Controlling Color in Photography
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 25 ก.พ. 2021
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Color is a highly subjective aspect of photography, but also extremely important. How we interpret color and color science has changed a lot from the pre-digital chemical processes to the unlimited possibilities with digital. I've got an interesting project I'm working on and thought I'd share this with all of you.
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Ted Forbes
The Art of Photography
2830 S. Hulen, Studio 133
Fort Worth, TX 76109
US of A - วิทยาศาสตร์และเทคโนโลยี
I love this topic. Ted: you need some framed photos or something hanging on those walls, it looks so bare!
'less is more'
@michael that's actually a pretty cool idea
Ernst Haas, how many people has he inspired, the main point for me, he was not stuck in one genre he did it all. A true master.
I studied his work in high school. Found him fascinating.
@@DianeVatcher I was inspired many years back by him because he photographed everything and anything. I laugh at ICM because people talk about it as if it was new, yet Earnst Haas was doing it back in the 50s and in colour. These days it seems to be female photographers that pull me in, they don't seem to get caught up talking about Cameras and Lenses but more about the image. Two of mention are Andrea Gulickx & Joanna Kustra, both have good websites.
Ted, I know you’re a musician so you’ll understand that analogy : in music, we tune to A440Hz. In a symphony, all instruments tune to the first/lead viola. All ‘flat/neutral’ profiles will act in a similar manner, to help us get a similar ground for colour correction, etc. Good video and interesting topic ! Although to be honest: I’ve been around the world with my motorcycle, my iPhone 7plus and a Nikon D5500. Most people can’t tell the difference if I took an image with one or the other. What matters is what they feel and why. In music, a lot of musicians play with junk instruments and fill stadiums (covid notwithstanding) so the message is the most important, no matter the media (music /photography /filmmaking...)
great comment, love the viola analogy. i'm not a musician but i see the parallel you're making
A reading suggestion: Oliver Sacks: "The island of the colour blind." Sacks, the author of "awakenings," visited an isolated island with a population that is largely colour blind. Their colourblindness left them with a kind of black and white vision. Over many generations, they developed a visual aesthetic of structure, strongly inspired by the rich diversity of visual structure in the vegetation of their tropical island.
I have difficulty with colors. So, I photographed a lot in black and white. But now, I am doing an authorial project in which I am using colors, and, thanks to videos like these, I have improved my relationship with colors.
13:30 - 15:00
yes yes yes please make a spinoff / part 2 of this video going more in depth on color and film simulation breakdown
This is a really good point. Will we ever be happy with a digital version of film colours when we will always know that it isn’t from film. When every aspect of the image is so adjustable, there will always be that temptation to keep tweaking, when with film you just accepted what the stock gave you. I am constantly trying to make my digital work have the honesty of film and avoid the digital trends of colour.
Yes! I would love to see this topic covered more here. Just make sure you come up with an emulation for Kodachrome 64 while you’re at it.😁
Kodachrome wasn’t as accurate as we would like to believe but the bluer colder balance had so much mood and was so freaking great .
I've just recently jumped into film photography for some personal projects, having been a digital only shooter for the last 15 years for personal and commercial work. I am utterly fascinated by the technical process and the looks of various film stocks. Its like I am discovery photography all over again. The process if far more intentional and deliberate with much more pre-visualization. Its been a lot of fun and you don't realize what a crutch the rear digital screen on the back of the camera is until you no longer have it. Having to rely on taking and calculating your own light meter readings and calculating tones and zones for desired exposure has given me a whole new appreciation for the old guard of photography who were the real technical and artistic practitioners of this medium. We have it waaaaayyyy to easy today, it almost feels like cheating.
I feel like this is a throwback to the original Art Of Photography podcast and I love that - this is where you do your best stuff. Stick with it.
Dear Ted, I work as a professional printer and I quite often get the question to try and "interpret" a modern photograph to look like a certain film stock. For instance to make a body of work shot on mixed media to be more consistent. What I have found in my efforts is that although colour and contrast are very important to have digital "emulsion" , it's just not everything. Like you said, quite often, emotion comes into play. There is nog slider for that :-). But also, and this is the part that in my opinion gets forgotten a lot, the rendering of a subject in pixels or on film is just different. I actually did a test with a photographer where we shot the same subject with film and digital side by side on the exact same moment. Later we tried to match them up and although color, contrast and tone got very close, the "feel" was never the same.
Long story short, I think you could get very close to "reinterpret" the film stocks, but the end result will never be 100%. I know that their is an entire division at Fujifilm Japan doing this and even they don't get it completely right.
