Turning Digital Photos into FILM (actually)

[@linusandhiscamera]

you’re welcome to come scan your digital film photos whenever you’d like bröther 🫶🏼 excellent video dude

[@WillemVerb]

LMAOOO what a great sentence. Thanks dude

[@kylex221]

Hey man, just wondering if you know much about the automatic trays for 35mm for these machines? Specifically the NC100AY. Mines giving me nightmares when scanning.

[@CadenceHelser]

They did this kind of process for Dune, shooting digitally, printing everything to 35mm and then scanning the film back to digital. And Greg Fraser raved about the ability to have the benefits of both worlds. It’s really cool to see this in the stills world & it turn out so well!

[@bagnome]

I think it's a semi-common practice that film makers do when they want the film look but can't budget to shoot on film. I think Cinelab and offers it.

[@ericzedd]

Woah. TIL!

[@MarcDeAcetis]

They’ve done it for a lot more films before Dune. Black Swan did it with a DSLR camera to film for the subway scenes.

[@difanaufal]

wow i didn't know that

[@Pierorocks]

greg did it for the batman too! it really is a best of both worlds situation

[@TommyGrisselFilms]

One must imagine Sisyphus converting a digital photo to negative, and scanning that negative to a digital photo

[@WillN2Go1]

Spot on metaphor for this circular path.

[@gregbarry7614]

In general, it's very cool how people are experimenting with the combination of digital and analog mediums and seeing what the results are. As opposed to throwing one out over the other to keep them separate. Art still innovates!

[@WillemVerb]

I totally agree, its cool to see what you can do when you combine new and old technology!

[@stevenhightop2518]

I was involved in the digital original to slide film output around 2002. I was the unit photographer on a TV show, and did all the onset publicity photos on a digital camera. But the contract with the broadcast network stipulated that the photos had to be provided to their publicity department as slides. The contract was a hold over from the 1990s. Plus, many print publications had not yet switched over to a full digital workflow. Art directors and photo editors were still used to putting slides on a light table and picking the one the wanted. Computer were much slower at that time when it came to reviewing dozens of images. So, the production team picked their favorites and I brought them to a specialist lab that had the output equipment, and we shipped slides. The next year the contract stipulated digital files only.

[@Tomzhinsky]

Sebastião Salgado has been doing this for more than 10 years and the results he's getting are amazing. You cannot tell the difference from his digital photos to his analog photos

[@Caracalaba]

Could you tell me where did he explain it? Cause I remember hearing him saying thay they had to develop a process to get consistency in the transition to digital but I didn't know he explain the process. Thanks

[@Tomzhinsky]

@@Caracalaba he talked about it in few interviews for some Brazilian channels and he also talked about it on a documentary called Revelando Sebastião Salgado (Meeting Sebastião Salgado) from 2012

[@Caracalaba]

thanks! i'll chek it out@@Tomzhinsky

[@joepphoto]

Doesnt he just print them on his preferred paper and then photographs those prints to print in books

[@milesian1]

@@joepphotoAs far as I know from the information given at an exhibition I saw in San Diego a few years ago, the digital images are transferred to film and the prints are made from the film. I knew that he switched to digital in 2008, and despite very careful examination of the images in the exhibition I could not discern a difference in the character of his photos between film and digital capture.

[@fuzzytalz]

I've wondered for years why there wasn't a service to convert digital images to film, now I know there is. And this looks gorgeous! Very, very interesting...

[@DeoAbarquez]

this is nuts! the side by side comparisons truly show those digital vs film color balancing. for the average shooter i think the cost would be incredibly dissuading but for work you truly care about it looks like an incredible way to archive. Great video Willem!

[@WillemVerb]

Totally agree, thanks!

