Transcripts
1. Introduction: Hi everyone and welcome. My name is Martin. I'm a film director, screenwriter, and photographer
from Berlin, Germany. I have been obsessed with
images for the past 20 years, ever since my dad gave me this, my first analog SLR camera. My passion for photography
has led me into filmmaking. It inspired me to
move countries and to go to film school and
pursuit of my dreams. In a lot of ways. It has really opened my eyes
to the world around me. And it has made me
a better person, and it has made me the
person that I am today. In this course. I worked for the
first time ever, share all of my
experience and know-how. You will learn from my mistakes so you don't have
to repeat them. I will try to
inspire you to take your film photography
to the next level. My approaches to offer you a condensed yet
comprehensive overview to really get you going. A ton of information out there. And it can seem quite
overwhelming and daunting to even get started
in analog photography, I will offer you this
information packaged into five concise lessons, highlighting different
steps off taking, developing, and
presenting films, images. Please join me on this journey. There's a lot of
information to get through. Without further ado. Let's begin.
2. Why you should shoot film: Welcome to lesson one. This is where introduce you
to some preliminary thoughts and concepts so that you can navigate the rest
of the classes. What is film photography? Let's start at the beginning. Well put simply, it is the
process of capturing images on photographic film coated with light-sensitive chemicals
dispersed inside and emulsion, which sits on top of the film. These rows, strips and sheets of film thereafter developed in specific liquid
chemicals yielding negative or positive
photographs. That's it. And it has not
fundamentally changed for, well, almost a 100 years. In the past. Of course, there were
obviously no computers or digital processes
involved in this at all. It was a purely analog workflow. However, with the advent
of digital photography in the 1990's and computers
somewhat earlier, all of this changed. When you shoot film today. You have one leg in the
past and one in the ever accelerating present
of imaging technology. You add once, partaking in a
heritage that enables you to really understand
where the medium comes from and what its
foundations are. But you are also kind of
forced today in 2022 to translate this
heritage into modern, contemporary contexts. This is what this course is
trying to help you achieve. This actually brings
us into the present, the hybrid workflow, whether you've called
it that are not. The likelihood is that
if you shoot film today, you are partaking
in this process. Some people just are
not quite aware of it, or they are used to it, or they never even
really questioned it. But to some extent or another, we are probably all using
a hybrid workflow already. In my opinion, it's
better to become conscious of it and
take charge of it. Put simply, the hybrid workflow just means the combination of digital and analog techniques in order to obtain
our final images. That's it. It really isn't rocket science until you start getting into
the details of it. So we will look
in this course at the four distinct stages
of the hybrid workflow. They are step one, exposure, step to
development or processing. Step three, scanning and
step for presentation. You may ask yourself, why bother if I can just use a digital camera and see
my result instantly? I can react to mistakes I make. Yeah, depths kind of true. But many creatives are still absolutely committed
to shooting film. Why is that? In my opinion, the
challenge of it all simply makes you a
better photographer. It forces you to make informed
decisions along the way, with only 36 shots on a standard 35-millimeter roll of film and even less
than medium format. You will want to take
each exposure and image carefully
and deliberately. This can have a really
beneficial effect on your final result. Unlike shooting digital
where you may capture hundreds of pictures and have
to sort through them later. But there are also
other reasons besides practical ones for which you may want to shoot
film photography. And chief among them is the aesthetic quality
of the medium. The film look, we've
all heard of it. It offers something
you simply can't quite reproduce with
a digital camera. Offering excellent highlight
roll-off and latitude, natural and pleasing texture
and grain structure, as well as excellent, rich, flattering skin tones
that really offer a welcome antidote to the
extreme sharpness of digital. Imagine shooting an image of the sun using a digital
camera and an analog one. You would be quite astonished. The analog film
is able to handle this extreme brightness
much better. It can display many
shades of white. Before going into a pure white. A digital sensor will clip into such pure
white much earlier. This is something appreciated by image makers across the world, particularly also in
filmmaking and in cinema. The proximity of
analog photography to cinema is another advantage
to us photographers because it offers
us an entry into an aesthetic universe cherished by Hollywood filmmakers
to the state. Even nowadays, the
best GPS in the world, the best image
makers in the world choose to shoot their
movies on celluloid. Why is this isn't
just pure nostalgia? Know, I'm convinced it isn't. It is precisely this film
look that we just discussed, even until the 2000s, companies such as
Fuji and codec, we're researching and developing their film stocks
and improving them constantly in order to keep
up with digital photography. That means that today
you have access to the best film
stocks available ever. It's super exciting
in my opinion. And remember, codec continues
to produce motion picture as well as still image film
stocks until this day. I would say analog photography
as well as cinematography, are alive and well in
2022 and for good reason. Now, a final word on a somewhat romantic idea about film photography that you
may have encountered. You often hear that
film images should be kind of blurry, out-of-focus, imperfect, full of dirt, dust and scratches.
You get the picture. Well, yeah, if
that's your taste, go ahead and indulge in it. I think more power to you. But there's also really
no shame in chasing a kind of technical excellence with your analog photography. Often photographers focused on such technical excellence
are a little bit frowned upon for supposedly demystifying the creative process or
being too analytical. Just go out there and
shoot. Well, sure. But in my view, the more you know, the more you can appreciate
the beauty and in a way, the more the mystery
actually grows, the point where you
can say, that's it. I know everything is never gonna come at the end of the day, creativity also involves craft, and I hope to improve yours
in these next lessons. With these preliminary
thoughts out of the way, let's look at the four stages
of the hybrid workflow. Beginning with the
capturing of your images. Let's go.