Of course, if you could invent "emotion" and "nostalgia" sliders, you might actually get there yet :-)
Hey Ted, Long time follower.....first time commenter. This segement really resonated with me......brought back a lot of memories. Early in my career (early 1990s) I was a creative director for a catalog. We shot 4 x 5 film and decided that we would try shooting Velvia for a Easter promotion. The colors on the photos were really nice. Velvia became our "go to" when ever we needed that extra saturation pop for a product shot. We had our own E-6 line so we did have control of our output and we ran ALOT test film. We had been exclusively a yellow box user for years and we joked about using the "F" word (Fuji) but when the images were reviewed by the merchandising group resulted in rave reviews....we were heroes. I just wonder what that world would look like if we had the advantage of current technology. I am still working as a project manager in a fashion pre-media firm.
Just now diving into the “Fuji X Weekly” recipes on the X100V, which appear to be promising. He has 139 recipes avail (most free) listed in an iOS app. Ted, I’d love you to review a handful of them, perhaps comparing to your memory of those more cherished film stocks.
I like the idea of applying a jpg recipe in-camera, thereby locking myself in to a “film” for the day or at least that single shot.
This is hands down the most engaging thing I’ve seen, photography wise, in at least the last year. It triggers the engineering sector of my brain as well as the one in charge of cave drawings. I shoot mostly vanishing roadside America. Nostalgia is the topic, colors are the alphabet. In other words I’m going for a look. I don’t even know exactly what that look is until I try it on an image. In addition to the digital captures I spend a lot of time experimenting with film in all of its glory. Sometimes a combination of lighting, brokenness of the expired film, and processing technique nets me a color palette I could never envision on my own but is perfect for the scene.
I develop all my own film and I use my A7Riv and a macro to “scan”. Negative Lab Pro is the plugin I use in LR for negative conversion. Experience with color negatives has convinced me that the look of any given film stock is as much in the hands of the person controlling the conversion software as anything intrinsic to the film.
Still at the end of the day it’s just a transfer function and one should be able to map a transfer function from the scene to the final file. It’s a big field right now in the motion picture industry as digital B roll has to conform to the look of scanned film. I’ve studied enough on the topic of 3-D look up tables to grasp that there are various levels of quality. I won’t say the more data points in the look up table the better but there is a correlation between the two, all else equal.
Anyway, it’s a huge fascinating topic and I look forward to seeing where you take this. I may even admit to having my own selfish reasons: I don’t trust Fuji! They have a proven track record of dropping film stock from their catalog at anytime for any reason at all. I have a freezer loaded with Provia, Velvia and some other favorites like Rollei CR200. That film won’t last forever and it would be awesome to have a look up table that faithfully emulated the look of the classics. Any such tool would not be perfect to everyone’s eye but Velvia is one of those things, well; you know it when you see it. If it reaches that standard it’ll be a success.
This is something that really hit home with me, just starting a photography business in family portraits, and everytime I listen to your videos I always get brought back to what was the art of photography pre digital age because personally I feel like the overall art of photography these days is exactly as you put it, the ambitious goal of reproducing the exact moment in reality that the photographer froze in a photo. I grew up in the years of film into digital when the first digital cameras were clearly inferior to the film equivalent. My first camera took 110 rolls it was a kids kodak camera because I loved watching my dad shoot film on his pentax me. I would love to see where this goes, and support it where needed. Your question about why no one has done this I think is because those like you who have the distinct memory of shooting on those film stocks are still shooting on those film stocks, they probably turned their bathrooms or guest bedrooms into darkrooms much to their significant others chagrine. That era of photographer was much more willing to get their hands dirty per se, and have the passion to do it that way. I'm inspired at the very least to keep shooting and looking to emulate those foundations, and build on what I can.
That was way too wordy, tl;dr I love what you're doing, and want to see where this goes.
THE ART OF PHOTOGRAPHY is back!!! Very nice
Ted. Totally agree. No way to know reality. The idea of straight out of camera means you don’t understand photography from the very beginning. Color interpretation is right in the middle of the discussion. Tastes, direction, etc. Reality is always interpreted by the technology and by our interpretation of the result. Then you work with the result. Great discussion. Thanks.
I think there’s been a huge trend over the last decade in popular/broader photography culture and education to de-emphasize playing with things like color and dynamics. Part of this is probably because screens are variable and subjective so there’s a fear of “overdoing” something for one type of display to the detriment of others (editing for OLED vs LCD vs bright vs dim, etc), but I think the main culprit is the prevalence of HDR and processing effects in popular photography apps- particularly at the start of the 2010s as smartphone cameras became ubiquitous. Couple that with more accessible processing techniques/apps and you started to see a lot of trends from more mainstream folks that “serious” photography people reacted very viscerally against. We all know the look- “overblown HDR poser Facebook ‘photographer” and I think a lot of people who want their work taken seriously are terrified of being accused of that sort of amateurism. So the reaction in some circles has been to do as little color processing as possible. As soon as a popular “look” gets turned into a plug-in there’s a tendency to want to do the opposite, which is great except when that breeds its own kind of monotony and groupthink. I think the same thing happens with composition rules for many people. Lots of portfolios have this rigid, almost timid, adherence to basic rule-of-thirds principles as though they’re scared that an internet stranger will call their work scrub-tier or accuse them of not knowing better.
