Just curious, which color film simulation is your favorite? What are the characteristics of that simulation that you like over other film simulations? TIA
I shoot raw with Velvia or Acros selected as a film simulation then edit to taste in Lightroom. I do not do recipes. I shot film back in the 70's as a kid and in college in the 80's on until I moved to digital in 2005. I lived though those eras and don't need to see images with colors that look like cheep prints from film that were left in the sun for 20 years to fade.
Classic Chrome, Velvia and Arcos. Velvia slide film was my favorite back in the 1990's for a couple of decades.
For an upcoming cruise ship trip in September to Mexican Pacific ports, I have loaded the Pacific Blue simulation to try out. Our small group of photogs and models has 3 half-day beach shoot scheduled.
Most of the time I shoot raw only and process using darktable. Since that gives me a more neutral starting point, I tend to use Pro Neg Hi, Reala Ace, or Provia to get a rough idea of what my starting point will look like. Some of the other film sims (e.g., Classic Neg) can be fun but they aren't exactly neutral.
You didn't ask about black and white, but I'll answer anyway: Acros with yellow filter. I always shoot that with raw + JPG and usually just keep the JPG without doing any editing.
I know a lot of people dunk on Velvia for being oversaturated to the point of inaccuracy, but I love it for landscapes, particularly on the GFX cameras.
So happy to see many using Velvia compared to the endless classic chrome on Reddit, etc., keep rich colors alive that actually look like film!
For me it’s velvia for color and acros + ye for b&w, shooting raw and editing in Lightroom, s curves, hsl, color grading, etc. My only complaint with velvia is sometimes the greens are too green and can’t be corrected.
For me it is Nostalgic Negative, Pro Neg Hi, or Classic Chrome... but none without some tweaks. They are simply a base layer, or a crumb layer on a cake.
Might I add a theory that one should match the film simulation to their climate, ex. live in the tropics a more saturated velvia might be better, in the desert, more muted film sim classic chrome potentially
I dislike all of them, but I use Nostalgic negative as a base where I then shift blues away from the awful cyan/green cast (that is in all the simulations) towards purple. It's also the only simulation where in-camera auto WB is useful, since the simulation is overly "warm" and the GFX auto WB is ice cold (4500 K in daylight, which is 1000 K too low).
No matter what I do, I can't see any similarities to film though.
JPG's are actually a little less bad when it comes to colors, but it gets useless because of inaccurate WB that is all over the place but mostly extremely cold (and if you correct for that, you will occasionally get random super warm WB instead). I'd love to be able to shoot JPG, but I can't without functioning auto WB.
FramesPerSecond wrote:
Might I add a theory that one should match the film simulation to their climate, ex. live in the tropics a more saturated velvia might be better, in the desert, more muted film sim classic chrome potentially
Yes, that is a good point. I definitely preferred Classic Neg when out in the desert, though even that leans a bit too pink in the whites.