3. Exposure: Hi and welcome to stage one of the hybrid workflow exposure. This is usually how it
starts an analog camera, an old camera given to you by your parents
or grandparents, or you found it in the attic or at a visit to
the flea market. This as well as a roll of film, is all you will need to get
started in film photography. Once you've loaded your
film into your camera, you're ready to take
your first pictures. In film photography terms, this is called
making an exposure. Why this terminology? Well, you are in fact exposing the chemicals within
the film to light. This exposure leads to a
so-called latent image. Latent image. It's like an egg that has to
be bred before it can hatch. In our case, the latent images
captured on the film roll have to be developed before you can obtain
your negatives. And just like an egg, latent images on film
are really fragile. Because film is not
only sensitive to light but also to other
physical influences. Chief among them are heat,
radiation, and humidity. This explains why film is often stored in refrigerators or even freezers to ensure as little degradation by heat
and light as possible. Now, let's properly talked
about capturing photographs. More specifically by discussing a crucial concept you may
have heard of it before. It's the dreaded
exposure triangle. The exposure triangle is
a simple model of how three principal values
determine the amount of light that reaches the
film or the digital sensor. The combination of
these values will yield a hopefully
correct exposure. The triangle applies to
all of photography and film-making to it consists of
three interrelated points. First, the aperture or
f-stop of your lens. Second, the ISO, or sensitivity
of your film or sensor. And three, the shutter speed. As I said, this
concept is valid for all forms of photography
and cinematography. So once you've grasped it, it's an extremely
powerful tool because in principle you will be able
to use any camera out there. Just be aware that it is at once deceptively simple and
yet deeply complex. It took me many, many years
to fully grasp it and also its effects and
implications on my images. However, I will give it a go. I will try to describe it in the most simple terms
that I can think of. Here goes, aperture
describes the size, the physical size of
the lens opening, and how much light is
able to pass through it. A large opening lets
through a lot of flight. A smaller opening let
through less light. Iso describes the sensitivity
to light of your films. Emotion and shutter speed finally describes the
duration of exposure. That's it. Here's some good news
in analog photography. The choice of film is made in advance once you
load your camera. Therefore, you really only need to consider the
other two values. Once you are out there shooting. We've talked about getting a correct exposure
using these variables. But how would you know? How would you know
a correct exposure and which values to dial in? Well, that is an
art and a science. And it is the point at which something like this
comes in handy. This is a light meter. Now, there are different
types of night beaters. There are reflective
light meters or incident light meters
such as this one. Both of these help you to determine the correct
exposure of your image. Incident light meters
such as this one, measures the light
that falls onto this semicircle here
called the lumen sphere. It measures all of the light hitting the points
on the surface. It has such a semi
spherical shape to resemble the typical
shape of the human head, which is why these are really popular in
portrait photography. You can measure the light at any physical point or location, but you should always point
the hemisphere towards your camera as this is where you will be taking
the image from. But as I said, the beauty of such devices
that you can measure. Different spots, different
parts of a room, for example, and get the correct exposure for the brightness at that
physical location. Again, remember to point the loony sphere
towards your camera. Now, many analog cameras, such as this one, contain
their own light meters. These are reflective
light meter systems. They measure the light that bounces off of the objects
that you are photographing. Rather than, as is the case
with an incident light meter, measuring the light falling
onto it at the location. Light meter apps for smartphones also use the reflective method. Now, both light meter types have their advantages
and disadvantages, but they also have
something in common. And that is that they
measure for middle gray. Now, you may have heard of this, but what the ****
is middle gray? Well, this means that
the light meters, both incident and reflective, always measure an exposure
that is correct for gray tone that reflects 18% of the visible
spectrum of light. Why 18%? Well, this
is down to science. 18% of reflection
in this case means about exactly
halfway between the darkest and the
brightest parts of an image is just to do with
our human visual perception. Hence the term middle gray. It means the halfway point between pure black
and pure white. The idea behind this
is that if you can correctly determine the
exposure for such a great tone, the other areas in your
photograph of brightness and darkness will also fall
into the correct place. Now it is middle gray. What about color photography? Well, in color,
there are shades of colors that you can
equate to middle grade. For example, the
deep blue color. The sky is very close and luminance and in reflective
quality to middle gray. This is also a
halfway color tone between pure black
and pure white. So even in color photography,
middle gray applies. And these slide
meters, of course, able to measure light for both black and white
and color photography. Sounds complicated. Well, it kind of is. But let's give you an example. This image you're
seeing right now, it's a digital image. But for sake of
explanation, it is useful. Let me show you what my
light meter indicate when I hold it here
close to my face. So I have already previously
dialed in my ISO, which is 800, which is the
Canon R5, ISO and LAG-3. Next, I have dealt in my 25 frames per second
and my shutter speed, which corresponds of
a 50th of a second. Now, the light meter indicates an aperture of f four or f 3.5, depending where I pointed. So I will know that
at this point, our middle gray
would be correctly exposed at these settings of F4, ISO 850th of a second. However, in this case, I actually want to expose
correctly for my skin type. And so my skin color, which is quite bright, it's brighter than
the middle gray. So I will take this exposure
of F4 and I will here again, we have the four confirmation
in front of my face. And instead of using a four, I will use exactly one
stop more of light for correct exposure of my skin tone because it is brighter
than middle gray. I have exposed this image
at ISO 850th of a second, Twenty-five frames
per second at F 2.8. And this gives me the exposure that you
are seeing right now. A little bit of
guesswork on my site, adding one stop of light. But I hope this illustrated to you the concept of
middle gray measurement. However, if you can't splash the extra cash for
such a light meter, there's a little trick
I can share with you. You could use a
reflective light meters such as the one in this camera
or even a smartphone app, and simply pointed
directly at your skin. Like this, what would happen? The entire frame is now
filled by your skin. The camera only gets
to measure the light reflected from your
skin. In this case. With this method,
you can kind of trick and cheat the system and upset obtain accurate
skin tone measurement. Again, the camera will also
measure for middle gray. If I were to point this
exactly at my face, I would have a middle
gray measurement for this part of the image. I would then simply have to add one stop of light because I want it to be brighter than
middle gray for my skin. Lastly, let's look at a general recommendation that is sometimes read
on the Internet. This is the idea that you
should always overexpose your film images as a standard practice by
as much as two stops. Well, I can tell
you this doesn't really match with my experience. While some films may
benefit from overexposure, I would not recommend
this without first expect experimenting a little bit and doing your own tests. I will be doing a detailed
course in the future on specific film families and how they respond to
over and underexposure. So stay tuned for that. Of course, the films performance also always depends heavily
on the development. This leads us to
our next lesson, breeding, hatching,
our latent images. Let's get going.