I'm pretty sure I first started thinking about color three years ago after a similar video from him. There was this picture of a bullfrog I had taken and I was so proud of my post-processing to get that perfect bell-pepper yellow on the frog and a warm orange in the leaves around it.
I'm a wildlife photographer, but I always try to edit my images as an artist before a documenter. My two favorite tools are color grading and the (de)haze tool in Lightroom, both effects that decrease the real-life accuracy. They give a darn cool feel to pictures, though.
Interesting idea and reminded of something I read about how VSCO got their early film profiles: they basically created "black rooms" with neutral reflection, shot a bunch of film under controlled lighting conditions and a range of color subjects. Then they scanned it under a microscope and created algorithms that could be applied to a digital file. (It's an old piece that an acquaintance recently shared.)
That's an intense amount of work to create a preset. But it does punctuate the point of what we're all aiming for, or at least what I am when I edit my photos.
Personally, I dream setup for me would be to shoot color film (because I love how Porta renders colors) and digital monochrome. Right now it's reversed (because it's cheaper and just fits my lifestyle right now). But all in all, very interesting.
Yes! Please share this project and the process. Would love to see how it develops and evolves.
Cold hearted orb that rules the night
Removes the colors from our sight
Red is gray and yellow white
But we decide which is right
And which is an illusion
(edit:) - Graeme Charles Edge
duster gato
That verse will always take me straight back to The Moody Blues album, Days of Future Passed
Hi Ted! I am watching this after two weeks of being heavily involved in creating icc profiles that I can use in capture one that represent what I love about film photography, exactly as you said, maybe with some degree of science behind it and some more of “interpretation”. I love your take on those thoughts about color and I’d love to hear more! As always fantastic video!
at the end you were describing an itch that you really wanted to scratch, and that was compelling. i hope you went for it, and i hope it was satisfying to you! if it was then it would might be a good product that others may enjoy!
Definitely interesting idea. Would love to see the end realization of it!
I’ve been getting back in to film more and more. I definitely enjoy trying to be more intentional with everything in my photography.
I don’t know if you are aware of T. Hopper on TH-cam, but she just did a great video on Ernst Haas! Similar in style to your artists series. Very entertaining and educational.
I’ve learned a lot from your “artist spotlights” and love to go back through them!
I immediately picked up that New York 1952-1962 right after watching that. Unbelievably artistry and photography!
Great topic Ted Forbes! Gosh I remember in the 90's when Cross Process was the thing there were certain times when I liked what KODAK rendered in Cross Process while other times I will lean towards what FUJI did. One thing that stuck with me when Digital came out was the way a Guy who worked in Colors Separation Department saw color, for him it was all numbers Plus or Minus Yellow, Blue, Magenta etc that ultimately ended in the way a color will look when printed. I think is great for you to cover topics like these that are part of Photography and is time to start moving forward with the Technology we have now. Thank you for loving Photography and for making this channel Ted Forbes!
I think you’re onto something, Ted! There’s a harmony that’s missing in all of these presets, thinking about Haas and Herzog with the memorable balance of hues. Part of it is I think they were much more selective of the light when they made images and so there’s a familiarity with the color relationships throughout their work. But I also wonder if the issue today is how the multiple digital color channels almost compete with one another, thus undermining that harmony/balance of color. Would love to see you wrestle with this, good luck!
Hey Ted, Can't Tell You how Excited I am to Hear You talking about this Subject & the work that you're doing on it.. especially as the serendipity with how it dovetails with where I am in my personal work is almost perfect... I am currently migrating back from my Beloved fuji XT-1 to my Nikon D600 as my xt1 while still even now is Just incredible for monochrome work and beautiful 'film inspired looks' for indoor compositions... seemed to lack the accuracy which I'm looking for in landscape and nature orientated scenes albeit from a fine art perspective.... however I really wanted to retain the incredible ability which we have with mirrorless and fuji especially to get sometimes even 99-100% of what we are seeing to achieve in terms of the final look of image that we were seeking to create as part of the creative flow especially when shooting hand held in a flow even before we've pressed the shutter... as such it has been a really interesting journey in finding... like you said, where this 'feeling/mood/aesthetic' or desired goal comes from or is created in our workflow or the creative process; from how one uses the camera in the moment of shooting/capturing the image and the cameras ability to capture a scene in a certain way... from just shooting to the histogram for the most 'versatile' file or maximum dynamic range... to using the ability of the camera to achieve a certain look either in RAW or dare I say it even using the Jpeg engine at least as a point of departure or estimating the exposure of the RAW image in order to exploit the looks which one is able to create with the camera in raw or Jpeg before moving to post.. and either keeping the Jpeg as is more common with the fuji system or recreating the look with a similarly or sympathetically exposed raw file in post.... Also How much or how little work one might desire to do in post to create the final image and whether the process of gaining the desired final image is actually enhanced in ones ability to capture the scene closer to the end product using ones mastery of the camera as a creative tool when setting up the camera and pressing the shutter button.... as opposed to simply creating the most versatile file and doing everything in post, when the initial creative vision for the final image may not be quite so well defined ..... For me at least from a more fine art orientated perspective, I have definitely found the former to be much more valuable in my personal creative workflow than the latter... However as you said in the video having a really detailed and well thought out palate of profiles or points of departure where the semiotics of how we as humans relate to and perceive colour reproduction both innately and according to our collective and personal perception of the cannon of work/advertising/photography which has existed in the world and society as we have been alive and historically to date would be an amazing tool both from an educational and creative perspective and a really exciting field for creative exploration too.... At the moment what could be considered my possibly 'retrograde' step of moving back to a DSLR has pushed me into creative use of metering having to once again develop a sixth sense of how the camera will expose a specific scene metered a certain way at -3 to -1.3ev to get the exact exposure and look I am looking for.... together with exploiting the still frankly quite amazing Jpeg engine of the D600 (beautifully natural colours and free of the artificial crushed blacks of the d750) ...using the Std Neutral Vivid and Portrait profiles with White Balance A+1 & M+1 with a few slight adjustments to get the both more accurate (than my XT1) yet filmic/saturated or higher or lower (portra-esque) contrast look that I am looking for to get me as close as I can to the final image I'm looking for in camera as part of the creative flow while I'm shootign in the moment... also using some of the T-max Neoplan etc. Nikon pc profiles to give the initial image in camera the desired film-esque bite and treatment of contrast to help me to control the camera-composition and exposure to get me as close to the final image in camera as I can, seems to be developing into a really nice workflow, including some of the sixth sense and feel necessary in order to command the exposure of film in the camera when shooting film, as an integral part of the creative flow and creative process as well... But as I said before to be able to continue this process in post with incredibly well thought out profiles which in reality represent a considerable/enormous body of work and knowledge of both colour science and the semiotics of how images translate through colour how they are perceived now and how they have been perceived in the past would be a really exciting development... and would almost certainly bleed some of this considerable wealth of knowledge back to inform the way in which we continue to develop the way in which we compose/envisage images in camera while we're shooting and creating the composition as part of the creative process of image making as well. Similar to how an encyclopaedic knowledge of film stock, and how those colours would be perceived and how the image would translate through the chosen film stock and colour palate to the intended or likely audience in a time when it was the only media available to photographers in the past. Therefore having this knowledge distilled into a largely experiential interactive and creative formate in the form of really highly developed profiles, would give the ability to learn and use this body of knowledge of the semiotics of colour and how it is perceived and has been perceived in the past in an accessible and experiential format to photographers now & could possibly go on to continue to inform generations of photographers in a way in which they can immediately apply to their own work and allow them to reference, mediate and compare their work to styles and mediums of photography used in the past in an highly engaging and interactive way.... So, Really Really Super Exciting for so many reasons Ted So a Big Thank You from Me and the Rest of the Photographic Community and be fantastic if you could inform us of any further developments as and when they come.... Thanks So much once again Chris :)
At last someone is talking about profiles instead of presets! I'll follow your videos, if you're going to post the procedure.
My workflow is based in profiles working hand in hand with my presets.
I'd love to learn how to create a profile and I'm betting that most of us here will.
In my opinion profiles are the future in editing and then presets and so on..
Thanks you from the bottom of my heart, letting me know I'm not alone in this! 🙂
One of my recent fav videos from your channel Ted. Thank you for this!
I remember using Kodak VIsion 3 during my cinema studies on set and we had to work with the specs (and the limitation) of this film. Since then, i approach color very differently than when i started with digital still camera. Intention/mood is the priority since.
I’d love it. There are a few people who’ve come up with “formulas” for specific cameras (in my case Fuji) that I’ve enjoyed. I’ll try to look up the articles after work
Ah yes! I remeber the photolab/1 hour photo shops. The reason why I started developing my own film. As a film shooter I love using different film stocks for different color effects. Some for portraits, others for sunsets, etc. Color lenses are fun too when experimenting/playing with color. I would love to see your process and the results. Great video!
All the films had a different spectrum response from one another. Each film had a data sheet that described the various sensitivities to the light so the results varied depending upon the spectrum of the light in which one was photographing. Color films varied from emulsion batch to emulsion batch and serious photographers were given suggestions on the film box as to what filtration should be used to balance a particular emulsion batch back to 'normal'. Color film balance changed day to day depending on how long the film had been out of the refrigerator. Latent image on color films bloomed with time. Pro films came to good color almost immediately and needed to be processed within hours of exposure. Amateur films came to good color slowly and would come to best color days after exposure. in developing; time/temperature/agitation/replentishment all made significant changes in the outcome of both color and b&w emulsions.
Yes, please do more videos on this topic, Ted. I have been planning to make my own color profiles for my personal use based on film popular film stocks with my own personal touch. I am not looking for clinical accuracy, but a style of expression through colors and tonality.
