{"id":32075,"date":"2022-04-16T15:56:14","date_gmt":"2022-04-16T14:56:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/phillipreeve.net\/blog\/?p=32075"},"modified":"2023-06-20T11:35:22","modified_gmt":"2023-06-20T10:35:22","slug":"analogue-adventures-part-6-emulating-filmlook","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/phillipreeve.net\/blog\/analogue-adventures-part-6-emulating-filmlook\/","title":{"rendered":"Analogue Adventures – Part 6: Emulating Filmlook"},"content":{"rendered":"

Introduction<\/h2>\n
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Sony A7rII | Sony FE 85mm 1.4 GM | Kodak Ektar 100 look<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

For many people shooting film is all about the grainy look and distinct colours, but do you really need to shoot film to get that? Let’s see what we can achieve with a few bucks for presets and a little effort in Lightroom.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Using presets and profiles<\/h2>\n
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Sony A7rII | Sony FE 85mm 1.4 GM | Kodak Ektar 100 look<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This article is mainly interesting for the Photoshop\/ACR\/Lightroom users among you, as usually such profiles are only available for Adobe software.<\/p>\n

First we have to talk about the difference between presets<\/em> and profiles<\/em> though. I guess there have always been presets<\/em> in Lightroom (I joined Lightroom with version 4, so I am not 100% sure), whereas the (adjustable) profiles have been added with version 10 if I remember right.<\/p>\n

These profile<\/em>s allow for a wider range of manipulations (maybe have a look at this article<\/a> for more details) and come with a slider that allows for adjusting their “strength” from 0 to 200%. Unlike presets<\/em> they also do not alter any of the sliders of other settings like contrast or sharpening directly and visibly.<\/p>\n

If you search online for a film name and add “lightroom preset\/profile” I am pretty sure you will find something. You can find offers with only presets<\/em>, with only profiles<\/em> or sometimes both in one package.<\/p>\n

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Sony A7rII | Zeiss Loxia 21mm 2.8 | Kodak Portra 400 look<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Some cost money, some are free. Generally my experience with free presets has not been that great and I found them to mainly clutter the list without being really helpful, whereas the ones that I paid money for I found to be quite decent (I checked reviews and comparisons first to see if there is an actual chance they might be decent).<\/p>\n

Keep in mind though: presets\/profiles are rarely one click wonders. While the ones I am showing you here often did a good job with the color palette and tonal range, they still need further adjustments in the contrast, lights\/shadows and white balance areas – as any raw image does.<\/p>\n

Replicating the Kodak Vision 3 look<\/h2>\n

As you already know from the previous two articles of this series I have been to Barcelona<\/a> and shot four Silbersalz35<\/a> (Kodak Vision 3) cinefilms with my Leica M6.<\/p>\n

I did not do many side-by-side comparisons taking the same picture with M6, then switching lenses with M10 and taking the same picture on digital to compare them, but very often I took a picture with the Voigtl\u00e4nder VM 35mm 1.2 III<\/a> on the M6 and a similar picture of the scene with the Voigtl\u00e4nder VM 21mm 3.5<\/a> on the M10.<\/p>\n

So instead of trying to have two pictures which are the same in every regard I tried to match the general look and color palette of the digital files here to look like the analogue ones.
\nHow close could I get? How much work was it? What can we learn from it? There are a total of eight side by side comparisons where we will discuss this.<\/p>\n

As starting point for the digital edits I used these profiles<\/a> which I bought for 26\u20ac. This is a reasonable price for 5 profiles (if they are good) considering they cost about as much as one roll of film.
\nAnd writing this article was a great excuse to spend that money without thinking too much about it \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n