4. Development: Welcome to step two of
the hybrid workflow, developing your film images. First, a little disclaimer. I am currently not developing
my own film at home. And my intention here is not to give you the exact recipes, developing times and so on. My aim is rather to give you an overview of what matters
most in development. But obviously there's
plenty of information out there if you want to get stuck in with self-development
at home. However, the more
conventional way remains giving you expose films to a lab to carry out
this step for you. The development
technique used is dependent on your specific film. There are different
processes that require different steps and also
different chemicals. The most common processes are the ones that I have here
with me on the light table. They are first C41 color
negative processing. You've probably seen
such a filmstrip before. They are kind of orange. Yeah. You've seen them
before because most of our childhood pictures were taken on these types of films. It's a real classic. Next,
we have black and white. As you can see, the
film strips are kind of purple, grayish in color. These are true
monochromatic films. Here, there's a huge variety of different developing
chemicals that you can use. They can be diluted or
concentrated to alter the final contrast and
also grain of your images. It's quite incredible because the exact same film can have a totally different
appearance depending on which black and white
developer was used, its wealth worth
exploring width. And if you develop with a lab, I would recommend that you ask them which developer they use. Next, we have E6 films, or also known as
DR. Positive film. As you can see here. The film strip already contains all of the
color information. That's why it's a positive. It doesn't need to be inverted
or color process at all. It's a great choice
for OCD photographers, but it is also notoriously
difficult to expose. It is even trickier and more
expensive to scan well, and it has much
less dynamic range then color negative and
black and white film. There's also a process called
cross processing or X Pro. This is when chemicals used for C41 color negative
film are used to develop dear positives,
or vice versa. Chemicals for E6 used to
develop C41 pictures. This gives a very unique
and experimental look with highly skewed colors. Whether that's your taste, you have to find
out for yourself. Lastly, there's also a process
called ECN to development, which has become quite
popular recently. It stands for Eastman
color negative processing. And it comes from the
world of cinematography. It is really similar to C41, but it contains
some extra steps, which is also why not
every lab can simply develop ECN two if
they develop C41. So you'd have to check
these extra steps involved. For example, a pre bath which removes the black ram
jet layer on the film. The ram jet layer
on ECN two films is a layer at the back of
the films emotion that reduces reflections
relations and also the buildup of static
motion picture film stocks. These ECN two films offer a slightly flatter contrast because they are meant
for color grading. And also final grain then C41. And they also come
Color Balanced for tungsten artificial lights, which is really useful. To be honest, you should
definitely give this a try. Now, the actual
development process consists of various
different stages. It has to be carried out
in complete darkness. It can be done
either by hand or by large machines that carry
out the steps automatically. Water, as well as chemical
temperatures have to remain stable and constant throughout the process
to achieve best results. The chemicals should also
be fresh in order to really achieve excellent
images with them. Unfortunately, these chemicals
go bad quite quickly. So the process may
appear straightforward, but it actually
involves quite a lot of mastery to get a really, really well-developed
image out of it. Now, as you can see
from my light table, they are not only different
types of film that require different
development techniques, but also different film formats. We've spoken initially
about 35-millimeter film, which is up in the right corner, which is actually 36
by 24 millimeters, with an aspect ratio
of three by two. But there are also
larger formats, chief among them,
the medium format. All of these other types of
negatives and positives. You can see here
our medium format. Medium format films
are known as 120. The common medium formats are
here right in front of you. There's six by 4.5
centimeters down in the right corner with an
aspect ratio of four by three. There's six by six, which is a square aspect
ratio of one-to-one. There's six or seven
in the top left corner with an aspect ratio of
roughly four by five, or one to 1.2. Now there are also six by 86
by nine cameras out there, but they are a
little less common. For all of these
medium format cameras, you can load the same 120 films. The only difference will be how many exposures you get
out of the single goal. Why is this? Well, it's because one side of the image lens always
remains the same. Six centimeters. Take a look. If I stack them on
top of one another, you can see that the medium format films all have the same width of
six centimeters. So that is why 120
films can be loaded in a variety of different
medium format cameras. Now, this six centimeters
is actually somewhat closer to 56 millimeters
in actual width. Once you subtract the border and arrive at the
exact image area is closer to 56 millimeters, but that's the kind
of technicality. And it depends a little bit
on your particular camera. Any format that is larger than medium format is known
as large format films. These are actually
single sheets of film and they range
from around ten by 13 centimeters up to 20 by
25 centimeters in size. Pretty much the size of this entire light table that
you see in front of you. They are huge. Anything even
larger than that is considered ultra large format. To develop these medium
and large format images, you need bigger
tanks and containers to hold the larger
sized pieces of film. That's why development for medium format and
large format has to be realized with
different equipment to 35-millimeter development. We've spoken in our
previous lesson about exposing film correctly. Let's look a little more
closely at a film strip and how development and
