March 27, 2017 | 6681 Views | By Dan Harlacher
For the Love of Film – Part II
In Part II, in For the Love of Film blog series, we bring you into the studio. I show our set up for creating new Color Film presets for Effects (coming in ON1 Photo 2017.1). If you missed Part I, you can find it here.
Once we raided Jonny’s stash of frozen-in-time film, along with the very few color negative and transparency films we could still get our hands on, it was finally time to go shoot.
We knew right away that we needed a consistent subject in a controlled environment. So we picked up some gear and headed across town to my studio. We started by creating a “lay-down” of vintage photo equipment.
This was our consistent subject matter. We shot this setup with some different digital cameras as well an iPhone. These photos would then be used as the “control” photos when we make the presets.
Next we swapped out the digital cameras for a trusty Canon AE-1 for our film shooting. For each film roll, we shot a slate with the film name as well as a Color Checker Passport for reference colors.
Then we shot a bracket of the scene, not knowing how the age would affect sensitivity on some of the older films, besides we had 36 frames to use in most cases.
After shooting we sent all of the film to Blue Moon Camera, the last lab in Portland that processes C-41 and E-6 in house. Funny memories stirred up as we crossed our fingers and waited a week to get the film back. Remember the good ol’ days when we had to wait to see our pictures? It brought a few smiles around here that’s for sure.
As luck would have it, some call it skill. I thank Jonny. 🙂 All but one of the rolls of film was in good enough shape to capture our image. Next came scanning all that film. So I dusted off my old Epson scanner, dug up some old software that would still drive the scanner and spent the next three nights scanning the photos.
In the third and final post of our series, For the Love of Fim, I’ll cover the creation of the presets and share some of my favorite photos using these great new presets.
4 comments on “For the Love of Film – Part II”
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On March 27, 2017 at 2:33 pm Adam Rubinstein wrote:
Was there any reason you didn’t include some color reference patches in the scene such as an X-rite color checker or was the intent to capture grayscale and grain?
On March 27, 2017 at 3:48 pm Patrick Smith replied:
Hey Adam, Dan noted this in the post. “we shot a slate with the film name as well as a Color Checker Passport for reference colors.” I you look closely at the smaller image of the scene, the color checker is there.
On March 27, 2017 at 4:22 pm Adam Rubinstein replied:
Man, I’m getting old I read that paragraph and passed right over that sentence. Maybe my equipment is not the only thing with cobwebs…
On March 27, 2017 at 8:40 pm William Bronte wrote:
Have a blast from the past that I doubt you have tested (you all look too young and definately not enough gray in the beards and mustaches). It was the 3M ASA 1000 E-6 slide film. Had a funky grain pattern and what I found to be a variable spectral response. Great for “dreamy” nudes and portraits–particularly with a soft focus filter.
Have one roll of 20 exposures that was lost in a freezer for about 30 years. The “develop by date” is August 1986. If you want it–I’ll express it up to you.