A digital camera is a Turing camera: it has the potential to emulate any camera, which means it has the ability to emulate any recording medium.
As an example, Ritchie Roesch has posted the recipes or settings to make Fuji cameras emulate different types of film. On the other hand, you could just shoot the actual film you are trying to emulate. Except some types of film are expensive or rare – try getting some Kodak HIE or Kodachrome to play with. So the ability to summon the ghost of films past has its uses. Plus you can effectively change films mid-roll or even for a single shot. It makes me wonder though – if I emulate a particular film effect in-camera, am I just replacing film with digits? What I mean is, that one of the strongest advantages of digital over film is that you have more scope to change it afterwards. If I save a file in the camera that has effects applied, I have actually shot a frame of film.
Perhaps the best way then is not to apply film effects in-camera, but later? Or at least save a raw file with no effects applied. If your camera lets you save both, you can have the raw file to work on and a jpeg to get an idea of what the final effect will look like. This might be useful if I was taking portraits in black and white. It’s difficult to visualise how colour translates, so saving jpegs in mono gives you something to show the subject.
If I choose to use a certain type of film or to process it in a certain way, I can’t go back and change my mind. If I shoot well-exposed raw files, I can do anything I want with them later. Is this a lack of commitment or is it pragmatism? Actually, it’s something I should do more often. I keep taking my old clunker cameras out for walks loaded with mono film. I should try using one of the digital jobs the same way, but having more options to change the results later. I’ve been having a go with the one camera, one lens, one month thing. Perhaps I should treat one of the digital cameras the same way? I’ve only got one that can swap lenses, so it looks like it’s going to be on the list. The emphasis will be different though. Rather than getting to know an old camera better, this will be more about seeing how much flexibility I can get out of a Turing machine.
Having thought about it, I’ve settled on using my Canon G9 compact. It can save raw files so I can play with the settings but still have the original to work on later. I’ve set it up to shoot back and white. It has two saved custom modes, so I have set them both to black and white but one of them to underexpose by one stop. I will use this when I push the ISO to 800 to see if I can use it for gritty pictures with deep shadows.
That’s the game then: G9 pretending to be a range of mono film types, with the option to later apply filters or effects.
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Update.
I’m quite enjoying this. It scratches my mono film itch and lets me change my mind later.
I might have succumbed to the dark side.
Fup Duck Photography 