exposure go hand in hand. I selected three negatives for you here to illustrate this. One is correctly exposed, one is underexposed, and one is perhaps slightly overexposed. Can you guess which is which? Well, let me help you out. You may assume that
the darkest one here is in fact the
underexposed one. But this is not the case. In fact, the darkest image here, the darkest negative, has been
exposed to the most light. That's why it would
appear as the brightest once it is inverted
digitally or printed, inversion means that dark becomes bright and
bright becomes dark. If you keep this in mind, you'll be able to judge
the exposure of a negative simply by looking
at it on a light table. I recommend that you get
yourself one of these, a magnifying device so
that you can also judge the sharpness and fine
details of your negative. Let me show you
this negative strip slightly closer to camera. You can get an idea of what
it looks like up close. So as you can see,
the brightest image, which is the underexposed one, is quite transparent and
lets through a lot of light. The darkest one, which
is the most exposed one. Let's send less light. You can still see my fingers
silhouette obviously, but it is noticeably different. And the one in the middle is a sort of halfway
point between them. So here again, you have
underexposure, correct? Exposure and slide overexposure. Just note that we film, it's quite hard to actually really overexposed, expose it. Even this negative is perfectly fine and can be
printed or scanned. Well, the dark one well, that is a little different. Underexposure is not the
best friend of your film. And you can actually see
that the film-based on the edge and the image are hard to distinguish
from one another. And that's a clue for you that there's some serious
underexposure happening here. Note how the correctly
exposed image in the middle has a kind of even
dispersion between dark and bright areas and a clear separation between the actual image and the
film-based around the edge. Unlike this one. Remember the film
border and base have not been exposed
to any light at all. So this area out here is
clear and when inverted, it will show up as pure black. In our last discussion
of light meters and exposure, the exposure triangle, I've mentioned that an analog, it is slightly simpler because the film speed is
chosen in advance, and hence we only have two
values to worry about. While this really does
simplify the process, it can also be a disadvantage. And that is if the light
situation suddenly changes or it no longer
matches what you anticipated. In such a situation, you
have the wrong film loaded, but you'll have a way out. This is called pushing
or pulling your film. What this means is that you are exposing the film
at a different ISO. Then it is actually rated at. And then later in development, you develop it either
longer or shorter. To compensate for this
incorrect exposure. Let's say you've picked an ISO 100 film because you
thought the sun would be out, you arrive at the
scene and now instead, it's really overcast
and it starts to rain. But you still want
to take photographs. You can now set your ISO
rating on your light meter or your camera to ISO
400 and chewed away. What if you've done, well, the difference between either one hundred and four hundred
is two stops of light. You have now effectively underexposed your
film by two stops. When you drop it off at the lab. You know, ask them
to push the film. Two stops in development to compensate for this
underexposure, it simply means actually
that the film is left inside the developing
chemicals longer. And thus it compensates for the lack of exposure
that was there. You have, again, in
practice underexposed to film and you are now over
developing it to compensate. Voila. You will still have usable
correctly exposed images. Pulling it's the same concept, but vice versa with overexposure during capturing and
under-development later. Now, I've said you will have usable and perfectly
exposed results. It's true, but there are
some caveats. Just beware. Pushing increases green and it can cause, unfortunately,
color shifts. While pulling reduces contrast. Generally, black and white
film pushes and pulls better because there are no
colors that could get skewed. So the only penalty is an increase in grain or
a decrease in contrast. Now, let's wrap
this lesson up with my top three recommendations
for the development stage. First, go for
quality over price. When choosing a lab. Your lab should be able to deliver scratch and
stay pain-free. Properly developed
negatives consistently. Film, It's like anything. You get what you paid for. Don't just opt for
the cheapest option. Larger commercial labs can only offer cheap prices because they developed zooms in huge batches with a
one fits all approach. Now this is maybe fine
for certain images. But for critical ones, you really want
the best results. These labs will use also the same developing
chemicals and times. Regardless of your
particular film emulsion, you simply won't get the
best performance out of the incredibly
high-tech film stocks that exists out there
using such techniques. So a poorly processed
image is a bit of a shame. My second tip is try as many films and techniques
as you wish and can, but strive for consistency
down the road. I mean, all the options
out there are super exciting and I've been there,
I've tried everything. But they will probably come a time when you will want to kind of streamline and focus your aesthetic approach
to truly master it. I sometimes wish
when I look back to images I took ten years
ago that I've taken them on simply the
same film stock to have some
consistency in my work. My advice is get to know
a particular stock, invest in it, get to know it intimately and you will
reap the benefits. My third tip, my
last one is simple. Develop your film quickly
after shooting it, scan it, or have it scanned immediately
after development, and then store it properly. This means in a cool, dry, dark environment that is dust free because you
simply never know. Some of those negatives
may turn out to be extremely valuable to
you in the future, whether for monetary, business
reasons or personal ones. So treat them well. Now, let's move on to the next stage where the hybrid workflow
really comes into effect. And that is scanning.