[@yaronicious]

I've only seen this in movies before, as Greig Fraser (like Batman or Dune) has a similar approach. Definitely interesting to see what comes out of it. My previous approach in this way was a little more complicated: roughly adjust digital photos in Lightroom, export as DNG and load into "Davinci Resolve" and there create an accurate film emulation (highlights, color rendering, film curve, color density, halation, grain, etc.) and at the end add a negative curve, export this again and then "scan" the "negative" again in Lightroom via Negative Lab Pro and then have the colors interpreted correctly there and the result often comes very close to real film.

[@WillemVerb]

This sounds very complicated but surely also doesn't cost $10 a photo. Id be interested to see a before and after.

[@Yolligraphone]

Whoa, that scanner is absolutely sick. I love how it's an entire table, with a computer, monitor, the unit itself. And that Windows 2000-esque UI! Very cool experiment. I think it was worth it. The results speak for themselves.

[@DrejcD]

I'm still watching it at my work, every day. My coworker is lab technician and working behind Frontier Lab; developing photos and scanning 35mm films. Pretty hard to find much needed spare parts for it in EU these days. A lot of daily work to maintain these machines.

[@bobsykes]

Whoa! The photos of the houses and the surrounding landscapes from your arctic circle book are amazing scanned like that! Incredible. I guess this serves to remind us just how good Kodak professional film stocks are and always have been.

[@WillemVerb]

Thanks Bob! Yea I agree, they knew what they were doing haha.

[@Eliguitar1]

Very interested to watch this. One of the charms of film is the way it glides up through the highlights, whereas digital sees deeper into the shadows and clips highlights in a more abrupt fashion when overexposed. The way colors are registered also feels inherently different. So I'm wondering how this service works. The new Dune movie was created this way (shot on digital, transferred to film then back to digital) and it does not look shot on film, just a sort of softened digital.

[@WillemVerb]

I agree that thats exactly how these turned out. Softened digital is a great way to put it. I didn't know big movies like The Batman and Dune did this. I was wondering if I was insane for trying this but happy to hear its used professionally for those applications.

[@Eliguitar1]

@@WillemVerb It's definitely an interesting experiment. No question. Another aesthetic option to have. Personally I am trying to make maximally sized/detailed prints directly from those gigantic 200MB GFX 100s raw files, but this takes things the opposite direction in a valid way...certainly the grain will look more natural than just a film simulation in a computer.

[@eamonhickey]

It's done with a device called a film recorder. In the early days of digital, film recorders were quite common because many processes for printing (books, brochures etc.) and display (motion pictures projection) were still based on a film source. So if you took a picture digitally and needed to print or distribute it through a film-based process, you needed a film recorder. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Film_recorder

[@williamcurwen7428]

This process was used many years ago for comping digital elements into adverts shot on film. It worked very well, seamlessly.

[@ChoaYeon]

as soon as i saw the scanned photos i can already tell and see how it changed it without a side by side, it looked so much more alive, and the film like looks just gave it even more character per each photos.

[@BigBenAdv]

This is really awesome! Unfortunately such a service doesn't exist over on my side of the pond. I lost the first 2 years of my photography (non-professional works but it was when I was learning) because all my digital copies gave up on me; My primary harddisk crashed, the backup drive that I plug in on occasion (and stored separately) also gave up the ghost when I put it back in, and my last copy on archival grade DVD (and stored in a dry cabinet) suffered from bit rot corruption. It was the closest thing I could do to the 3-2-1 backup method at home but even then, it failed on me. The only photos I have from that time were the negatives that I shot and still have a copy of. Being able to use negatives/ slides as an archival means is really awesome - whilst cloud backups exist, the companies behind them may not necessarily last as long as well-kept negatives would.

[@denkibike]

Assuming you're in the UK, FirstCall Photographic offer a digital to film service, I think they only do 35mm though. It's £40 to transfer 36 images to a roll of colour negative.

[@BigBenAdv]

@@denkibike Sadly, wrong pond. I'm located in Asia.

[@siathomas4807]

@@denkibike Thank you!! seems to be out of stock right now, have you used anywhere else in the uk?

