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Film simulation – open thread


evikne

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2 hours ago, evikne said:

I agree with you. Profiles cannot even contain grain (only presets can). So when I select one of my profiles, there is no grain, even if it emulates an ISO 3200 film. My RNI profiles have a set of corresponding presets that select the associated profile and adds the "correct" amount and size of grain.

Actually, I was using Darktable for this edit (not LR). They are called Styles in darktable, and some presets per module. They will all end up as individual steps in the history where you can delete any step you want, reorder them and of course add your own adjustments. Still testing it, but I like the approach of only changing one parameter at a time.

Edited by dpitt
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On 12/28/2022 at 6:00 PM, dpitt said:

I see grain of film as inherent evil, a downside of film.

I heartily disagree ;) . In my humble opinion, grain or texture in digital adds some materiality to images that gives the eye something to hold on to despite being out of focus. Clean photos don't offer that. That's why many cinematographers tend to expose digital in such a way that the sensor starts to exhibit noise, which isn't distracting or even technically "wrong", but in those boundaries that find the noise acceptable, even don't notice. Grain in film does precisely that.

My go-to ISO on the SL2-S is ISO 800, as ISO 800 offers the widest DR and delivers a fine texture. BTW, the SL2-S sensor is invariant from ISO 100 to ISO 3200. At ISO 6400, the signal gets slightly amplified and produces different-looking noise. 

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2 hours ago, hansvons said:

I heartily disagree ;) . In my humble opinion, grain or texture in digital adds some materiality to images that gives the eye something to hold on to despite being out of focus. Clean photos don't offer that. That's why many cinematographers tend to expose digital in such a way that the sensor starts to exhibit noise, which isn't distracting or even technically "wrong", but in those boundaries that find the noise acceptable, even don't notice. Grain in film does precisely that.

My go-to ISO on the SL2-S is ISO 800, as ISO 800 offers the widest DR and delivers a fine texture. BTW, the SL2-S sensor is invariant from ISO 100 to ISO 3200. At ISO 6400, the signal gets slightly amplified and produces different-looking noise. 

No problem for me, as long as you are happy.  There are so many ways to approach art.

Now, I am still learning about photography, but this looks very similar to the discussion we used to have in my professional domain, in particular the digital versus analog discussion in audio High End during the 80's and early 90's. People were arguing that ticks and noise on vinyl were necessary to have the same musicality as with vinyl, but the whole world moved to CD anyway. 95% did not hear or bother with the difference in sound, and were all going for the perfect digital CD sound. But they got ripped off, the CD contained only a small percentage of what the human ear is hearing, and vinyl held 2-3 times more data.

95%  will now find the iPhone Pro 14 files of 48 MP equivalent to those of the M10R. (I do not ). Meanwhile, vinyl is back as a niche product and film is starting to come back too. IMO Photography is about 10-15 years behind audio in the digital domain.

Digital audio is ready for the next step, but I am not sure it will be commercially viable. Streamers are experimenting with high definition streams with 24bit / 200+KHz sampling, that finally grasp what was in between those scratches and noise floor on the record and what got lost on CD. Downloads of full studio quality digital files can even be better. Digital audio now finally out-resolved the human ear. Not sure how it will evolve but if an iTunes-clone would now sell this quality at slightly higher price, with hardware that is as hard to copy as an LP, it could catch on and finally replace vinyl with something both digital and better.

IMHO tech is not out-resolving the human eye yet. Camera's still do not see the same dynamic range as the eye, displays can not display enough colors and DR, and prints can not capture all the tones we took for granted with analog. It is hard but eventually we will get there. If I could choose, I would add 16 bit colors rather than grain. There is something in the digital high end MF photo's that approaches film better than FF, and i do not think it is the pixel count.

Just my view of course, and there are lots of people on the forum with more optical or photography knowledge.

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1 hour ago, dpitt said:

… but this looks very similar to the discussion we used to have in my professional domain, in particular the digital versus analog discussion in audio High End during the 80's and early 90's. People were arguing that ticks and noise on vinyl were necessary to have the same musicality as with vinyl, …

No. It’s different. Ticks and noise doesn’t make you stick to the music. Texture and grain, on the other hand, does precisely that - make you stick to the image. 

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RNI Agfa Optima 200

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M10 with 50 Noctilux f/1

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M10 with 50 Noctilux f/1

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  • 2 weeks later...

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Saturday, 11am

M10 + Nikkor 85mm 1:1.8
Rollei IR 400

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 1/5/2023 at 2:57 AM, evikne said:

RNI Agfa Optima 200

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M10 with 50 Noctilux f/1

I always like your edits with RNI. Do you mind sharing your RNI workflow? And which version you use? I bought it but I haven’t used it much lately. I found that I was having to apply the RNI preset and then “edit in photoshop” to do a quick levels or curves adjustment to fix some of the flatness. The RNI documentation said to do this so it’s not my invention. This is RNI 5. Lately I’ve been playing with cobalt imaging’s Kodak pack. 