5. Scanning: Let's look at the topic of
scanning your film images. This is a crucial stage
in the hybrid workflow, the scanning or digitizing of your negatives and positives. This is the moment where the physical object
you've created, such as this filmstrip, these positives are translated into ones and zeros into
pixels on a screen. There are three main methods
of scanning your film. There is your traditional
flatbed scanner, which contains a
light source and a small sensor which runs
across the scanning area. Reading the brightness and
color values of the object you are scanning and
converting it into pixels. Next, they are professional
drum scanners, which use a similar technique, but with much, much
more sophistication. These were specifically created
to digitize film images. They are still around, but they are expensive, difficult to maintain, and nowadays poorly supported
on the software side. But especially for medium and
large format photography, they still represent the absolute gold
standard of scanning. Lastly, a more recent trend, and that is the advent of ever-more resolving
digital cameras. And using these to effectively
photograph your negatives. This method involves
also a light source, such as the simple
light table here, as well as a highly
resolving digital camera and a macro lens. You will basically photograph these film strips or top or light source
using a macro lens. That's really all
there is to it. It sounds simple,
but in practice, it's quite tricky to do. In my opinion, however, this method is probably the
most feasible option for 90% of photographers out there who may already
have a digital camera. It also gets extremely close to the results obtainable
with a drum scanner, particularly for sharpness and particularly
for 35-millimeter. This technique is super
exciting and that's why we'll discuss it in more
detail in this lesson. And I'll also be showing you
some examples of actually converting those images in
Lightroom or Photoshop. Because the photo you take will simply be a photo
of the negative. So it still needs
to be inverted. As fifth development may be tempting to just let
the lab scan your film. Yeah, sure why not. But just as with development, there are also some caveats. As far as I can tell. They are also again, three downsides to lab scanning that can be avoided
with a setup at home. First, a lab usually does
not scan your full negative. The scans that you receive
are heavily cropped so that sometimes you only see about
90 to ninety-five percent of the actual image. You don't see the film border. For example. The beauty of film
is that you can even see the emulsion
responding to light. And this effect is
particularly evident at the edge of the
negative frame. Take a look here. At the corner of the image, you see a clear demarcation
to the film base. This is one of the beauties of analog photography and
only a full negative scan can show you this. And this is also the reason why full negative scanning
has become a huge trend. You can appreciate
the black border running around your frame. And you can also read, depending how large you
capture the film type, the manufacturer, and
rebate of your film stock. You can even go so
far as incorporating the sprocket holes
that are used to hold the film in place
inside your camera, which are these holes
here, these perforations. And also scan them, digitize them as well. That looks amazing and it has become a real trend to show the true like analog heritage
of your photographs. This you won't get
from a lab or at least not from a regular
commercial lab. The second reason to avoid lab scans is really their
lack of resolution. You will usually receive
a poor representation of your film and also of your
lenses actual sharpness. By virtue of just receiving
a low-quality batch scan. Often it will be a JPEG
heavily compressed. You may even think
the film or the lens you've used is not
particularly sharp, or that the grain is
mushy and smeared. But you should consider
that this may simply be down to a lack of
quality in scanning. Good macro lens digitized
digitization setup or a drum scan can show you the exact fine texture and surface characteristic of
your particular film stocks. Green analog is well
able of resolving. Even find textures and structures such as
individual hairs. You just have to use the right film stock and
the right development. The last reason to avoid lab scans is really
important too. And that is that the
interpretation of your negative in conversion involves
making aesthetic choices. Choices on contrast, choices on color, temperature,
and saturation. So whoever makes the scan decides the final
look of your image, if you're really serious
about your photography, it's likely that you will want to have a word
in this process. You know, that's just
kind of obvious, right? Unless you find a lab that
offers you something that you are perfectly happy
with, that's fine too. But just remember, a negative
always has to be inverted. There's no escaping
these creative choices. Unless you shoot positive film. This is the inversion pipeline we are now going to
look at in detail. Let's jump onto my
computer and get started. Alright, I will show
you three methods of converting an inverting
your DSLR scans. Let's start with
the most common, which involves a plugin
called negative lab Pro. Maybe you've heard of it before. It's a simple plug-in
for Lightroom, which allows you to batch convert larger amounts of scans. And it does so in both black
and white as well as color, which is really useful. Negative flat Pro has become
very popular because again, it just simplifies the process and it gets the
colors quite right. Most of the time. We've already
imported our film and we will jump here into the development tab
to the first image. The first step I always take is to white balance
off of the border. Why? Because maybe you
can see the whole image has a slight purple, blue tint to it. Now after white balancing
that tint is gone. And I will synchronize
all of the images so that they all have a
more neutral appearance. Obviously, the plugin will know that we are working on a
black and white picture. It will do that also
automatically and realize that color
information can be discarded. So here you can see my
sources, a digital camera. The column model is
black and white, which again means that the program subtract all
of the color information. Pre saturation, I leave a default border buffer
is five per cent, which is this film border
which runs around. And five per cent buffer means that the
program doesn't take it into account when
calculating the conversion. So now this would take a second, and I will speak to you when
this step is completed. Alright, so here we are. All of our negatives
were converted now by negative lab
pro in a batch. You now have a whole bunch of options here that you
can play around with, which will affect the
look of your conversion. This is more relevant and more
fiddly once you do color. But in general, you know those initial
results that you see here are pretty decent. You can also set the
sharpening down here, which has some presets built-in. There are also some
advanced settings for the behavior of the program, the file management and so on. But for sake of demonstration, this is really all
there is to it. We now have a fully
converted film and all of the pictures
are looking good. As you can see. This is a bit bright, this is a bit dark. That depends on the exposure, on the initial state
of the negative. But the program, yeah, it doesn't really decent job of giving you a
batch conversion. And the quality is great too. As you can see here. From the DSLR scan. We have a decent
amount of sharpness. We can see the grain. These are even only
21 megapixel scans, so they are made with a 5D
Mark three, if I recall, my usual scanning
cameras or five TSR, which has more megapixels. But this is the first method of converting batch
converting your images. I use it frequently and I can recommend
the plug-in for sure. Again, you have
plenty of options. If you want to bring
again up the tweaking, you just hit Control
N once again. And there you have
your window to edit. Now, not everyone has Lightroom and not everyone has
negative lobe Pro, especially because
it costs something. But black and white
conversion can also be done in any other
image editing program, really on Mac, we have the native program called preview or four shell in German. And if I open the raw
file, it opens correctly. Now of course, it
would be nice if I could just simply invert the
whole thing with one click. But in preview, this
is not possible. However, we have the tools. The color correcting panel here. Now the first thing
that we need to do is we need to remove all
