Simulating Film

[vandergus]

In addition to my D40, I also have a 1970's era 35mm rangefinder which I occasionally shoot with (mostly color negative film, Portra NC and Superia Reala are my favorites). Comparing the film scans with purely digital photographs from my D40, I noticed some characteristics in the film images that I preferred over the digital, mainly the way the film seemed to have more subtle highlights, nice contrasty midtones, and deep murky shadows. Just a richer overall tonality.

So I thought I'd do a little searching around the interwebs to see if I could find any techniques to simulate those types of characteristics in digital files. I found this site, which provided some custom color curves for a few of the more popular types of film: Kodak Portra 400NC, Fujifilm Provia and Velvia. I took the Provia curve and applied it to a few of my photographs and used it as a starting point. I noticed a fairly strong purple cast in some of the pictures so I messed around the curve in the red channel until it was satisfactorily reduced. It probably doesn't match the Portra look as closely now but it's closer to what I had in mind. Here's an example.

Original image


Simulated Color Negative Film


The difference is subtle, but I definitely prefer the second one. Changing the color curves compresses the highlights a bit and brings up the high midtones, which is usually where the skintones are (at least for the pasty variety of people). That helps brighten the face and make it stand out from the background a bit more. I've tried it on other types of photos and I think it works best with people photos. I may post some other examples later. Any comments on the photos or different ways to achieve the effects are welcome.

There's also a certain aspect of silliness to the whole thing that I'm still trying to come to terms with. I feel a little like I'm worshiping at the alter of almighty film, considering it intrinsically better than digital merely because it was there first. But I keep telling myself that I'm really just after a different kind of tonality or look in the images, a look that film happens to have. Any comments on this are also welcome.

[wulf]

It's not silly. What you are doing is applying some characteristics from images you like into the very flexible medium of digital photography. The beauty is that you can do this relatively easily and quickly AND experiment with the effect of different finishes. Colour and tone have a major impact on the impression an image makes so it is good to get it exactly the way you want.

Wulf