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Processing to look like film?
Posted: April 9th, 2013, 11:38 am
by Charles2
- Film example
- film_example_sm.jpg (47.65 KiB) Viewed 2534 times
The screen capture is about a shot someone made with a Zeiss Sonnar 50/1.5 lens on Kodak 400 film. There is a quality to the rich colors that I do not see from digital sensors.
The saturation histogram (bottom; shown at medium expansion) is remarkably level. Maybe that has something to do with the appearance. Typical digital shots have a histogram like a mountain.
The question is whether post processing can more or less approach the same effect. You can push the histogram from one or two points toward a more level curve, but the result is just ugly. I've seen RGB curve files for Portra and Provia, but they do not come close.
?
Large:
http://masters.galleries.dpreview.com.s ... 6CZ1Ggk%3d
Re: Processing to look like film?
Posted: April 9th, 2013, 12:01 pm
by jsachs
I'm not sure the shape of the saturation histogram is all that significant in this context as the histogram is highly subject dependent. I suspect that much of the difference comes from the wider latitude of print film which can only be simulated using HDR with digital cameras which respond more like slide film and can easily clip one or more color channel. There may be some color gamut issues as well, but I am not particularly knowledgeable on this subject.
