How to shoot film… without using film

In 2011, I shot nearly 70 rolls of film. I love film. And I really love my Olympus OM-cameras and their fine ZUIKO primes.

I also love the unique look of film and the classic DOF-control of the 135-format (with those great fast lenses from the film era). But I don’t love the amount of time, film-photography eats up. Actually, I just don’t have enough spare time anymore to shoot film on a daily basis. Unfortunately 😦

Of course, I could just grab my Fujifilm X-Pro1 and enjoy the benefits of digital photography – but in spite of the Fuji’s serious retro-feeling, there’s always something missing for me. So I was looking for something between the ultrahigh-resolution-EverythingByWire-digital-world, and the charming slow, manual, organic and often imperfect world of film-photography.

And since there isn’t a digital back for my OM-cameras, here’s the compromise I found for me…

I traded my Nikon Coolscan V ED film scanner for a different kind of “scanner”. A portable 21,1 MegaPixel FullFrame CMOS-Scanner made by Canon (aka EOS 5D Mk2), which can “scan” the images straight from the back of the attached lens 🙂

Honestly, my goal was to reduce the amount of time I had to invest into 35mm film-photography, while maintaining the “ZUIKO-experience”. The best way to do so, was to replace the actual film with a digital sensor (which has to be FullFrame to capture the entire “virtual negative” and all those great vignettes and other flaws/effects old lenses often unveil), and cut down the whole processing-, waiting- and scanning-time. Old glass gives interesting results when used on a 36x24mm Sensor, the images look really nice so far, but still way too “digital”.

So step 2 is the “filmifizing” of the 5D Mk2’s RAWs…sorry…negatives. There are dozens of “film emulators” matching various post processing workflows out there. I went with the very advanced and well made VSCO film-presets for Lightroom4, by Visual Supply Company.

To make a long story short: I got myself a Canon EOS 5D Mk2, added an OM-to-EOS AF-confirm adapter and an EG-S focussing screen to it, and can now shoot all my ZUIKO primes on the Canon. Don’t own a native EF-lens (so far), and I’m very happy with just some basic features of the 5D2. The output of this combo is then pumped through Lightroom, where the VSCO magic happens to the files. What comes out is some kind of “film-tofu”, but that’s actually the “filmiest” way of photography I can afford (time-wise) at the moment.

Have a look and judge for yourself, how tasty my film-tofu is. So far I only tried some scattered colour-emulsions of the whole set, but more to come:

HeadUp Display

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Hello Kitty bike

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last days on the old rims

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cuddling the pug

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texting

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public kitchen

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Jeep

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Passat CC

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Siesta

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finally, some rain

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driver on duty

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beach(-club) Buggy

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eye contact

 Category: analog, digital, gear, photography      Tagged: adapter, camera, Canon EOS 5D MkII, Eg-S, F1.2, film, flaws, Frankfurt/Main, gear, Hybrid, manual focus, OM, street, vignetting, ZUIKO

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