[@marknachmias423]

Peter Turnley has been converting digital images to negatives for a long time. As you may know, he works primarily in B&W. I think the negatives are then printed in a darkroom. I have some of his prints and that’s what they look like to me. Great video. Thanks

[@doptimist]

Wow!! Was not expecting those results. This might just be the best argument i've ever seen to support the "film look".

[@zach.sorensen]

This process is actually super interesting. Thinking of the use case of needing to shoot something in a faster pace, needing quick autofocus or faster frame rate than film could ever provide, but still wanting it to be on film. Super cool, would love to see some darkroom prints of these

[@williamcurwen7428]

What is really exciting is applying a treatments aesthetic to a RAW file, then printing it out on film, or a particular film, whether colour negative or transparency to achieve something both unique and believable because of our cultural associations with film.

[@JohnSmith-gs4zv]

Would have love to see a 35mm test. 6x7 has so much fidelity and dynamic range it usually looks like digital, whereas a tiny 35mm frame of the same scene shows much more different results, I'd presume.

[@photomitch]

Thank you, I've gotten my negative back and I think they did a fantastic job. Can't wait to create some prints from them.

[@rodrigoquirante]

This is absolutely wild! As a hand printer myself, I would definitely love to see the c-prints you make with these. Thank you for producing such great content! Love from Spain. 🤍

[@locuraphoto]

BEAUTIFUL... i'm absolutely floored by all the subtleties that just turn these images into such wonderful versions of their digital selves... the way some colors jump out in comparison to their digital capture and yet overall it's mostly subtle nuances that simply invoke that film medium love

[@laurencewhite4809]

Is it me or does the black look completely crushed.

[@Texashammered]

I love this as an option for sentimental value, but I believe there are tools that can closely replicate the effects of film on digital. I believe if more effort and attention were placed on sensor technology, color rendition, and light gradation, we’d have more compelling options. I currently use a set of tools that work more in tandem with the files rather than just presets and I’ve been happy with the look. I’ll never tell anyone to abandon film, but I think it’s time to start demanding more intent when it comes to the build and design of digital cameras. If they weren’t treated as cash grabs for companies to oversell to hobbyists and “hybrid shooters” I think we’d have more purpose built cameras like we had over 30 years ago.

[@dct124]

This is wild. I literally just happened to search this and none other than Willem has made a whole video essay on it. 👏🏾 These are impressive.

[@SatanSupimpa]

I thought about this a while back, since this can be done for motion picture, I assumed would be easier to do it for stills. Never really tried to execute it, but I'm glad to know there's an option to do it more professionally.

[@thedarkslide]

My late friend Oliver Rolf from Platinum in Hamburg, Germany used to do this as one of the services he offered through Platinum. The results were astonishing, he did an amazing job at that.

[@johnathanmphoto]

This is AWESOME! I don't know where I got to idea to consider this... and you just happened to upload it 10 days ago! Brilliant!

[@c0mputerface377]

Results are incredible. I this this would be fully worth it for a project if you had the budget. The side by side is blowing my mind

[@Istorian]

What an interesting idea! Thanks Willem!

[@ShawnPBruce]

I had been looking for something like this last year to create backups of my favorite images. Thanks for making this!

[@mynewcolour]

I used to have digital art put onto slide film for projection for story telling. It worked well.

[@alexeyvishnyakov8132]

it's actually the way dune (2021) and batman (2022) were made. the movies were shot digitally, then projected on film and then converted to digital again. makes a really unique look, best of both worlds

[@neerajnongmaithem392]

i could just imagine the cost involved

[@alexeyvishnyakov8132]

@@neerajnongmaithem392 yesss…

[@Purp1eP3nguinZ]

Film recorders! I didn't know anyone was still offering this service commercially. As I understand it, the two main reasons for the existence of this technology were for printing digital images with legacy optical printing systems, and creating slideshows which incorporated digitally generated imagery. This was during the time when digital printing and digital projection were not yet ubiquitous, so it was sometimes necessary to record digital pictures and graphics onto film to be compatible with the available equipment. Would love to get the chance to play around with one of those machines.