of the color information. Otherwise, our conversion
will have a tint. And I do this by just taking
out all of the saturation. You can see the program
asked me now to make duplicates as a tiff because
it's a Canon RAW file. I will do do so. Now I have a duplicate. You can see that this step
pretty much does the same as white balancing off of the border in case
of negative lab Pro. Now, we have removed the
color tint from this, and now we need to invert. How would you do so? Well, it's kind of weird
and counter-intuitive, but you have to invert
here these sliders. So I will take the
highlight slider, bring it all the way
to the darkest part, and I take the darkness and
slide to the brightest. Now you can see obviously
this is not looking good, but it is a positive. Now we have inverted
successfully. If I now bring this more into line with the information that
is actually there, meaning I tweak the
mid tones and I bring down the highlight
behavior and so on. We are approaching
a, I would say, sort of usable
positive inversion. Now, obviously this is
not looking as great as the negative flat Pro, but it is a decent
enough alternative way. And it is free. Black and white and
version can really be done with almost any program. And there's some latitude
here for me to play around with bringing these sliders
in line with one another. The highlights are causing
a bit of an issue here. But still, I think you can understand that if I bring
down the exposure here, it's starting to look okay. Once again, if you
don't have access to professional programs or I don't want to spend
money on a plugin. You do have the option of doing an inversion with your standard
image editing software. This works especially well
with black and white. However, color is a bit
of a different beast. And that's why I will show you a manual color conversion
using Photoshop. Now, if I drop this Canon
RAW file onto my Photoshop, it will first bring up The
Camera Raw, camera Raw plugin. I will now first bring the image into
the correct alignment, because at this point it is in fact horizontally inverted. So let's mirror the image. And there we are. This is now correct. I'm still doing
all of these steps in Camera Raw, by the way, because Camera Raw has access to the full information
present in that file. I don't want to lose
anything at all, which is why I will even
do some sharpening here in Camera Raw rather than doing it once the file is
actually opened. So as you can see, I've just flipped horizontally mirrored the image
to be correct. I will now still
repeat the step here. Taking the white balance picker off white balancing off
of the film border. You will see in a second why? First of all, note how
orange this image looks. And that is simply the color of the negative strip as you've
seen in the other lessons, that orange mask needs to be removed for us to get correct
colors once we invert. And removing this
orange mask again works by white balancing off
of the film border. You can see immediately
that it's more neutral. Now we have removed that
extreme orange cast and we have now sort of funky,
weird-looking negative image. But once we invert it, it will look already
pretty good. Next step I do is I go into the detail sharpness panel and I usually ramp
this up to 60 to 80. Let's go with 80 to make the effect a little
bit more pronounced. Depends also a little
bit on your film. We won't go into all of the
fine details settings here. But these steps are essential. White balancing
off of the border, adding some sharpening. Lastly, you could make an automatic correction
for your lens. Here in this case it was a Canon EF 100
millimeter macro lens. So why not? Let's correct slightly. You can see it removes a bit of vignetting and a
bit of distortion. So I usually do that too. Now we are ready to open the image into Photoshop and
start working on the colors. And by the way, as you can see, this isn't 48 megapixel
scan with the five TSR. This is the full quality. We open. Now we are
inside Photoshop. Now there's a simple first step, and that is the command. And I command that you can use. Command i means invert. Boom, we've inverted. We now have a positive image. As you can see, it already
looks sort of flake reality, but it has a blue cast over it, maybe a green cast. The colors are not quite right. But we already have a positive image which
looks like reality. But of course we want
to get it right. Now. I'm not claiming that my
workflow is to perfect one, but I wanted to show
you how I do it. I work with going
into the command L, tone that collector and German, which is the
gradation correction, which opens up this panel. And you can either edit all three color channels
at the same time, red, green, and blue at once. Or you can edit them separately. Let's go into red. Now, as you can see here, the histogram shows nothing both in the dark and
the bright parts. We can throw away
that information. So we bring this slider
all the way up here. This slider all the
way up there too, where we begin to
have information. We do this on all three color
channels, green and blue. So we have now thrown out all of the parts of the image that contain no information
in the first place. Again, little bit of an
improvement, wouldn't you agree? We now have removed that blue sort of faint
casts that's over the image. But still I would say
the colors are not completely on point yet. We have now done
an important step. Let's go again into this panel. We can see now that there's information in the entire
range of the histogram, remember that it's an
inverted histogram. So this part here is actually the dark part and this
is the bright part. Let's tweak a little bit
further inside the channels. I would go into the
red channel and I will start working on the mid tones. Five slide a bit and add
some red into the mid tones. You can see that it nicely
cleans up these tones, the whites and the grace. This is before. This is after. These mid tones have really responded well
to a little bit of red. Let's see how they
respond to green tweaks. This is also something that
you experience more often. The green tweaking doesn't
need to be as extreme. But in this case, I
would say it benefits from removal of a bit of
green in the mid-tones. I've gone lower on
the mid tones and this gray has become more neutral in my
opinion, more correct. Now, let's go to bloom. Do we need to tweak the blue? Well, as you can see, if we remove blue, then green starts
getting predominant. If we bring in too much Bloom, we start to get into
a kind of magenta, but yet a little bit of extra
blue in the mid tones suits this image. I would say. Let's go so far as going to 1.1. You can always see here and the white part the best effect, as well as in the
gray at the bottom. But you can already see it
becomes a matter of taste now, maybe 1.1 is too
much. Let's go 1.05. So what have we done? We have removed a little bit
of gray in the mid tones. We've, Sorry, we've removed a bit of
green from the mid tones. We've added a bit of
blue into the mid tones, and we've added a
fair amount of red into the mid tones. There we go. Again, see that the
change from this to this. I'll show you zooming into
the image a little bit. Here. You see quite a lot of green in that gray part that we have removed nicely
with this step. I would say we are pretty
close to a quite usable image. The red tones maybe a
little bit desaturated. Maybe the whole image has
a little desaturated. So we can now start
to fine tune. I like to use the dynamic slider because it tends to boost those colors that
needed the most. Well, I've added 50 of
value in that panel. And it has boosted the
reds nicely. Again. I'll zoom in to show you. Take a look at this
yellow, this red. This is with the dynamic boost. And this is without
with, without width. Yeah, There you have it. That's a very simple
workflow of inverting your image manually
in Photoshop. A C41 conversion, which
many people dread doing it. But as you can see, it took me about five minutes
to get a really good point. And I highly
recommend if you have individual images
that you really, really care about and
that are really great, then do take this extra step
to manually convert them. Because if you leave this
to negative lab Pro, it will sort of give
you the colors that it thinks are correct, but they may not be
100% to your taste. It is well-worth learning this relatively simple
workflow here in Photoshop. And well, that wraps up the practical example
for this lesson, and it wraps up the
entire lesson as well. We have now taken successfully
the step of having a digital copy of our negative on our computer to
use for further presentation, for the processing
to print from or to simply share on a
website or social media.