I hope to see a series of videos on color philosophy as well as the process of creating custom color profiles for LR and C1. It will be very helpful to a lot of people.
I think this would be a great topic to follow up on
Hi Ted - would love to see more on this topic! back in the day I loved to shoot agfachrome 100 and fujichrome 50.
Interesting topic. I'd love to see more and how you get the "film"-look you want. About the "color science" behind JPGs. None of the camera manufacturers go for a neutral look. They all go for a pleasing look - which is a good thing IMO.
Yes! Please take us down the rabbit hole with you 🙏🏻
some of my favourite videos of yours are the Capture1 tutorials, I'd be very interested in seeing how you tackle the creation of a preset, even more than in seeing presets themselves. Really breaking down the qualities of film within the terms set by a digital world would be a super interesting exercise.
I love everything you're talking about here (and in all of your videos). I love love love my fuji camera, it reignited my love of shooting... I want to love their presets but while they are good, they just don't hit the mark. And I'm not quite sure you can emulate film really, with digital. My personal way of editing that gets me as close as I can get to the "feel" I am looking for, is to take an image to photoshop and get it looking as close to the way I saw it in real life, and then take it into alienskin and use a few layers of my favorite film presets at various opacities to create my own look. I would be super interested in more videos on this subject. Thanks for the great channel!
As someone who is colour blind, colour is still so important however I feel for me I have a greater understanding of tone. I use the tonal range of contrast rather than colour to emphasize parts of my shots. No sure if this sounds right but is only way that I can understand colour as I see it
This is interesting. In drawing in monochrome AND a in painting with color, we use what is termed Local Value, which is basically the gradation of tones from black to white. These tones are manipulated according to contrast as you’re describing, in order to establish a composition, and direct the eye around a work. Light on dark, dark against light, and everything in between in order of importance or movement. Do you photograph in color or B&W? This is quite interesting...
I’d love to see how this project progresses, it’s something that interests me. My understanding of colour interpretation in the digital world is very limited and something I personally need to work on. I shoot fuji, and also grew up shooting film, and I haven’t been able to get anywhere near the satisfactory results I’d like to get in terms of accurate colour balance.
I had my fujifilm X-E3 (along with my canon) stolen about a year ago. When I cashed the insurance check I went all in on canon, because it was the more practical system for me... but I desperately miss my Fuji, almost entirely because of the color and film simulations. I got way more images with the right “feel”, right out of camera... it was much easier to for me to create emotionally satisfying images with that camera, even if they didn’t have the resolution or low light capability of my full frame canon.
Someday I’ll get another Fuji, even if only as a “fun” camera, but the point I want to make is I think more companies should offer more ability to adjust color (and shadows/highlights) in camera... I want to be able to get as close as possible to a final image as possible, in camera. I know that this color info wouldn’t be baked into a raw file of course, but cameras could offer a TIFF output option for those who want to get an uncompressed final image out of their camera with their color choices “baked in.” Or maybe they could revise their raw file spec to be able to have an exact color profile embedded instead of relying on Adobe (or other raw processors) to interpret their colors.
In fact, why doesn’t canon/Nikon/Fuji, etc. work with Adobe to offer more exact color profiles for Lightroom/camera raw? They have to know it’s a small percentage of their users that’ll bother with a first party raw processor... Would love further thoughts on this Ted. It’s a fascinating topic, thanks for bringing it up!
Ted, as we’ve discussed a bit, seeing colors is difficult for me. My form of colorblindness limits me to seeing only muted colors. For example, distinguishing between green, brown and red can be nearly impossible for me. Initially I limited my photography to only black and white, but my curiosity about color is growing. I’ve been experimenting a bit with both digital and color film. But I only know how I see these images, and not how it’s interpreted by anyone else. So, yes, I’m definitely interested in hearing more about color.
I think it'd be FASCINATING if you could do a series in which you color correct until the photos look good TO YOU. Then those of us without colorblindness may get a very unique experience - not a shared experience with you, but a somewhat opposite view instead.
VERY interesting. Loving the insights on color (speaking as a plain ole utility photographer/videographer - I lived on Fujicolor 800 which looked wonderful in the days when ASA 800 print film was a really big deal). Love the color of the video - looks subtly just right.
From someone who shoots film and digital, I absolutely love this idea.
what timing ..
im transitioning from black n white to color ,,, and (side note) ernst hass has been making waves across youtube lately , I've been studying his work ,,
basically perfect timing :)
Until about 12:40 I kept thinking to myself, how can Ted not have heard of VSCO? Then you let the cat out of the bag as to exactly where you are heading with this, it sounds intriguing indeed!
I think that aproce of correction of inconsistents of "velvia" will be in March update of Capture One.