Edited by Crem
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11 minutes ago, Crem said:

I always like your edits with RNI. Do you mind sharing your RNI workflow? And which version you use? I bought it but I haven’t used it much lately. I found that I was having to apply the RNI preset and then “edit in photoshop” to do a quick levels or curves adjustment to fix some of the flatness. The RNI documentation said to do this so it’s not my invention. This is RNI 5. Lately I’ve been playing with cobalt imaging’s Kodak pack. 

Thanks! My RNI workflow is very simple. I first do most of the ordinary editing, then I just put the RNI profile on top, like icing on a cake. I have about 30 favorite profiles that I browse through while previewing them. When I find one I like, I select it and continue browsing through the favorite collection. I can compare with the Alt key, or by moving the mouse on an off the preview thumbnails. If I find one I like better than the first one, I select this, and so on. Sometimes I go through one or more full collections with negative, slide or B&W films this way. I use All Films 5 Pro for LR.

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Am 28.12.2022 um 18:00 schrieb dpitt:

I see grain of film as inherent evil, a downside of film.

You seem to be a bit younger, because I grew up with film and its grainy ingredients. Grain was just part of the time and ubiquitous. I guess film grain makes a photo sometimes a bit more interesting or even wicked. I agree, digital noise doesn't feel right, never. There is some original film noise to be found on the Internet as a jpg. If you insert this jpg as a background image in your post-processing workflow and reduce the transparency of the foreground image, you get almost a perfect grainy image.
Here is a street scene without noise and with the film simulation Fuji Superia HG 1600, developed with darktable (click to view properly).
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44 minutes ago, 01maciel said:

You seem to be a bit younger, because I grew up with film and its grainy ingredients.

Thanks for the compliment 😉 Everything is relative of course. My first 35mm camera was a Nikon FE in '78, my younger brother had a Nikon FM. We started our darkroom in 1979 i think and used 30m reels of HP5. My brother is now an ex-pro, studied at the most prestigious film school in Belgium. I had around 25 years of analog experience when I got my first digital camera.

51 minutes ago, 01maciel said:

Grain was just part of the time and ubiquitous. I guess film grain makes a photo sometimes a bit more interesting or even wicked. I agree, digital noise doesn't feel right, never. There is some original film noise to be found on the Internet as a jpg. If you insert this jpg as a background image in your post-processing workflow and reduce the transparency of the foreground image, you get almost a perfect grainy image.
Here is a street scene without noise and with the film simulation Fuji Superia HG 1600, developed with darktable (click to view properly).
M10 + Summilux 35 pre asph II
 

I am not against grain. It is inherent to the analog process, and as all things analog it is more pleasing than digital noise. So film has something digital has not (yet) reached, but IMO it is not the presence or absence of grain for me. I just think the human eye is capable of seeing things the digital camera's of today and the screens of today are not capable of reproducing. It is not the resolution, it is not the noise, it might be the subtle tonal differences we can see 'live' and not yet in reproduction and/or the amount of colors our digital workflow is capable of. For example, I see something a Leica S can do or a Hasselblad digital back, that is not in the pictures I see from an M11 or SL. And maybe it is even more present in a good pro scan of a nice film photo. It certainly is present in good scan of an analog MF negative and even more so in MF or sheet film prints that are processed in a full analog workflow.

I am not a pro photograph. My technical background is more in audio, where I spent a lot of my years as pro understanding the analog/digital differences. Technically audio is very similar to vision, it is just an other frequency and dynamic range basically. It is interesting that in both domains the digital products did not win over the most critical part of the public initially. And even after the initial awe, there is a revival of the analog. Audio is a few years ahead of photography. In audio top recording studio's like Reference Recordings had a dual workflow for every studio recording. One analog to vinyl starting with a custom built super tape recorder and one full digital with the best digital had to offer to CD. Even their mixing panels where different for analog and digital.

In photography I would say that the best results are when one either uses all digital or all analog workflow.

Just my 2 cents....

PS: It would have been nice to see the same scene captured with Fuji Superia HG 1600 film. Do you know of these kinds of test pictures? e.g. M11 against an MP? Same lens, same scene?

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As I am 90% an analogue shooter and I like consistency across my images, I do like to add grain and also use some other settings that I hope give a more analogue look 

This one the profile is Portra IV from RNI .  It's a low quality screenshot, sorry 

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Edited by grahamc
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RNI Profile Portra 160 IV ,  50:2 v3
M10-D

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RNI Kodak Gold 800 , M10-D , 50:2 v3

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Before/After:

 

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RNI Fuji Superia 200 v2

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M10 with Noctilux-M 1:1/50

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