The Home of the Hybrid Photographer

Well, it has been a hectic week for me, but I guess I have avoided not posting. It is Sunday night and I am finally getting a release out. Sorry for the lack of contents yesterday, but I had my nose to the grindstone taking care of business. Now that is done and I am back. It may take a few days for me to get back to early posts, but I will get it back.

Tonight I bring to you another black and white simulation. Tonight’s preset is an emulation of Foma’s Fomapan Creative, a nominally rated 200 speed film, functional from ISO 100-800 depending on processing. This roll was exposed at ISO 200 and developed in D-76 Stock soulution for 6 minutes at 20C.

This is a really sweet film, with great tone and wonderful grain. I really like it a lot, enough that I am considering utilizing it for a lot of work I normally do with Tri-X. I have not been overly impressed with many of the modern-classic films (those utilizing the traditional cubic silver), but this one relaly got me. I love the tones it produces.

I hope you find this preset enjoyable. I will be back agaoin tomorrow, with my Monday update and some new links for you to follow. Tuesday shall bring another preset, and further in the week I have a few reviews for some software and services, including a great canvas print service, along with more presets.

I hope to have a WordPress migration in the next month, have some gears moving with some great people right now…I will update further when things firm up a bit more. But good things are coming. I am also working on my own guide to simulating film in Lightroom and ACR, which I will release as an e-book this summer. It is coming along well thus far, and I will update further when I have more information on that as well.

In the mean time, keep using my presets, and let me know what you think of them. Don’t forget to get your copy of the Cold Storage Collection to help me keep getting new films to emulate. On average every $10 purchase/donation will pay for 1-2 new emulations. So if you haven’t grabbed a copy yet, be sure to do so…it keeps the site alive. AND anyone who purchases a copy of Cold Storage will get a FREE upgrade to the 2nd edition that will be coming this summer..it is my way of thanking all the early supporters. To pull the trigger on the deal, look to the right sidebar for the purchase buttons or click here to read more from the orignal post for CS.

Thanks again for all the support!

Until tomorrow,

Michael

Now to follow up my Maco Cube preset from this past weekend, I now give you my version of Maco PO, their Orthopanchromatic film. Being an Orthopanchromatic film, it has a very subdued response to red, but does not render it black as an Orthochromatic film would. Being said, that is all I can say I find special about this film. It is still a good, solid film, but nothing makes it stand out to me, especailly when compared to Fuji Neopan 100 Arcos, another Orthopan film.

I hope you enjoy it

Back again tomorrow, in the mean time don’t forget my Cold Storage collection. If you enjoy my presets and wish to support their further development, the $9.99 usd purchase price goes towards costs for the website and to aquire new film and processing to prepare the film for emulation. The process for making these presets is fairly involved and does require an outlay of cash on my part…your support helps offset these costs. For more information on how I make my emulations click HERE.

Until tomorrow,

Michael

Alright, it is Sunday here in Mid-America, and I have nothing better to do that bring you my newest film emulation preset. Today is a rendition of Maco Cube, from Maco of Germany, the manufacturer of the Rollei films. Maco Cube is a 400 speed (nominally rated) Black & White film emulsion. The manufacturer claims an ISO latitude from 100 to 6400 with the same film, depending on development process used, with a fine grain across the ISO spectrum. They claim to accomplish this by utilizing three emulsioon layers with chemicall different silver crystals, that react at different speeds, allowing for fine grain and high speed. I did not test it at any other speed thusfar except for 400, as the deevloper I have on hand currently is D-76 and the only speed rating on the datasheet for D-76 was 400 [10 minutes @ 20C].

I find that it does have a fairly fine grain, but that is of no difference currently in Lightroom as there is no tool allowing for inclusion of grain (please Adobe…V3? Please?) I got the general color response reasonably accurate and I find the emulation to be reasonably close to Maco Cube @ 400 in D-76, for what it is worth. Enjoy.

As I mentioned yesterday, please join Flickr Presetting Lightroom group and enter into out photocontest. We have less than a week to go and less than 20 entries, those are pretty good odds to win a copy of HDRSoft’s Photomatix Pro, with it’s new Lightroom Plug-in. Also you have a shot at getting my Cold Storage Collection, three copies are up for grabs. Presetting Lightroom has more than just the competition too, we have a collection of now over 200 free presets that you can get to from our community discussion board. Come on by and enter!

And if you think you have a good shot at winning, you might want to check out the video from profiPhotos, coverin the use of HDRSoft’s Photomatic Pro with Lightroom! Follow over to it HERE!

And if you got some mad tax-return money burning a hole in your pocket, and you like the presets I make, please consider grabbing a copy of Cold Storage and get the 12 exclusive presets along with every preset released on LIDF up to the end of Janurary 2009. $9.99 to go to film and processing to keep the emulations coming and improving! Thanks!

Until tomorrow,

Michael

Well I hoped to have an article up for today, however the article expanded well beyond the scope I desired for a post on LIDF. The article is on getting the most of of the LIDF film presets, but I decided I am going to work on it more and roll it into a PDF file that I will post here on the site once I get it completed. A manual of sorts to help people get started with my presets.

As for today, my post is running late..as will tomorrows..but I should get back to early releases over the weekend. I am going ahead and releasing the next preset based off my recent experiments with some expired Agfa RSX II. Today’s flavor is the ISO 200 version that I got finished last night. Similar to the ISO 100, but with some shifting of color in the reds and in general a much higher key presentation of the photo.

Please download and use, see if you like it. If so please let me know. If not let me know also. If there is any film you want to see emulated, let me know…I’ll do what I can. But for now enjoy today’s release.

And another shout out to another great photoblogger out there putting my presets to use. I ask you to hop over and take a peek at Beau A.C. Harbin’s blog. He has a stream of great photographs, one of the newest being and HDR image treated with my Fuji Velvia 50 preset from the Cold Storage collection. The image is unique and stunning. Please drop by and take a gander, click HERE. If you enjoy creative images you will enjoy his blog.

Speaking of the Fuji Velvia 50 preset, it can only be found in the Cold Storage collection, which can be purchased in the upper right side of the blog. If you need more information, please refer to the blog post for it HERE. I hope to have a dedicated page to the collection soon, with more information for those of you who are not sure…but for 9.99 it’s an easy sale for anyone who wants to help LifeInDigitalFilm keep growing. There are so many different film stocks with so many ways to process it that we can keep the emulations going for quite some time, as long as there is a way or me to pay for film and processing.

Anyways that is all for today, hopefully things smooth out over the weekend and I am back to early posts every day…I almost missed today’s post!

Until then,

Michael

Time for another quick post, busy work week so far, but I am not going to let LIDF slip. So here is my newest Black & White preset, simulating Rollei Ortho processed in Rollei Low Speed Developer, for enhanced tone and contrast.

This seems to be a very versatile film, and I need to shoot it again and develop in Rollei High Speed developer. Anyways, I gotta run, not enough time to do a write up, but please enjoy the preset.

Be back tomorrow, hopefully have some time to get up the article I have been working on.

Until then,
Michael