[@hahauenstein]

this is so neatly nerdy, love it

[@jr8440]

it saved a very important negative for me. It was eaten up by bad fixing. So we did a hi res scan. fixed the zones that had gone bad and burned it on a hi res negative. So happy about it

[@dct124]

This was done for Dune, and The Batman. They shot on an Arri Alexa LF then filmed it using 35mm film. It's a really cool method of film making.

[@robertocaccini]

It's always fun to learn about stuff I've never heard about. Thanks Willem!

[@dct124]

9:04 that's crazy 😮😮😮 look how more alive that looks. Omg ppl really think some of us are crazy when we say film has a look that digital doesn't. It's not just a tone curve either. There's something else going on where it almost looks like it's been given more depth. Like the lens may have warped the digital image. The digital image looks flat. I'm really in awe right now. The blooming on the windows 😱 The reflections. That could just be increasing the exposure, but that lift to certain zones of the image is wild.

[@mj_1446]

The color is just amazing. I think it will be cool if there's something like an instant film printer but uses color negative instead.

[@CarlosPerezFilms]

This is amazing! I know there are some labs that are doing this for movies. Directors/DP's are filming on digital cameras like Arri Alexa's, Venise, RED's, then cutting the full feature and as part of the grade they get them "filmified" with what i could only guess s the same process but for 24fps.

[@WillemVerb]

fascinating!

[@eamonhickey]

The device used for this is called a film recorder -- many of them are essentially a small computer monitor that displays the digital image, and this image is photographed by a specialized film camera. So in principle, most of us could do basically the same thing at home -- display your digital image on your computer's monitor and photograph the monitor with your film camera. Obviously, it's likely to be much higher quality if you have a calibrated, wide-gamut 4K or 5K display and take real care with the photography (completely darkened room, exact alignment, a good flat-field macro lens etc.) Might be fun to experiment with.

[@maksimkupre9681]

Thanks for sharing that thing, Man! But honestly it’s still look like a gimmick. No wide dynamic range, slightly dirty contrast between light and shadows. Your digital works look perfectly balanced and modern btw

[@andrewapplegarth334]

It's interesting that this was a suggested video after I watched one about manipulated photos in photography contests. With this service, you could hide the manipulation or enter a digital photo in a film only contest by using the negative as your proof.

[@christriance-martin2168]

I see this as a rejection of digital abundance in a way, and ease of use. And an acceptance that scarcity makes things 'special'. People want the feeling back, and they can't get it in the ocean of Instagram and similar.

[@NatSegebre]

Wow I was NOT expecting them to come out that beautiful

[@TheDeamonLo]

Maybe GammaTech can have you out so you can make a video about how their lab works.

[@ColinMcCarthycreative]

this is so niche and exactly the content im here for! thanks man. lets see the prints!

[@garactacle]

The main reason, for me, is to be able to make wet prints for exhibitions and print sales. I'd love to try this out at some point. Thank you so much for sharing.

[@trulsdirio]

To me this is a way to get my digital images into the dark room. Might actually do that in the future, seems fun to get proper prints from digital images.

[@nightsbeatswitchgood]

i recently heard abt someone doing this for fashion editorial work. shoot digital for ease on set first (also so the client can approve i guess) and then go to analogue post-processing after, and, yeah, i thought they were insane but... the photos look sick.

[@WillemVerb]

I could see this especially interesting in an environment like that where clients need a live feed of the digital images coming in to approve them or make changes, but then the final selects can be sent off for c-prints or other finishing methods.

[@NikkuManAMVs]

This is exactly where my head is at. I shoot digital, but all of my favorites shoot film.