6. Presentation: There we are. We have now successfully
digitized our net negatives. We are able to look
at our pictures on a computer or a
smartphone. What now? Well, for decades, the proof in the photography putting
was in the printing. And even today, printing your photographs as
something special. And it appeals to many
professionals and beginners alike. Myself, included. In this lesson, I'll take you through some of the
basics of this stage. However, let's not ignore or forget the topic of
digital presentation. Most likely, your
analog photos will find their way onto the Internet on your own website
or portfolio, or in a publication's website
or a client's website, or well, of course,
on social media. And really there's
no shame in that. I think this digital
trend has meant an incredible democratization
of the photographic art. Analog photography
is to be enjoyed by everyone when it comes
to actual printing, just as we film and
development choices, you can go a few
different rules. This will depend on
your intentions, on your film and on your budget. Most prints done by labs
are now hybrid prints, meaning that the image
pipeline may be digital, and yet the printing
pipeline may also involve some analog stages. This is certainly true of the first most common type
of photographic print, the so-called
C-type Photo Print. C stands for chromo,
chroma genic, meaning that a light
sensitive paper containing dyes and other
chemical components is exposed to light in a similar way to the negative
at the capturing stage. The exposed photo paper is
also then developed and fixed. C-type prints are true
photographic prints and they used to be done without any digital
processes at all. They have high
sharpness, digit colors, and our archival quality, meaning they will last decades. This is a particular
type of C-type print. This is a contact sheet. This was in fact
realized without any digital intermediary steps by a master printer
here in Germany. These are basically the
entire film strips that I've shot on this roll of film placed onto the
photosensitive paper, and hence developed with a
one fits all contrast ratio. These were used in
the past to give you an impression and an
overview of your film. And indeed they do. I can see all the 36 images
of my exposed film and I can judge which of these are
worthy of further attention. These contact sheets used to also be available for
color negative film, but unfortunately it
has become really rare. So strictly speaking,
this is not part of the hybrid workflow as this is a fully analog contact sheet. But it's a good illustration of how a seat type print
kind of appears. You can see a
certain glossiness. That classic vintage
photography print vibe. I think it's gorgeous
and I still get them with my film
from time to time. As I said, it gives me a perfect overview of
what I've captured. The next relevant printing
technique is the inkjet print. As the name suggests, it uses ink on regular paper rather than
being a photographic print. This means you don't require
a dark room or developing chemicals and you don't need to do the print and full
darkness either. You just need a decent
inkjet printer. However, these prints
tend to get photographs, perhaps a more
painterly quality, something you may like or don't. It's somewhat less sharp and legs the clarity
of a C print, but the quality of the printer and the ink place
also a huge role in your results and color accuracy here is very workflow dependent, meaning that your monitor needs to be
calibrated and so on. Inkjet prints are also called fine art prints because they are also used for
the reproduction of other types of graphical art. Besides photography. The inkjet print is
also a viable option. The last print that
I want to talk about is the fully
analog hand print. This is now found mostly in black and white photography and represents the highest
price as well as quality level in
photographic printing today. By retail type prints
such as this one, are realized with the use of high-quality cotton
based photo papers, which contain silver, bromide and halide and other chemicals. These prints display. Brilliant whites, blacks, and
are good for a 100 years. If framed, archived
and handled properly. Just as we have a
color C type print, it is possible to realize
a photographic print from capture to print without the help of any
digital processes. However, unfortunately,
there are only a few labs left who
still offer this because, well, the high prices
of raw materials, the great skill
required, and so on. It is simply not the most
economical printing option, but it is really
something special. I recommend that once in
your photographic life, you treat yourself to such a burrito print if you are crazy about
photography, like I am. Now, let me show
you a little bit how it looks up close
as you can see, I've removed the frame and I've now removed the mat board, replace it here to the side. And I've simply
glued the print to the backing paper using
an archival type tape. The print itself. Well, it pretty much looks like your average photographic print, but well, the beauty
is all in the paper. And in the method
of realization. Perhaps you can see the paper has like a structure
and a depth to it. This is because it
is a cotton paper. You really see that
kind of texture and organic quality of
the surface material. Let me come even closer to the camera so you can
get an impression. So I hope you liked this print. I hope you enjoyed that
I showed it to you. I just want to draw a
really quick parallel to the contact sheet. While I put this back together. See these frames are quite cool because you have the
mat board which just sandwiches the print
inside and one pro tip. As you can see here, there's the mat board between
the glass and the print. And that's really important. You never really want to have that print come into actual
contact with the glass. Why? Because overtime, that
will be humidity, heat, and so on, which will creep
into your frame. And this may lead, if
you're unfortunate, may lead to the paper
actually sticking to the glass and getting
damaged that way. So that's one of the reasons why these mat boards are introduced, because they are kind of like a placeholder that
creates a little bit of physical space and separation between your glass
and your print. That's something for
you to consider. Now, I have put
this back together, make sure that I don't
have any hair or dust locked in underneath. And I can put my
frame back together, which is magnetic frame, which is kind of
cool as you can see, it just comes back
together that way. That is your fully analog
buried to type print. I hope you like it. Let me just grab
the contact sheet that we've also talked about, which is lying next to it, which is also a
fully analog print, as I've said before. This is not a burrito paper. This is a different
type of paper. More regular photographic
paper, slightly thinner. And it is also a glossy option, as you can clearly see, with much more
reflections happening. Then on this mat by Rita paper. This is by the way, an
import cotton rag or paper. While I don't quite know who
manufacturers this paper, but you can see that it has a totally
different aesthetic. This is much more shiny and reflects light and a
much stronger way. Now, while we're at it, let's also look at
a C type print. Again. Same dimension, same
frame as you can tell. But this time we
have a color image. This was taken on
dia positive film, Fuji Pro via 400 x, which is my favorite DEA film. And of course it was
discontinued by Fuji. You know, that's one thing
in analog photography, don't get too attached
