Let's be honest, 90%* of us want to shoot film for the "Film look" and tag our picture as #NoEdit on Instagram (don't worry, I'm in the 90% too when I started). But how have you ever wondered how we ever get that iconic film tone? Well saddle up because this will be another tough article to digest for those who are unfamiliar with scanning film!
*Percentages are greatly exaggerated, Sample size (n) non-existent.
Now we all have heard the age old classic debate of Noritsu vs Frontier on which scanner has the best colour tones and the likes. Like every film shooter I was also drawn on this interesting comparison but I said to myself I guess I'll stick with Noritsu as a local photolab near me scans with a Noritsu and it's good enough for me... Until their Noritsu went kaput. I wasn't quite satisfied with the colours they gave me with their flatbed scans so I bought my own scanner and long story short Thefilmpool Photolab was born.
To keep things simple let's assume that we all started photography with a digital camera. When we started to take picture we just shoot JPEG in the beginning and then gradually when we learnt about editing then we moved onto the RAW file as it offers more flexibility in editing. Back in the days the negative is the RAW file and the print which we receive is the final edited JPEG so you see there's not much difference between the photographic process back then and now, just that everything is faster and can be done with more accuracy. In fact, go watch this video and you'll see how Adobe Photoshop is basically a digital darkroom. Then digital technology came and film scanners came into play revolutionizing the whole process into a hybrid workflow so sensu stricto we cannot really call ourselves as analogue photographer unless the whole workflow is analogue (I know one guy in Brunei who is currently setting up his darkroom to make prints so his whole workflow is analogue. I tipped him off about then enlarger and we were so excited when it actually came!!).
Alright sorry for the lack of pictures, let's get to the scanning and editing part. We got the negatives which is the "RAW file" and now let's scan it!
And here we have the "RAW file", our negative. Let's bring it into our digital darkroom (ahem, import it into Lightroom/Photoshop/Capture One).
Now you may think because it is a negative you can just invert it into a positive but you can't just invert this normally because if you do, you'll have a pretty bad cyan like so...
So how on earth do you remove that cyan cast? There's plenty of methods on removing this cast, One method by Anthony Morganti includes inverting the RGB tone curve in Lightroom individually as shown here. Another method as noted by u/iamthejeff on Reddit is to sample the film base in Photoshop, you can check out his workflow here. Sampling of the film base leads to a better and improved workflow and some very good results from Nate Photographic in his latest product; Negative Lab Pro. Before we go any further, let's see some example inversion I did with Anthony Morganti's method.
Not bad but I think it's lacking a bit in the saturation and need to play around more with the RGB tone curve and some white balancing. With a bit of editing...
That looks much better! Sorry for the dust, can't be bothered to clean then up this time but let's get back to the problem statement: the film look. Is there really a true film look as from what I have just shown above is that it takes a lot of editing to get to this point. You can, just buy a Noritsu or a Frontier for $5000 Brunei Dollars but after to talking to a lab tech that has operated a Frontier before this, he also revealed to me that they did extensive editing on their end with that scanner in order to get the most neutral tone. So is there such thing as a real film tone? In my opinion, no. What you have received in your Google Drive folder is basically edits from your lab tech so think twice before tagging your images as #NoEdit because your lab tech probably spend a good hour correcting and editing your images depending on the lighting and exposure of your shot.
To show how much editing is needed in a roll of film, I'll attach some images from a Fujifilm Superia Xtra 400 film. Keep an eye on the DX code (the yellow barcode next to the frame counter at the bottom), if the colours of the DX code changes that means the image is edited to get the tone.
Having a good relationship with your lab tech (no, I don't mean to go on a date your lab tech... well I guess you could ask them out) helps you to get what you want but because it helps to let them know what the final product that you expects from the film. Tell them of you want it to look flat, saturated, contrasty etc. After you get your scans back, feel free to edit them as you please to get the tones that you want or leave it, totally up to you! Editing is by no means frowned upon (personally for me that is).
“You don’t take a photograph, you make it.” – Ansel Adams
I will not be scanning films anymore but I have taught my replacement; Philip and Sulaiman everything I know so do ask Qawie (the developer and meetup guy) who will be scanning your film so you'll know who to contact!
Want to know more? You can always hit me up on my IG @nachobanhmi and maybe we can hang to talk about film stuff!
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