[@totallyrocknroll574]

This isn’t related to the topic of this video, but I would love to see a video dedicated to the story of your journey as a photographer! I’m a beginner, just finishing up my first film photography class in college so I would love to hear more about how you got to where you are. Also, I absolutely love your videos and photography style. I can see how much you truly love what you are doing; It’s very inspiring :)

[@villegas24]

This upgraded the images in my opinion. They look beautiful.

[@oskarwrona8177]

Actually in Poland it is required by law that every new movie needs to be archived on film. Producers are obliged to make a film copy for national archives.

[@jamesprivet]

Smart country.

[@rollingtroll]

I hate having to admit that I may prefer the 'digital negative' to the mamiya photo. That said, that may not be on Ektar. I do like the results. I can't really think of a reason to do it, but they definitely look analog. Really wonder what source they used to shoot the photos from, and whether it's a 'camera aimed at a screen'-idea, or whether it's a more direct transfer.

[@IllinoisPB]

Incredibly interesting! This opens up so many possibilities.. it’s like having your cake and getting to eat it too

[@ckhicks]

Beautifully explored, love these results! Thanks for sharing.

[@dct124]

The image of the house in the snow, the windows just look so much warmer and life like than the digital image 😮

[@selijahgrondin8206]

Wow this is so interesting to learn more about. I'm really excited for you to explore this more and get some amazing photos in the process. I would love to see you interview the company & find out more about how they do it.

[@richard.l5563]

called : film out. early machines called LVT. kodak shipped ektar with their first lvts. default settings were for ektar

[@b1nzak]

Can’t wait to see the result of a dark room printing session with this negative! Nice video !

[@connoryballantyne]

As a musician and photographer I have always loved the interplay between the processes. This is basically re-amping - playing a digital instrument out through an amp and recording that sound back- but with a photo. This the best analog (pun intended) for that process I’ve seen for sure. I print a lot of my digital photos on photo paper and rescan, equally a great way to change the feel of an image.

[@gerardneedham]

Keen to see a follow of this shooting it side by side film

[@HenryBobeck]

Such a fun process thanks for showing your results Willem!

[@HeSo_71]

These Svalbard images are insane

[@pedronunes6401]

this is such a curious process, would love to see the darkroom prints compared to a digital c-print directly from the digital file, would they look similar? Completely different? iIm so intrigued!!

[@AdrianUrsanu]

Great service to keep and save your favorite digital shots physically

[@WillemVerb]

Yes! A hard drive can always fail and you can damage a negative but if you store them in different places it certainly is a nice way to add some backups. Nothing sucks worse than losing work you care about.

[@bucknerfilm]

weekly uploads have been a blessing, thanks hoss

[@WillemVerb]

Trying my best!

[@roccocasella454]

Great video! Definitively interested in see c-prints from those negatives and to know more about the process: for example why ektar film base?

[@Fringer15]

Amazing! Never heard of this process beforehand!

[@siathomas4807]

wow! beautiful images, i'm in awe!! was wondering wether you would recommend sending over with a light edit or would you send raws?

[@simonefaluschi3940]

I've heard about this process from Sebastiao Salgado, who does that for long term archiving purposes, I didn't know it was available also for us mere mortals 😅. And happy to see the final results, that seems excellent, even if expensive. Thanks for this review 🙏

[@Geert890]

Broski although this is really cool this can be done in photoshop too. It'll look the same on your screen.

[@TechWithBruno]

This is so cool! Expensive, but cool

[@mygicshow]

That is not a bad price at all. If you can take that into the dark room and do prints… I’m so old I have all my darkroom equipment from the 80s. Nothing beats a real silver print. Thanks for posting!

[@NSRGB]

I love this cross process. You can do it with your videos too which is super cool. Id love to see you do some prints with these. awesome videos man.