because you never know how long some products
are really around. Now the reason I'm showing
this is that this is in fact a hybrid workflow product. Unlike the beretta
print we just saw. This is a C type
print that is based on a scan that I
provided to the lab that I edited to be color accurate
to the actual positive, which I will show you
in a second next to it. So you can have a good comparison
to judge whether I was. In fact, close enough to
getting the colors right. Now, as you can see here, the method of mounting
is slightly different. This was in fact attached
directly to the mat board. As you can see, it
is a Fujifilm paper, I hope you can see because
it's the faintest of writing. Perhaps here it doesn't
display as well. But trust me it is, it is a Fuji Film paper, which I think it's
fitting since it's a Fuji film that
it was taken on. This C type print, as I said, was realized using the
scan that I provided. And then it was used to expose the light sensitive paper
in a dark room setting. Now, this exposure phase nowadays also involves
digital projectors. So the file will be loaded
into a computer and will then put projected onto the paper directly
from a digital source. So these C-type prints are
true hybrid prints and well, they are also beautiful
and they have an amazing dual heritage
of digital and analog. Again, here, I've used
the black border. You have to be
quite careful when having your print done
because this blackboard is obviously quite
thin and it has to match exactly to your
board, to your mat board. So I recommend that you
create the mat board only once you have the
print in hand so you can measure it to the
millimeter what you need. Otherwise, your mat
board border may start to cover up that black border that
you want to display. That would be a shame. So I hope this good
for you to see. Well, there you have it. We've discussed two
different prints, two very important
types of print, the C type print, as well as the
beretta analog print. And you can achieve beautiful, gorgeous results
with both methods. As I promised, here's
a little comparison between the final print
and the positives. As you can see, the positive has a light source underneath that's needed for us to even see the
luminance of that positive. If I turn off the light table, you will see that, you know, there's not that much for
your eye to pick up on. So it's a difficult,
let's say equation. And if you think of it, then D or positive was not
really meant for printing. It was really meant
for protection, meaning there was a light
source behind the positive. And that was projecting
the image onto a surface, onto a wall or onto a
screen in a cinema, for example, the or
positive film is not actually intended to
be printed as it is here. And you can see the
glossiness of the positive only really comes to life through that light source. The print itself is slightly more matte and well,
it's a matter of taste. I said I still think
it's very beautiful. But typically, this type of film was
developed for other purposes. Also, I don't know if you can
pick it up on the camera, but the blue tone of this is actually cooler than up here. This has a fair bit more
magenta or purple tinge, which I added in post-production in color grading because
I felt it needed it. But well, here I'm realizing how there's actually still a
difference between the two. And that also shows what I said about being OCD with
your photography. That even if you shoot, you still have quite
a challenge to get your print and your
positive to match 100%. Finally, an important
recommendation for this printing stage. And that is simply always
do at least one test print. There are photographs
that I've test printed 34 even five times. Most labs will always offer this as part
of their service. Or they will provide
you a test print for a fraction of the cost
of the final print. You will really want to do this, especially if you want to frame your images or display
them in public. Because of course,
you want to ensure that the print looks
if you imagined it. And that is as close as possible to what you
saw on the monitor. This end, you should also seriously consider
color calibrating your monitor and editing your
film images on the monitor, not with a maximum
brightness setting. This is the number one mistake committed by beginning printers. And that is that
often the print in reality will appear
far too dark. Because think about it. The monitor is set to max
brightness, but in reality, the film paper or the
print paper rather won't reflect as much light
as an LED lit monitor. You will want to get that
brightness matching between the monitor and what you see there and the print
you get later. I can only repeat. Always, always get yourself
a test print once you frame your photograph
and you put it on the wall or shared online, the hybrid workflow
is concluded. But the quest for expression
and knowledge is infinite. You can spend years
perfecting and studying each of the four stages I've
introduced to you in this course. Nevertheless, I hope
you feel more confident now and navigating
this complex universe.
7. Closing thoughts: All right guys, that concludes
this crash course on the hybrid workflow and analog photography
in the digital age, I've tried to condense a lot of information and sorted in a cohesive and
logical way for you. And I hope that
has helped you to navigate this field
a little better. I'd like to end with
a personal opinion, so please indulge me. During our scanning lesson, we spoke briefly about the
full negative scanning trend. I mentioned that
this allows us to appreciate the light quality at the edge of the
frame and to show the film type and
perforation if we wish. However, the way that this
trend actually started, it was to display an
image without cropping. The idea was that a
photographer should be able to compose an image perfectly
without having to crop later. This mastery of composition was intended to be displayed by
showing the full negatives. Of course, many iconic pictures in history we're still cropped. This full border
approach is perhaps a bit of a purists take the
real irony, however, instead, in today's world of Instagram
and digital sharing, the full negative now meant to prove that a picture was
taken in an analogue way. And yet there are
filters and apps that allow you to fake
this convincingly. You can take a digital photo, run it through an
app or a filter, and it will give
you a border and a perforation as well
as some film grain. And it's really
extremely difficult to tell apart from the real thing. In 70 years. Something that started
out as a proof of authenticity of the
true mastery of analog image-making has
turned into something that in authentically pretends to be something that it's not. I guess these are just
the times we live in. But it doesn't really
matter in the end, how an image was taken
if it's a good one. Now as I've shown,
a negative always has to be inverted and
hence interpreted. So I think it's an oxymoron to think that there's
such a thing as a pure negative image that you
don't need to edit at all. No, editing isn't the very
nature of the negative. Just remember, at the end
of the day, this is art. There is no one way. There's no right or wrong. There's only what you want
to express, what you enjoy. And on that note, I'd like to thank you for
taking this class. I hope you enjoyed it
and that it was useful and I'll see you in
another one in the future. This has been the hybrid
workflow with me, Martin. Thanks for sticking around and until next time,
keep film alive.
Martin Monk, Film Director & Photographer