Yes! I would love to see you cover this topic in more depth
Hello Ted, very intriguing video, loved it. Very philosophical too. Just a quick question when at the end you mention provia 'digital' not being the colours that you remember. Have you considered the extent to which your memory could be tainted ( pun unintended)? There has been a lot of study in the field of psychology and memory and how we 'personalise' our memory. You may find these articles interesting. One is from the American Journal of Psychology entitled 'An Experiment Study of Memory Color and Related Phenomena' and the other one called 'Memory and preference for the colours of objects'. I know it can be far reaching from the stand point of photography alone, but fields do often cross-over. Jess.
Love to see the process!
Love your videos and your passion for photography
Yes! In the last year I've become increasingly interested in film simulation so sure, i would love to see more on the topic
I would like to see you discuss luminosity, hue, saturation, tone curves and highlight & shadow intensity...
But in a comparative way... So for example... You might take a recent photo with a analog camera then digitize the print, then take the same picture under the same conditions with a digital camera and pull up the RGB values, the luminosity levels and the dynamic range characteristics... Perhaps you can then show how the process works if one wanted to emulate the digital image to look like the analog one...
A lot of work... I know... Still would be interesting for us "photography nerds"!
Thanks Ted!
This is how I've started thinking about presets. I make "looks" for myself that capture a feel based on colour and feeling. I apply them only after I've got the exposure pretty close to the final values. Would love to see how your experiments turn out here
Great info, I would love to see those looks come to life
I think these films are like your first love, impossible to recreate! That said, Ilford B&W was magic for me. I couldn't take a bad shot if I tried!!
Color always will be in the eye of the beholder.It’s in my opinion not any were near an exact “science” although we try.I have always and still love the look of great exposed film.There are some amazing good looking film shot movies out there still as of today.I shoot digital and manipulate like everybody else.
Great and interesting topic Ted, I also would like to see more of these.
I would definitely be into seeing more about this! I tend to sink heaps of time into colour correction because, unlike exposure the "right" result is far less obvious. I can't count the number of times I've spent ages tinkering with the colour balance on a photo only to come back to it the next day and say to myself "what was I thinking?!"
On top of that, when I have a reference I'm trying to emulate and can't quite get it right, I'm always left wondering if it's because the image I started with is too different from the reference, or whether I just haven't adjusted the colour the way I need to. Would love your insight on this!
Great video, and thanks for the recommendation about the Ernst Haas New York book, I have received this today. Some of the images are timeless, and just as valid today,
Fascinating discussion i am constantly trying to capture film looks
You are sooo right! Eveyone sees colour differently!!!!
yeah would realy love to see how you build your own and how you remember it from the past!
I think that's the big problem, the emotive interpretation. We can have all the presets we like and they may technically "look" like a certain film stock, however, you can never get them to look "like" that film. The reason being we each react to the way a film looks, differently. Those films we loved to use will have a particular look and meaning for us depending on our experiences with them. That's something that a digital copy of that film will never replicate. There will always be something missing and those presets will appear cold to our eyes. It's one reason why I still shoot film. Digital images, no matter what situation I may find myself in with a digital camera, always looks robotic. It lacks soul. Don't get me wrong, it can look fantastic and have a certain character if you shoot it right, but there's just something missing from it. Call it a raw essence, but digital just seems to lack it.
Great video, thanks. btw: Capture One does provide the simulations for the Fujifilm images on RAWs not only with JPEGs, and I think they did a great job to get it very similar to the in-camera simulations
I was thinking about this the other day, but more in a question of "if digital photographs could be identical to film would I stay with film?". Besides the general film brands, if you were shooting something critical you would match the production runs to ensure no change in the continuity of the film, still and especially movie. As much as I like shooting digital, conveinence and cost, film is what I enjoy most. Mostly large format. Pam Bennett Buena Ventura Life
Oh man, I was actually writing an essay about this subject!
RNI 5 is what I currently go to for this idea. They moved to profile based in 5 (also lets you adjust the strength slider like if you want velvia but not quite so much).
Excellent topic, please some deep dive videos on this. One thought: one thing is a 1:1 move of the color impression as specific analog film has (had) into the digital world - with the limitations in color and other aspects those films have. But with the possibilities we have today it might also be possible to use the full range of color, details, dynamic range together with the knowledge on specific lenses and filters to come to a modern interpretation of the specific film in the digital area. Is this what you intend to do?
I have yet to see a preset that I'm happy with. I have a bunch and use the as inspiration sometimes, C1. Color profiles sounds like a much better starting point to me. Great video Sir, thank you
Really great staff!!!👌👌
Quick question, how do you find out about all these incredible classical and historical photographers? If you are able to answer this thank you very very much!
Great subject, about which I am certainly eager for more episodes. One question I would like to be tackled is which books do you recommend about this subject?
Are there any resources online on how to create a color profile? I haven't come up on any good information. I tried taking a raw file and color matching to a film photo in similar lightening conditions, but I wasn't successful (probably my deficiencies).
Great topic. Keep going on!!
Light is amazing based on location. I miss the classic-chrome look of Tokyo or the sunsets of Florida. Thank you for the video, now I want to get back and do more studies in light and what emotions I can generate. Do you know of any books, similar to swatch sheets that would go into color for travel photography?
