Selecting a film type

Photographers accustomed to silver-halide film technology like to vary film according to their desired subjects and effects; thus one might prefer films with a soft rendering for a portrait, a film with strong contrast for a dramatic journalistic photo, a film with saturated colors for a sun-drenched landscape.

DxO FilmPack’s selection of films offers wide latitude for choice and experimentation, and the following ideas can serve as a guide:

Color projection or print films

Positive films or slides. The medium is transparent and the colors are direct, for projection, a concept that comes from Kodachrome in 1936. This type of film was highly sought after by magazines and publishers since for photoengraving one can visually compare the rendering of the image and its print. Among the DxO FilmPack profiles are:

Films from the 70s to the 90s, typically used for landscapes and photojournalism, such as Kodachrome 25, 64, and 200, Fuji Velvia, Kodak Ektachrome 100 VS, Kodak Extracolour and Elitechrome
Contemporary films, often much softer since they are designed to be scanned rather than projected, adequate for photojournalism and landscapes, but also for portraits and studio use, such as Fuji Astia and Provia, Kodak Ektachrome 100G
Special films and instant developing films such as Polaroids, among which Polachrome has a grain structure with a lined texture like a television screen
Generic profiles inspired by the rendering of films such as Kodachrome or Velvia

Color films for paper prints and scanners

Negative films, whose inverted colors are masked by an orange or brown medium prohibiting any direct vision of their colors, used primarily by the general public for family photos. This type of film held the largest market share for film before digital, but there are also varieties for more professional use (studio, weddings) whose profiles are reproduced in DxO FilmPack:

Universal films for landscapes or travel, such as Fuji Superia 200 or Kodak Elitecolor
Films for portraits, studio, photojournalism, or weddings, such as Kodak Portra 160 or Fuji Reala
Films for saturated and dramatic exposures such as Agfa Ultra 100
High speed films for low light photojournalism, such as Fuji Xtra800 or Superia 1600
Instant film: Fuji FP100

Cross-processed

A trend often used in fashion photography or creative contemporary photography is the inversion of hues created by using a negative chemical process on a positive film or vice versa. The images obtained through these processes seem artificial with lighting effects and color casts. DxO FilmPack includes these two simulations.

Original	Cross processed Kodak Elite 100

Photo: Bachir Bendjeddou	Photo: Bachir Bendjeddou

Black & white negative film

Public opinion still considers black & white to be the symbol of artistic photo, and the chemical processing of these films is easy and attractive for the amateur. We can distinguish traditional films, characterized by their fairly coarse and irregular grain, and films from the 90s that have a “tabular grain” with more geometric forms but above all a smaller grain. Finally, there are chromogenic films that are developed in color chemicals and have an ultra fine grain and a very soft image structure:

Chromogenic films with soft rendering for portraits, family pictures, etc, Kodak BW and Ilford XP
Very fine (around 100 ISO) and fine (400 ISO) tabular grain films: Kodak TMax and Ilford Delta
Traditional very fine and high contrast films: Agfa APX, Ilford Pan F
Traditional medium speed films: Ilford FP4 and HP5, Kodak Tri X
High speed, very grainy films: Ilford HPS, Kodak TMax 3200, Ilford Delta 3200
Infrared films: Kodak and Rollei
Instant film: Polaroid

Colored filters

Applying a filter to the lens during exposure modifies the light that hits the film. This method was almost inescapable in landscapes in the 1950s and 1960s… but since then it had almost disappeared. A filter absorbs colors close to its hue and reinforces the opposite colors: for example, a red filter will lighten reds and darken greens, a yellow filter will reinforce blues in a sky and a blue filter will fade them. With digital photography, these filters are applied to a black & white rendering and act on the given color layer to produce effects comparable to the original exposure:

Mixed filters: cool colors and warm colors, that can be applied to a black & white or color image
Black & white filters, in red, deep orange, orange, yellow, blue, and green: in practice, as the colors give gray tones in a black & white image, the filters will allow the selective reinforcement of certain hues and the weakening of others leading to selective variations in contrast not only in the gray tones, but in the original colors of the scene. Yellow and red filters are always used in traditional black & white photography to darken skies and plants, while the green filter lightens fields and foliage. It can also accentuate tanned skin, which yellow and red filters will fade

Toning for black & white film

The toning technique is the application of chemical products that change the tonality of black & white prints on photographic paper. Naturally, these effects are primarily applied to images that have been processed in black & white, with or without a filter effect.