All tagged Film

Processing Fuji Files with Exposure X5: A Quick Look

When I talk about Processing Fuji raw files, I mostly cover Capture One and Lightroom (with X-transformer). While I still think that Capture One is the best overall option, there is another application that I've been using a lot lately, and that is Exposure X5. While it is not as fully featured as Lightroom or Capture One, it does have some unique attributes. For Fuji Shooters, it offers some appealing options, depending on your preferences.

VSCO Film alternatives

Since VSCCO Film was discontinued at the start of this year, I’ve been looking for alternatives to recommend to people who want to create a realistic film effect. While I do have some film like presets of my own, they are mostly designed as an artistic interpretation of film. For those looking for accurate and highly regarded film simulations for Lightroom, there are a couple of solutions.

Mastin Labs Fujicolour Original for Capture One: A Quick First Look

I’m a little late with this but following on from their first Capture One set, Mastin Labs has released another film emulation style pack. This set, called “Fujicolour Original” covers Fujifilm negative stocks, and is similar to their previous Kodak set, and the company’s Lightroom presets of the same name. They sent me a set to try out, and so here is my quick first impressions review.

Film Lux 3 Now Available

Just a quick update on yesterday’s post: FilmLUX 3 is now available from my digital download store. FilmLUX 3 is a set of presets for Lightroom 8 or later and Photoshop CC 2019 or later. It was handcrafted by carefully studying the properties of various film stocks and creating my own version. It is designed to create a colour film look that is inspired by scanned film, although it isn’t intended to be a direct emulation of any particular film stock, but rather my own set of “virtual” films. 

Using Kodak PhotoCD Files in 2019

I recently moved house, and doing my best attempt to Marie Kondo my office during the move, I ended up finding some things that I thought were long gone. One of which was a collection of PhotoCDs from 1996. The PhotoCD format is long since dead, so I wondered if I would have any chance at finding a way to use the files. After a little digging, I was able to get them to open! Here’s the full story…

Video: Scanning film on a 20 Year Old Film Scanner

I recently came across a set of negatives that I took about a year ago, and I realised that I had never properly scanned them. This gave me the opportunity to record the process, something I had wanted to do for a while, but had never gotten around to it. So, in this video I show you the process of scanning film using a dedicated, if somewhat old, film scanner.

Shooting in the Glendalough National Park with a Fuji X-Pro2 and a Hasselblad

I recently had the opportunity to borrow a friends Hasselblad, and so in order to make the most out of it, I headed to one of my favourite places in the country, Glendalough. I haven’t shot with a medium format film camera before, and I didn’t want to waste too much film, so I brought my X-Pro2 with me aswell, and actually ended up shooting most of the images on that. 

Presets in Action: Enhancing the mood; Creating Filmic Black & White with T-Pan for Lightroom

A little while ago I got up early in the morning and headed to a little fishing town just north of Dublin to get some morning shots of the sleepy port coming to life. I had originally hoped that it would be a nice bright morning, and that I would capture the early rays of the sun over the sea and the harbour, but instead a thick cloud was down, and it was beginning to rain. 

T-Pan vs Real Film: Round 2

I wrote a post yesterday where I compared my new T-Pan for Lightroom Presets , applied to some Fuji X-Pro 2 images, against some real film. It wasn’t meant to be taken too seriously, and wasn’t meant as a scientific comparison. I wanted to show, that I could mix images from both together in a single story and they would work together well. However, someone suggested that It wasn’t a fair comparison, because the film I was using Ilford XP2 wasn’t “real” black and white film.

Fuji X-Pro 2 + T-Pan for Lightroom vs Real Film

I’m really proud of how well my T-Pan set of Lightroom presets turned out. I’m not just saying that as a shameless plug. I set about creating something that would work well to emulate black and white film, and I think the results work really well. I’m sure it’s not perfect. It’s not a full simulation as such, but rather an artistic interpretation, but I think it comes close. To see just how close I decided to do a little experiment

More Adventures in Film

I’ve been shooting some film again recently. I really do like shooting film, and I would shoot more were it not for the down sides, of cost, and scanning and so on. Being a perfectionist when it comes to image quality, it frustrates me that I can’t get film scanned properly without doing it myself, and being a busy professional, it frustrates me to have to take the hours it takes to properly scan film. 

Shooting Kodak Ektar

In my recent rediscovery of film shooting, I decided to try out a roll of Kodak Ektar 100. I've never shot with this film before, but it gets a lot of good reviews online, and having used and scanned a roll, I can say that they're not unfounded. I headed out on a sunny(ish) autumn day in Dublin and took some shots around the city using my trusty Eos 5 with a 17-40 f4/l lens.