Would definitely love to hear more on this topic and your potential collaboration with your photographer friend sounds right up my street. Also curious to know what you think of the ‘Fuji X Weekly’ recipes as highlighted elsewhere on this comment stream. I have used a few of them and I find them interesting. You noted that Provia/Astia are different to the actual film stock you used. Never having used film, I’d be really interested in your thoughts on how the Fujifilm legacy film stock compared to these digital recipes. Oh, and I’ve always been a big fan of Mr Haas too. He’s pretty damn special.
Would love to see your process. I’m learning to create my own colour looks in Lightroom, using colour theory, whereas before I was using presets and tweaking from there. Love your vids. PS: you need some pics hanging on your wall. 😉
Ted, love your channel (I really do), but this could be a podcast!! This video (underline video) is entitled "Controlling Color in Photography". Pace your Followers who might have problems seeing colours but I'd love it if you could show us a bit more what you are talking about rather than just talking about it.
Ted this is something I have thought about a number of times, but I don’t have the experience or broad depth of film stock knowledge to do this. I never really used Kodak film, but did use Fuji film Velvia, Superia and Provia around 15-20 years ago, along with Ilford HP 5 for black and white.
It would be great to be able to replicate that aesthetic on modern day digital raw files. So I would be very interested in this project.
That would be very interesting. I love Kodak Portra and still shoot with it.
I have tried Portra presets in Lightroom for my digital photos and they don't even come close to my analog images.
Check out the Mastin Labs presets/ styles! I'm using them on Capture One and very happy with them.
So we don't have cameras that record the universe's largest color space out there in sophisticated gradation. That means a photo is a reduction or abstraction of reality. And how the abstraction is made, what choices are in there, determines how we perceive color character. That is precisely the secret sauce of film photography. In 1980, I would take Kodachrome 25 to Africa and it would give the best colors of the Masai region and its people. Excellent browns, reds, yellows and even whites with great contrast. Some of Asia's rice fields (farms) would do best in Fujichrome that I fount to green elsewhere. No doubt many Japanese landscapes would have done excellent in that Fujichrome. Product photography in the studio? Ektachrome Professional large format. Crazy saturated prints in color from positive film on Cibachrome.
Kodacolor (color negative film) actually had very good Caucasian and African skin tones. Color negative film may have had a wide dynamic range but it needed to be printed on paper and the paper only got to 4 f-stops dynamic range. It was possible to print a hard or wide contrast negative on soft or hard paper but the paper did not get beyond 4.
Note that Kodachrome (color positive) actually was a three layer black and white emulsion that was processed as a panchromatic black and white film first. This was followed by baths for color couplers and color pigments or dyes to be infused into the film in places where no silver was present. In the B&W processing, the unexposed silver had been washed out and after the color "filling" of the three separate payers, the developed silver was also washed out.
This gave extremely dense and deep colors and an illusion of sharpness, maybe, to a point that some people felt that Kodachrome (only in 35mm confection) was better than medium format. Some photographers made their test shots with a Hasselblad on a Polaroid back and then shot the real thing with a Leica or Nikon on Kodachrome.
I'm not sure that film did so bad in dynamic range. That may be an urban legend.
We tested film, measuring density (blackness or grey level) as a function of log i*t. Note that here, the "log" is 10 base. And the i is for intensity of light with the t for exposure time.
The "4" or "5" pertained to the 10-base-log dynamic range - the comparison with f-stops is simple: with a 10-base log value of 5, we get 100,000 for i*t and in f-stops we have to go to 2-base log where 100,000 is between 16 and 17 (so we are talking about over 16 f-stops for i*t).
The debate about "usable" dynamic range lurks, and we can simply say that the usable piece was generally 4.5 which gets us to about 14 f-stops. Now note that the nonlinear shoulders in that sensitometry or densitometry curve could be straightened digitally after a very good scan and you are back to the 5.
Several Lightroom color packages or plugins exist that try to mimic old film. I cannot say I have seen one that made me think, "yes, this is what it was in 1973 or 1980".
As to differences between cameras, we look at our raw shots through something called "raw processing" that is depicted on a monitor/display. Raw processing is basically a mathematically repeatable way of wild-assed guessing RGB pixels from 14 or 16 bit deep photosite data and the result is less than 27 bit deep RGB pixels (better said, R
Kodak portra. And black and white film of course has its differences between film types too. I'm constantly trying to emulate ilford delta
Colour should be Subjective. I miss the variations of film.
Except as a product photog accuracy is essential.
LED lighting can have hole in its colour spectrum.
I've gone back to stobes because of LED colour problems...
Mastin Labs makes some fantastic film emulations some styles (im a Capture one user) that will even give you some of the push pull options from film shooting.
I would ABSOLUTLEY love to see your interpretation of film emulation presets. And, Dude, you need furniture.
