The question, can digital photos have the “film look” arose during my recent two-and-a-half-week road trip to the Picos de Europa. In this article, I describe several techniques I tried to replicate the film look digitally.
On a recent road trip to the Picos de Europa in Northern Spain, I took my Nikon FE2 and Mamiya M645 with twelve rolls of film, six rolls of 135 film and six rolls of 120 film. It wasn’t enough.
Fortunately, I had also taken my mirrorless Nikon Z6, as a backup, just in case! So, I decided to shoot digitally on several of the day trips to eke out my dwindling film supply. Unfortunately, in my rush to pack, I hadn’t paid attention to which lens was attached to the Z6. It was a Tokina Macro 100 F2.8 D (I use it to digitise my film negatives). Hardly suitable for landscape and street photography.
I hit upon the idea of using my old vintage Nikon lenses, which I had taken for the Nikon FE2. So the Nikkor 35-105mm 1:3.5-4.5 zoom, coupled with the Nikon Z6 (using the Z adapter) it was. Everything was set to manual. To help with focus I enabled focus peaking – that helped a lot.
Editing the photos
I have got so used to film photos over the past few years; that is how black and white photos should look, in my opinion. So, I started experimenting with Capture One to see if I could get close to my preferred film look. I added a few old photos shot with the Nikon Z 24-70mm 1:4 S into the mix.
The problem was I had several hundred photos – about a hundred after culling. I needed a quick way of doing this.
Capture One style
I developed a simple Capture One style for a black-and-white film look conversion on an “average” photo. This comprised:
- applying the Nikon Z6 monochrome ICC profile
- reducing clarity by -50
- increasing structure by 6
- decreasing exposure -0.4
- decreasing highlights
- increasing shadow
- increasing brightness
A few clicks later, I had over a hundred black-and-white film-look photos. Most were pretty decent, although I tweaked brightness, highlights, shadow and contrast on some. I live in Spain, and the sun is very bright, so you get extreme shadows and highlights. But, the changes needed were mostly minor.
Silver Ffex Pro
For comparison, I also did two conversions of each photo using Silver Efex Pro. In each case, I started with the original colour RAW file.
- A black-and-white manual conversion from scratch, edited until I had an image I was reasonably happy with.
- Soft sepia – A dreamy custom sepia conversion that I created and saved as a preset. I then applied this preset to the photos.
DxO FilmPack 5
I haven’t used this plug-in for a long time but thought it might be quite interesting to see how it performed. I used the Ilford Delta 100 preset purely because it is one of my favourite films. No other edits were made. I was pleasantly surprised. Not bad at all for a one-click conversion straight out of the box.
Results comparison
I edited five photos for this comparison. Below are my results. The images are best viewed on a large screen. Click any photo to view a larger version (PC only, does not work on mobile devices).
Photo 1
Location: La Alberca, Salamanca, Spain
Camera: Nikon Z6
Lens: Nikkor 35-105mm 1:3.5-4.5
Aperture: Not recorded, Shutter: 1/50 sec, ISO:400
Photo 2
Location: La Alberca, Salamanca, Spain
Camera: Nikon Z6
Lens: Nikkor 35-105mm 1:3.5-4.5
Aperture: Not recorded, Shutter: 1/40 sec, ISO:400
Photo 3
Location: near Hornos, Jaén, Spain
Camera: Nikon Z6
Lens: Nikon Z 24-70mm 1:4 S, Foval length: 47mm
Aperture: f8 Shutter: 1/250 sec ISO:100
Photo 4
Location: Cabo de Gata, Níjar, Spain
Camera: Nikon Z6
Lens: Nikon Z 24-70mm 1:4 S, Focal length: 65mm
Aperture: f8 Shutter: 1/250 sec ISO:100
Photo 5
Location: Cabo de Gata, Níjar, Spain
Camera: Nikon Z6
Lens: Nikon Z 24-70mm 1:4 S, Focal length: 70mm
Aperture: f4 Shutter: 1/1000 sec ISO:100
Conclusions
So can you replicate the film look from digital photos? Probably not, although you can get close. My experiment was short and simple. Some spend a lot more time. Some companies spend huge budgets trying to replicate the film look. In the above examples, I think the “grain” is too uniform. There are no blemishes, no dust spots. The images lack soul and depth. Sure, you can produce pleasing images which mimic film photos. You can even mimic vintage photos and various darkroom techniques. But why not go out, enjoy the whole film experience, and shoot on film in the first place?
Film photography is not just about producing photos with the “film look”. It’s about the whole film experience. The shooting, developing and printing. Then there are the darkroom processes (if you choose to go all the way). It’s a lifestyle choice. It’s more about taking photos and creating images, not sitting in front of the computer processing RAW digital files.
