Getting that "Film Look" with Digital

If you want accurate color, you need a balanced system, then create a custom color profile.

What do you use to "shoot almost all digitally now"? What film has "natural colors"? Perhaps you could share examples of what you are getting and what you would like to attain.

If you don't like the colors and subtle gradation of tones in a digital image, you probably aren't using a decent DSLR, raw imaging mode, Photoshop, screen and printer profiling and/or a decent inkjet printer. Sorry about the grain - you need 35mm film for that. I'm sure you wouldn't like medium format film (or digital) in that regard.

As a start, compress the highlights and don't oversharpen. Uncompressed and oversharpened highlights are the most common obvious giveways that a photo was done digitally. Consider adding grain-like artifacts if you must, but film photographers have been trying to minimize grain for over a hundred years.

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>>I miss the natural look of films<<

Film look 'natural' because we are used to that look. If you had started with another medium (like ditial) you'd be saying "I miss the natural look of digital".

What I mean is: when we get into new formats and/or tools it's best to learn how to use them for what they are capable of producing. Take it to the limit. The moment we want to 'imitate' one for the other makes it a moot point, IMO.

In technical terms it has to do with contrast and saturation. If you learn how to use curves you'll be able to imitate the look you seek. In addition, you can save the parameters and apply them to all you pictures.

Getting natural skin tones with digital is certainly possible. But I also find the 'problem' a little silly, given that you can still shoot film, too. By all means shoot digital, but if you miss film, shoot film!

I use Alien Skin but you can't just use the presets. You have to tweak them...

Unless you are adding to an existing set of film pictures in order to hang them on the same wall, software that "emulates" the look of film is somewhat of a snake-oil product.

Digital has the capacity of rendering much more accurate and therefore "natural" skin tones than film ever had. But it is true, digital does have problems. One of them is linear capture of digital. Film logarithmically compresses the highlights, which is akin to the way human eyes see the world. Digital, on the other hand, often has the sharp "cut-off" look in the highlights. But this problem can be alleviated by shooting in RAW mode and then using software like Bibble that has an excellent set of tone curves that compress highlights, combined with Highlight Recovery tool that litarally "paints in" the blown out highlights. I found that this gives a very subtle, specfific look to my pictures that some may call film-like.

Shot against the light on a Digital Rebel, processed in Bibble. Paris 2005, Copyright Eugene Scherba

Actually, the film look is very possible with digital if that is your goal. However, you really need to focus on one film emulsion "look" at a time. Velvia has a set of parameters easily duplicated - as does Tri-X, etc. Basically, you need a strong understanding of PS CS2 and lots of time to practice the nuances. You also need to know WHY film looked the way it did. For example, Tri-X had a very long toe and the grain had exceptional accutance. It also had extended DR if developed correctly. Without understanding all this, duplicating this look would be impossible. This of course, would leave the beginner out of the picture.

This may be a bit off topic, but I just rented "Wolf Creek" dvd I swear looked as if it was shot on film. It had the familiar deep and contrasty shadow roll off, color saturation and skintone hues that my eye's have come to associate with movie film.

Come to find out from the "making of Wolf Creek" dvd feature selection section it was shot with a Sony high definition video camera. They even included comparison clips of the movie shot on miniDV and HD and the differences were stark.

Shooting HD instead of on film allowed the movie makers to make the movie shot in the Australian outback for about $1.5 mil instead of the projected $5 mil.

Digital is great, but I miss the natural look of films like Portra.

Medium format NPH and Portra are my benchmarks when it comes to shooting people/portraits with a dSLR (usually my 10D). I can safely say I'm fussier than you when it comes to nuances between film vs film and film -vs- digital, and yet I can no longer easily distinguish between professional MF print films and my 10D in an 8x10. Mission accomplished as far as I'm concerned.

When it comes to producing people pics that are dead ringers for slow speed portrait pring films I've learned some tricks, but I have no idea if you are using a 5D or a HP point -n- shoot digital.

Some tips for you at least, and I'll assume you aren't using RAW, which I rarely do for general shooting:

- Try to get a manual or custom white balance for the scene as much as possible.

- Err on the side of warmth, and not coolness when it comes to color temp. One trick we learned a long time ago in the professional photo-finishing biz is to stroke our color balances to the warm side because it resulted far fewer returned prints. Basically, you'll find digital looks the most 'film-like' if your images is a bit warm or rich with crisp blacks -vs- cool/green or under-saturated.

- With many dSLR's you can run most of them with +1 saturation, and if your white balance is good and you aren't shooting hyper saturated subjects, you'll get straight Frontier prints you'd have a hard time telling from 645 NPH or Portra.

- I find the levels adjustment in Photoshop is enough for me and I rarely mess with curves. Good digital capture is by default quite linear while professional films, especially when printed on paper, aren't. Punching up the saturation a bit (either with RAW conversion or in camera) and pulling in the white and black amounts in levels a bit should get into Portra'ish territory without much effort.

What separtes film and digital is that properly processed digital is perfect, film is not. If you want the "film look" from digital, crush your histogram, particularly on the shadow side, and screw with your colors in selective color. Start by adding blank and magenta to blues pull down the red saturation a touch.

I always wonder why it is that stills photographers are moving in droves and droves to digital acquisition, whereas cinematographers, if they can afford it, are sticking to film, citing that it is better in every aspect (resolution, colour accuracy, dynamic range, and predictability).
Is motion picture film of a higher grade than stills? I would have a hard time believing this, considering that a frame of 35mm motion picture film is about the size of an APS-C sensor, smaller than a 36mm by 24mm stills frame.