This idea of individual interpretation and perception is actually an incredibly profound concept that extends beyond the considerations of visible spectrums of light. I wish I could remember what the psychological term for this level of reasoning was. I think what you are saying is 100% valid but if we could reproduce what we see, even our interperitation, if it was accurate enough to closely resemble what was there, others should be able to see what they would see still. Did that Male sense out side my head?.... to be honest I am only 3 minutes into your video and already off on a tangent. I will be quiet now and return to the video. 🤐
In the old days, artist's goals were to imitate nature, maybe ''Mimesis'' was the normal trend. Nowadays living in big cities, spending our time in front of computers, and not experiencing nature in full glory made us interiorize even more. So my point is that we don't need to talk about colour accuracy anymore, we don't try to reproduce a scene 100% because by the time the raw files reach the hard drive, and by the time we start colour grading our emotional state changes, therefore the output is in close relation with another state of mind.
First I want to tell you that I respect your videos that I consider very educational and correct, I am a humble follower of yours for a long time until today I have never wanted to give an opinion for reasons that I am an enthusiast, I think, that I have advanced in photography, but today I answer this Video that is not well said, in itself, in the matter of color, there have been three great scientists who solved this, but as indicated and should be, to learn, you have to go to school or educate yourself through studies. To see the color you have to educate your eyes, that is the purpose of the teacher in an art school. Let me explain something here, for the eyes of man there were only 5 colors, until 1704 when it was discovered by Sir Isaac Newton that there were many more, getting to see 7 in the spectrum of light using a quartz crystal, then 12 and then 14 colors in the spectrum of light, he deduced the first theory of 24 colors, between primaries and 2 neutrals and to these he gave their values between primary, secondary, tertiary and neutral, but this took him to educate his vision, we all see the range of the spectrum of light but we do not interpret it until we are educated. The other scientist who worked with Electromagnetic Spectrum was Sir William Herschel and who also saw those colors of the rainbow as Sir Isaac Newton said, and finally the most brilliant one who educated his eyes with these before his name was Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. The latter, who we could call scientific for his contribution to the arts, sciences, and letters, educated us all in the colors of light and to find them in pigments and ways of using them, etc., but by visual education, consequently we all have the gift but you have to educate your eyes.
Ted talks about actual art, instant thumbs up after 2 seconds 👍
Film simulation is something I have thought a lot about lately. So, yes please - let's hear more about your thoughts and your project.
We may be approaching peak camera, but in no way are we approaching peak color. It will be fascinating to see what the next 15 years bring to the table.
Check out Dehancer. It’s a tool for Lightroom and Davinchi (?? Not sure, not really that familiar with it), I think it does something you are talking about in the video - emulates film colors in digital stills and clips - not just like Lightroom presets, but deeper, like color science, real deep stuff. The guys who do it are super technical about studying film colors and everything, maybe that’s what you’re looking for.
Better go buy those books before they fully sell out to Ted's audience :D
new york book is readily available on ebay
color correction has been discontinued , and is retailing for over $400
No. 1 thing everyone needs to understand is that no matter how much color you change on a digital picture, it will never ever look like a good film shot. Infact the more you change color, the more digital it will look. It involves the right amount of contrast, shadows, the right amount of sharpness without being crunchy, and perfect grain. That shine we get on film, shot with a strobe, for example, can never ever be replicated on digital. Well, unless you know certain tricks while shooting, retouching, and preparing the file for print. Once all of this stuff is taken care of, the color will fall into its own place. And we wouldn't have to worry about it. Good -ve film needs to be exposed for shadows, as it is extremely hard to over-expose highlights. Contrary to digital, which is exactly the opposite. Therein lies all of the differences. Finally, retouching is NOT a concept of computers. Photo manipulation and retouching has been happening since the 70s. And they called it 'photo manipulation and retouching' in the publishing world. Nonetheless, good video Ted. You certainly hit on a few clutch points there.
It seems to me like trying to emulate the looks of certain filmstocks is kinda taking things backwards, it only works because there is nostalgia from those who used those filmstocks, but there is nothing inherent about them. As you say, it's just a chemical process that was tuned for relatively arbitrary subjective perceptions. Color science is thrown around a lot, but it's a little bit of a fig-leaf. Sure, having the camera manufacturer give you "looks like in real life" (+- picture control) is nice, because it reduces work for a lot of shots. But if you look at the movie industry which is currently in the process of moving towards physical representations (scene-referred) with things like ACES, that is much more interesting. If the quantities in an image file are an accurate representation of physical quantities, then you can apply the same color grades to those files, regardless of which camera generated them, and get the same look; so you can mix cameras and sensors freely without this being visible in the final product. Well, that's the idea at least.
ACES does embody another really important idea, which is the separation of objective and subjective layers. We are trying to produce content (be it pictures or movies) which are received and seen a certain way. Using a basal objective layer makes this much easier. That layer is color management, so calibrated devices, retaining color space information and using tools which are color-space aware and use accurate libraries and tools to manipulate and transform colors. Then on top of that objective layer, the subjective work can be established.