Its a long shot but can anyone identify a film from a photo ?

Ok so i follow a number of blogs that are oh so hipster and they post photos like this
http://26.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lr...i5z0o1_500.jpg

And there are several other with the same soft perfectly lit slightly blue but still warm photos.

As much as i LOVE old cameras with normal film giving perfect results im intrigued as to how this is achieved ??

so is this a special film, a special developer or toner, a printing process or is it as simple as a photoshop filter/action ??

any insight would be hugely appreciated

Thanks
Samuel

Well the #1 clue we'd use is the colour neutrality / white balance, but that is something that people tend to change automatically when they scan a neg or slide or print... so this is not easy.

But offhand I'd say this is quite possibly a daylight-balanced slide film. Notice how the areas illuminated by the incandescents are warm, whereas the daylight areas look more neutral, and the highlight transitions are quite fast and the shadows quite deep. So I'll say it's some standard slide film.

With a modern color neg film like the fuji 160s you'd not see so much of a warm/could contrast and you'd have probably preserved all the highlights and also more shadow detail.

And yes, there are PS filters, such as the AlienSkin package, that emulate this look. And you can also diddle with a scanner to get this look from neg film. But it's no fun!

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Originally Posted by keithwms

But offhand I'd say this is quite possibly a daylight-balanced slide film. Notice how the areas illuminated by the incandescents are warm, whereas the daylight areas look more neutral, and the highlight transitions are quite fast and the shadows quite deep. So I'll say it's some standard slide film.

With a modern color neg film like the fuji 160s you'd not see so much of a warm/could contrast and you'd have probably preserved all the highlights and also more shadow detail.

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That's a good guess. I'd just like to say that the Lomo crowd doesn't necessarily a) expose their film correctly and b) post-process their scans in photoshop/whatever correctly. Not only do they not do those things all the time, they seem to revel in the imperfections that result. Which complicates things a bit.

I was thinking as i looked at it that it reeked of slide film :) i have expirience with provia/velvia and there is something about it very slidey :)

thanks so much for your input
Samuel

I would have said Ektar 100 because of the blue, maybe pushed a little to avoid blur and then adjusted in post digitally. If I had to pick a slide film it would be Elite Chrome 400, but the grain tends to be a bit large in that film. E100G gives that look as well, but not under that lighting.

That looks to me like an R print from older Ektachrome.

Are we certain that this is film?

I downloaded the file and looked at the metadata and there is a IPTC Content, description of "SONY DSC". Could this be a digi shot?

Sorry to speculate, maybe Sony makes scanners and that is how that bit of info got attached to the image?

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Originally Posted by zsas

Could this be a digi shot?

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Yes. Absolutely.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by zsas

Sorry to speculate, maybe Sony makes scanners and that is how that bit of info got attached to the image?

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I don't think that's it. Not to promote digital or to argue that it is as good as slide, but, again: the Alienskin software will generate a very similar look from a digital file. The software folks cleverly collected the curves from all the popular films and used them to generate PS effects that emulate film responses. Look here. It's all the rage. I have seen shots from cellphones that look like film, so to speak. There are many other software packages that will do similar things.

The reason for the meta data could be that the original source file was digital.

To keep this from going into one of those analog v digi threads, to the OP, how about you rephrase the original question to something like "I like the look of the below photograph and would like to shoot film to look like the below image, regardless if the below image was shot on film or digital"

Quote:

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Originally Posted by zsas

To keep this from going into one of those analog v digi threads, to the OP, how about you rephrase the original question to something like "I like the look of the below photograph and would like to shoot film to look like the below image, regardless if the below image was shot on film or digital"

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...which is what I answered in my first post :)

Slide.