primarily to simulate the difference in perceived grain for (for example) 35mm, 120 & other formats.
View attachment 377668
It works really well and just knocks the "presets" brigade out of the park IM very humble O.
Pros -
Works on W7+ as well as Macs.
It's a standalone app - you don't need Lightroom or something to plug it into and it works as an external editor in the Lightroom "Edit in" menu.
It's customisable in that you can enter your own film details and save as a preset.
It gives really nice, natural looking grain and contrast. I couldn't tell which one of these was on film until I looked at the filenames.
It has a demo which allows you to do everything apart from save the file.
(LH image has an HP5 preset, RH image is proper Eastman 5222 Double-X film)
Cons:
Black & white film only. Not really a con for me, but I think simulating colour films is pretty tricky.
Not all films are included and you might need to build your own templates for something specific.
It's $90, so not cheap, but cheaper than some of the "preset" packages you can get these days.
To be clear, I am not affiliated with them, just a happy purchaser.
Flickr full size images for pixel peeping if you want to:
Digital
Film
mods - I thought this fit best in F&C because it's trying to be a subjective post comparing how well it does to actual film. Feel free to shift to Talk Computers if you think it has a better home there!
I really like the look of film, however, I am often out with a film camera and see a photo I think would look good on the film I don't have in the camera right now. I'm also often out with my phone, or digital camera and "see" the shot in HP5 or Delta 3200 and don't want to go through a ton of faff trying to find a decent preset that works.
I've tried a lot of "presets" that are Lightroom presets that basically move the tone curve slider and the B&W controls. Grain is often top heavy and looks bad (to my eye) and every black & white photo often needs further adjustments to make it look halfway decent. From freebies, to the expensive VSCO film emulations - all suffered from the same problems. Being a lazy arse, I just want my photo to look nice & grainy - like the look I get from Delta 3200. Or I want a bit of grit & contrast, like I get from Tri-X or Double-X. Or maybe I just want that nice neutral look I get from HP5.
I'll leave you to read the blurb on the website that talks about how they do their "emulations", but I am really pleased with the results. Unscientifically, they just look really good to me.
This is my plant. I was having a go at still life with flash and I wanted to shoot some film alongside it, so I had some Double-X.
Below is the original alongside the edit.
So when you use the software, you have two main controls. The first is the spectral response (or what I call colour sensitivity) and it's customisable - so if you have some obscure film from somewhere and still have the info sheet that came with it showing the spectral response, you can enter your own settings here.
Grain is also really well controlled. One of the issues with the grain slider in LR is that by the time you've finished cropping, every file is different so the grain settings need to be done for every photo. This is slightly different in that the grain is an "overlay" that's applied to the image, and you can control the size of it. As far as I can see, it's used primarily to simulate the difference in perceived grain for (for example) 35mm, 120 & other formats.
View attachment 377668
It works really well and just knocks the "presets" brigade out of the park IM very humble O.
Pros -
Works on W7+ as well as Macs.
It's a standalone app - you don't need Lightroom or something to plug it into and it works as an external editor in the Lightroom "Edit in" menu.
It's customisable in that you can enter your own film details and save as a preset.
It gives really nice, natural looking grain and contrast. I couldn't tell which one of these was on film until I looked at the filenames.
It has a demo which allows you to do everything apart from save the file.
(LH image has an HP5 preset, RH image is proper Eastman 5222 Double-X film)
Cons:
Black & white film only. Not really a con for me, but I think simulating colour films is pretty tricky.
Not all films are included and you might need to build your own templates for something specific.
It's $90, so not cheap, but cheaper than some of the "preset" packages you can get these days.
To be clear, I am not affiliated with them, just a happy purchaser.
Flickr full size images for pixel peeping if you want to:
Digital
Film
mods - I thought this fit best in F&C because it's trying to be a subjective post comparing how well it does to actual film. Feel free to shift to Talk Computers if you think it has a better home there!
