Rich colors with a DSLR like Pentacon?

Hi everyone,

The other day I saw a documentary about Pentacon (an East German company that made cameras) and the various models they made.

I was googling "Pentacon" and came across this flickr page that contains photos made using a Pentacon Six:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/zgodzinski/sets/72157619768674064/

I am blown away by the richness of the colors. I understand that this camera uses real film and that this effects the kind of colors.

But I am wondering if I can achieve a similar richness of colors using my Nikon D5100? Any tips or tricks in that direction?

Thanks!

One image says "Kodak Ektachrome E100GX slide" for example. Different film types and developing techniques can give different qualities.

With a digital camera, especially from RAW but also from JPEG, you can alter the colour and tone any way you want.

I'd suggest you start by adjusting saturation and curves ( which incorporates contrast adjustments ). These are fairly blunt instruments compared to other basic techniques for processing, but it's a good place to start.

--
StephenG

So if I understood you correctly this cannot really be achieved through photography techniques but through post processing?

I do agree with the other poster, part of it is the film and part is the scanning, and any adjustements they did at the time of scanning.

The Carl Zeiss Jena factory put out decent lenses, but not necessarily as good as Nikon or Canon. But it is easier to make lenses for medium format cameras.

You'll probably manage it with the in-camera processing and/or settings.

You have a huge range of processing and dynamic range settings on your camera, and you can even shoot in RAW and process it all in camera. I think you'll find that basic settings like saturation will do most of the work for you.

--
StephenG

camvienna said:

So if I understood you correctly this cannot really be achieved through photography techniques but through post processing?

Click to expand...

Sure it can be achieved through photography. Processing is part of photography unless you just want to look at g'zillions of red, green and blue little dots. That's all the camera knows how to do without processing.

You can do the processing with your camera settings or in your computer later. It's your choice. When those people who made that film camera prepared the image for the Web or for Print, what do you think they did? They didn't magic the image from a slide to the web. They Post Processed it. How hard is it to bump the saturation up so far that point and shooters love it? You can bump it all the way to Coolade if you want, but it's processing and it's half of photography.

If you're not setting those JPeg output settings in your D5100 based on each scene, then you're not really learning a huge part of photography. That D5100 comes preset to some good average settings, but it may not be good at all for some scenes.

If you don't want to mess with it in the camera all the time, it's better just to wait until you get home and do it from the comfort of your chair in front of the computer. It's way more comfortable that way and you don't have to think about the settings for each shot while you're shooting. Make sense?
--
Cheers, Craig

Follow me on Twitter @craighardingsr : Equipment in Profile

camvienna said:

...I am blown away by the richness of the colors. I understand that this camera uses real film and that this effects the kind of colors...

Click to expand...

You brought a smile to my face with the real film comment. Real film, like fake film (sensors), consists of photo sensitive material. Once exposed, real film, like today's fake film had to be processed. The chemical processing of film was done with the same goals as fake film processing.

You would laugh at the processing gyrations we went through to achieve effects that now takes one flick of the wrist with a mouse.

Currently, camera brands decide on the out of camera look. It is easy to see these differences using the dpreview comparison database. If you like color saturation check out Olympus's out of camera jpegs.

I agree with Guidenet that once film is scanned it is electronic and as such is not different from any other fake film images.

Mike

Red13 said:

camvienna said:

...I am blown away by the richness of the colors. I understand that this camera uses real film and that this effects the kind of colors...

Click to expand...

Currently, camera brands decide on the out of camera look. It is easy to see these differences using the dpreview comparison database. If you like color saturation check out Olympus's out of camera jpegs.

Mike

Click to expand...

True, but all but the simpest and cheapest cameras give you some control over the color rendition. You can bump up the color saturation, contrast and white-balance to achieve the look you prefer. You are not locked into the decisions made by the camera designers.

Paul Noble

This reminds me I have a roll of 120 to pick up tonight.

I'd guess that ken rockwell's settings advice might be useful, he loves him some slide film. A fairly agressive s-curve and or some tweaking to contrast and saturation should get you close (depending on how high you value convenience that may be enough).

If you don't find anything that works, you can get a medium format camera fairly cheap these days (even nicer ones than Pentacon/Praktisix) and Wal-Mart's send out development is a cheap way to get 120 film developed. I think it was $4.88 for my last roll of Provia.

If you really want to blow your socks off find a nice 4x5 flickr group

As mentioned, you can do in camera processing or post-processing to achieve various film looks. There are countless Photoshop and Lightroom plug-ins, presets, and actions, etc. for most any film type imaginable.

You can also use the Picture Controls of the D5100 to create various looks. You may even be able to find a Custom Picture Control that you can load into you camera. Here is some information on that and a link to several film based custom ones that someone created:
http://www.flickr.com/groups/nikon_d300_users/discuss/72157615997229801/

See page 95 of the D5100 reference manual (the bigger manual on the disc) for info on Custom Picture Controls.

camvienna said:

camvienna said:

I am blown away by the richness of the colors.

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

What colors? In the link you provided the only shot with any decent saturation was the out of focus marquee, and I've seen plenty of dSLR shots with more saturation of neon signs.

All the portrait shots were pretty muddy. I've certainly seen more vivid examples with even cheap digicams.

Maybe the sleeping dog under tungsten lights....dunno what you are seeing. I shot 6x7 transparency for years and there's nothing color wise I can't do better with my 60D.

I should note some of the shost on the link were taken with Kodak Ektachrome VS. This is a rather unpopular film known for it's excessive contrast and blown colors. It was Kodak's attempt to mimmick the more popular Velvia. However, unlike Velvia, Ektachrome VS blocks colors and is even more harsh. Many software programs have plug ins to emulate these kind of effects.

Funny thing is Pentacons were your choice when you were on a tight budget

Thanks very much for this tip, will try it out!