Today I complete my run of Ilford films for the time being. Today I bring you Iford’s SFX, one of the few remaining IR films. This film was actually discontinued, however Ilford is not making Limited productions of it, one batch a year.

As always, my emulation of IR films is designed to be used on regular raw files. I have not tested this preset with a IR raw file, as much I I would like to, I just don’t have any IR RAW files. I have a few IR JPGS, and the results were alright with them, however, I don’t preset on JPGS often and I was not overly impressed with the results.

On another note, I will be taking a few days off from the blog, hoping to expedite my migration over to WordPress. There will be no presets during that time, maybe an article or two, but no big releases. When I resume, I plan on releasing two presets a week, with other content on non release days. This really does not change the frequency too much, I have release 33 releases in 13 weeks, which is about 2-3 a week. I plan on new presets coming out on Tuesdays and Fridays (make note: I am in USA). Hopefully I will have my new preset out on this coming Tuesday, but if not, watch for it on Friday.

I hope this year brings much more content to LifeInDigitalFilm, and I really hope the upcoming switch to WordPress improves the quality of the site. I look forward to being here doing this for a while.

Michael

Next stop on the Ilford train is XP2 Super. Ilford color processing black and white. Designed to be developed in regular C-41 chemicals at any mini lab. A decent film, much like Kodak’s BW CN in many ways. Not exactly my cup of tea, but a good film for B&W shots when you don’t have your chemical lab running.

Enjoy,
Michael

Next in my Ilford series is Ilford’s orthochromatic, continuous tone copy film, Ilford Ortho+. Emulation made possible by my friend Jason Dhenning by capturing my Color Check card on a sheet of Ortho+ with his 8×10 camera.

Suffering from a migraine currently so I am not going to expand any further, save to say one thing. When using this, or my Kodak Copy Film preset, you can really manipulate the channel mixer. Normally I only recommend adjusting the Orange channel is skin looks bad, but on this preset you can go about +/- 10 units without completely blowing the emulation. I try to keep my total amount of adjustment to 15 cumulative units or less (does that make sense?) and I feel the emulation holds up.

Until next time,
Michael

Tonight is the first in my short series of Ilford films. Tonight I bring you the slow but sharp, fine grained Ilford Pan F+. Watch your black clipping and contrast using this preset, as a little too much can really black out shadow highlights.

As always, both Lightroom and Adobe Camera Raw preset files are included.

As side notes, I will be redesigning LifeInDigitalFilm over the next few months. I will be moving the blog from Blogspot hosting to another hosting provider when I finally get my business website up. When I do make the hosting switch I will be migrating LIDF to WordPress, which I wish I would have used when I started this mess. The change should allow me to provide a better experience, and the web hosting will allow me to have actual information pages for each film I emulate. So if in the future I have lapses in posts over a day or two, know that I am working on making the site better, not blowing it off.

Also, today I converted a really great preset to ACR. It is x=warm+storm preset, and it throws a really great effect on your image. I ran it on a wedding catalog I have and I had great results. Check it out at x-equals.com/blog. You may have already seen it up at PresetsHeaven, if you have still run over to x-equals, Brandon has included the ACR version of his preset for your enjoyment.

Well, until next time,

Michael

And now for something moderately different:

Today I am presenting my version of Ilford’s mid-speed B&W film FP4+. What is different today is that it is not just a Lightroom preset. Inside the zip file is a folder called “ACR Presets” containing .xmp files for Adobe Camera RAW.

To install .xmp presets simply drop them into the following folder in Windows…(no clue with Mac)

[C:\Documents and Settings\UserName\Application Data\Adobe\CameraRaw\Settings]

When you open a file with ACR, look on the right side of screen. Below the histogram and above the slider are icons for different RAW controls. The furthest button to the right shows 3 sliders as its icon. Click it to reveal the list of presets installed. Then simply click the preset of choice to apply it. Then teak the image in ACR before you open it into Photoshop.

From now on I will be including an ACR preset with my Lightroom presets. On slow days where I have no new presets, I will update the old releases with their ACR counterparts.

I hope this adds more value to your download and opens up my film emulations to a wider audience. My preset will now be usable on Lightroom and Photoshop [I believe PS Elements also uses ACR, if so it will work on it too...let me know.]

Anyway, FP4+ is a very good, mid-speed film produced by Ilford. I really like it a lot for portraiture, I feel it gives very good skin tones on a variety of skin. I use it quite a bit, and for a 100 ISO range film (125), it is quite good (not quite Fuji Neopan 100 Arcos).

Until next time,
Michael

[Adobe Camera RAW preset added 01132009]

Well the weekend is over, got to get up and work 3 days before vacation starts. Yay! So I finally found time for another post, and tonights menu consists of Ilford HP5+.

HP5+ is Ilford’s answer to Kodak Tri-X. A very versatile film with plenty of exposure latitude.

Wish I had more to say, but I have only shot it once, and it was for developing this preset. I think I will be sticking to Tri-X, but there is nothing wrong with this film, and I would probably prefer it for formal portraiture.

If you like Ilford film, check back in. I have quite a few ready to release in the coming days.

Until next time,
Micahel

[Adobe Camera RAW presets added 01132009]

Wow, another week passes and I am just now releasing a new preset. It has been a hectic week, but I have a weeks worth of presets ready to roll now, so hopefully it will get better.

Tonight I present to you my interpretation of Ilford’s Delta film. It is very similar to T-max and Fuji Neopan Acros. It is an excellent film in my opinion, better than T-max, but not quite as beautiful as Fuji’s. But that is my opinion. Very good for images with high contrast.

I hope you all enjoy this preset and that you are all doing well.

Until next time,
Michael