I have noticed there is a trend at the moment of people shooting film and desperately trying to emulate the characteristics of digital photography. One may ask, why not just use a digital camera silly! Thing is, I know, some people just must use the oldest technology possible to appear as least bit interested in modern technology whilst ironically using their Macintosh computers and broadbands and flickrs to display their ultra old SkoOl cool, DIGITAL SUCKS! grouped pictures to the world. So,….haha :p, this is for those people who want to dip their little toe into the wonderful world of digital photography.

 

A while back I did as direct a comparison between film and digital as possible. Here, read part one of my first attempts at emulating negative film (Kodak portra) with digital (Canon 5D) to get some background info.

 

Film simulation/ emulation with digital RAW photography retouching.

 

And here is part two whilst we are at it,

 

Film simulation/ emulation with digital RAW photography retouching, part two.

 

 

 

 

 

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So here is the film scan, a straight scan I might add using kodak portra 160 VC negative film. No photoshop work, apart from a resize. It could do with some tweaks but don’t we all. This was shot on some second hand Yashica compact camera that I bought from a car boot sale for probably 50 pence, £1 maximum. No more for that dinosaur would I pay. It had a Carl Zeiss lens (wasn’t a T3, T4, etc. Terry Richardson style, something even “lower” down), auto wind on and even auto flash. Had to set the ISO manually though with some naff switch on the base, what a piggin’ pain eh. So let us call this a snapshot from a fully automatic camera, something anyone could have achieved before digital was invented.

 

 

 

 

 

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 Now here is a beautiful rendition of the world via the digital camera, modern day type snapshot anyone can achieve this day and age. As you can see technology has come on leaps and bounds, and for those people who have no idea what a RAW file is, digital is perfect as the pictures come straight out of the camera looking like this. I kid you not, I have applied absolutely no post processing to this one, it just did not need it. So this was using a standard consumer Canon point and shoot digital camera circa £100 ish, straight outta Argoose. Bargain once you consider all the beautiful memories you will be able to treasure forever, for, wait for it. FREE! The camera was in Auto mode, just as the film camera was fully auto.

 

So in comparison you’d imagine the photos to be pretty similar, in reality though the digital is far superior which is not surprising considering the technology we have now, it’s 2009 duh.

 

For example, the film scan has this ugly fluffy white cloudy thing in the sky PLUS some colour. You know what, thankyou to the camera God, for the digital one has fully clipped the sky perfectly along the horizon to white. This way it makes it much easier for me to paste in some istock sky, like a sunset perhaps, or even better still, to insert that pretty sky picture I have in my clipart folder that was installed with windows. Then I can email the picture and show off my snazzy new skills to my nan.

 

Moving onto another advantage to the digital, sharpness. What on earth is that blurriness in the background on the film scan? I can not stand blurry, it has to be a fault right? I am going to do a 100% crop, get straight on the forums to see if anyone else can see this defect. If at least 10 people agree with me I will hail digital photography as the new number one wonder of the world. I can zoom into the digital file and everything, and I mean everything is sharp and wonderful. Especially at the horizon where the sky is thankfully turned white, that edge is so wonderfully sharp and harsh it nearly made me shed a tear of pure hapPENIS.

 

Moving on, what beautiful tones the digital photo has. I see the world exactly like that, that is exactly what beauty is to me. I just can not get enough of blown out white skies, toxic greens and yellows, muddy brown washes applied over everything, dull skin tones… and don’t forget all that sharpness.

 

Lastly, I can’t explain my gratitude enough to Canon, I may write them a letter. No DUST, HAIR, SCRATCHES or GRAIN. Wow, speechless. It means we can see all of the aforementioned positives without all that crap in the way. On top (and who doesn’t like that) of all of this, I got to see the picture straight away on the screen, no one has time for patience these days.

 

So, quite a lot to try to achieve from the film scan. I have spent a long time trying to understand all of the complexities of what makes digital, digital. And how I can translate this into a workflow in trying to emulate digital with film. Here is my best attempt so far, it took me a while so I forgot to clone out that scratch but hopefully you can see beyond that and notice how close I have got. First of all I clipped the sky completely to white, 255, 255, 255. This is paramount, it really is the cornerstone to my technique, making sure there is a good portion of the picture completely clipped. I then added a good whack of techno yellow to the mix, greyed out the skin to a wishy washy mud colour and played with some curves to increase contrast and to try and makes things really POP. Unfortunately I have to live with the blurry background which is a camera fault sadly, plus to hell with that lens flair!

 

 

 

 

 

 

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*Cough Cough*

 

OK, maybe way too much sarcasm, now switched off.

 

Thing is, it was quite a kick in the balls to realise that a 50p camera produced something amazing to my eyes whereas the £100 modern camera was molesting my eyes. My balls were well and truly incinerated when I discovered that this 50p fully auto snapshot camera also produced pictures that looked better to me than my £££££ Canon 5D digital super duuuper slr. Absolutely ripped. It’s why I have obsessed so long over this, balls being burnt hurts bad.

 

The reason I got to this post is for a few reasons. Seeing way too many nasty digital images everywhere, noticing how people who exclusively use film tend to have this “digital sucks” attitude, then onto seeing some old snapshots shot on film.

 

 

 

 

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For example, a straight scan of me by Dunno using any old camera on auto, no experience just negative film. This is probably about 15- 20 years old, no idea, and looks a ton better than todays digital. This is the snapshot of yesterday, everyone could have lovely moments captured in a way that would look real and beautiful, “Look mummy, blue sky!”. Today we have pictures that look so cheap in comparison it all looks disposable and naff, like the digital example above, “waaaahhhhh, mummy, mummy where has the sky gone?”, “this is just digital harsh linearity my son, live with it.”

 

Of course you can over come digital short comings, to a degree. I have tried, I get pretty consistent results now that I am happy with. I always wish though, oh man, shoulda done that on film. It still looks better to me. The big problem is that snapshots are obviously not going to be RAW edited and to think that we will, as a generation, have billions of these naff ugly blown out sky photos is quite sad. Doesn’t feel as though they should be cherished.

 

Oh and emulating film is a lot more difficult than emulating bad digital. On the topic of bad digital, there is worse examples of it. For example, that garish cartoony HDR, gross is my opinion. On top of that there are the photographers who use digital but do try and fix the shortcomings. So I see a lot of that fill light and highlight recovery etc. lightroom type tool action going on. That is like trying to cover up a spot, it just makes it look more obvious.

 

Surprising thing is, looking around I see a lot of Pro photographers with these type of images. Quite shocking. It is hard to explain but easy to see. I see a lot of banding in broad areas of colour like the sky. I see the HDR mickey mouse effect a lot. I see the use of auto tools like highlight recovery being used, which brings highlights down to a grey with a lot of halo’ing. Then there is the dull tones, lack of tonal separation and even the pale, grey lifeless skin.

 

It is difficult making digital look good, I go back to what I do and think some could be much better. Sometimes some pictures are beyond repair, digital has had its wicked way… it’s when seeing pro photographers who are represented by agents doing ad work with these types of images that is surprising.