[@filmstockreel]

I think this is definitely an interesting process. This is great for the reasons you listed but could also be good for anyone who just doesn’t want to shoot film all the time. You’d still need the film resources like a scanner and negative lab pro for example but it’s worth it. The scans look amazing and in my opinion even looks better than the original digital images. Would love to see some darkroom printing. Maybe even some black and white photos if they do those.

[@DavidDacaro]

Ten bucks for a digital film conversion ain't bad when you consider a specialty lab in Williamsburg/Brooklyn (can't remember name, they're kinda secretive) charges something like $2,000 per frame for film output and $1500 per frame to scan it. They are supposed to be the best at film grain and the look of film. If I remember I'll reply with the name of the place. Good luck with your work, looks cool!

[@CalvinGrayCat]

Yo this company is about to have mad people trying this out having no idea a video was made that thousands will see and get excited about. That is awesome ha! The photos look amazing dude I dont see how someone wouldn't at least try this with some of their favorites. Its almost way worth it, you can rattle off thousands of digis and make film of the best ones, otherwise youre spending thousands on film just to get one shot! Thanks for sharing this :)

[@parkermillican]

I really like how the colors turned out on those scans

[@beatleswerecrap]

for sure keen on the c-type prints!

[@bngr_bngr]

The Fujifilm scanner is the star of this video.

[@haakon.borgen]

This is amazing, would love to see more of this. I also think they do this for some movies to get the real film look.

[@colekaprelian7389]

So cool! I'd be interested to see darkroom prints of these photos.

[@mattabbottphoto]

Very interesting cheers. Would be great to see a video on how you match your digital images with photos shot on film.

[@GeekyGalore]

They do this on movies too. I believe they did this with Matt Reeves The Batman

[@WillemVerb]

very cool. I had no idea

[@DPZSnaps]

this is awesome. would love to see more of this.

[@conamx5728]

that's awesome. glad I stumbled upon this video. can u please upload the photos to Flickr or something so that we can view the pictures in high resolution? please....

[@enochfoss8993]

This is really interesting. I would love to see some of these photos in print.

[@seanmlemoine]

I could be wrong but I feel like Raymond Meeks might have done something like this with shooting something digitally and then printing it to a transparency and darkroom printing from that. Cool video.

[@just_eirik]

This is very outside of anything I do, but it is very fun to watch!

[@gabriel221373]

This was so awesome! Would definitely be interested in seeing how they print in the color darkroom.

[@anthonysheardown1126]

Very interesting to see, thanks for sharing! I would love to see how they compare in a darkroom print!

[@MTimWeaver]

This is really cool. BTW, Gamma Tech is in Albuquerque, NM (I live in Phoenix and had never heard of them, so I looked them up).

[@homebrecker]

Such a good idea if you have a few digital photos that you want to fit into a film project.

[@janjasiewicz9851]

I suppose the advantage of this process is that you can shoot digital images in low light/night, as digital cameras are superior to film in low light, and then convert to analog. It would be interesting to see a digital image taken by a "medium" format sensor (Hasselblad, Fuji), and or a Leica M11 monochrome.

[@pedronunes6401]

he did, some of those photos where with a fuji gfx, so medium format digital to medium format film

[@zakyzigzag]

I've always had questions regarding "film-out", including the post production for IMAX films and whatnot, and how they're copied to be shown on IMAX films (for that case)

[@tedvitale8978]

This seems so counterintuitive to me but such a cool process!

[@yellowcrescent]

Neat. I was just recently thinking about trying to do something similar in order to burn color negatives, artwork, or digital photos onto 6x7 slide film. I just picked up some glassless slides from ebay (glass 6x7 slides seem to be impossible to find). For negative film to slides, would have been simple: project from my enlarger with minimal color correction. For digital, was thinking to print 3 digital negatives and use an additive color process... although I imagine it would be difficult to tune precisely.

[@juiceboyxd9310]

I guess it's like how some movies that are shot digitally get printed onto film to be projected analogue in a cinema.