Kodak Porta 400 from DxO Film Pack, applied in PL3 (which is medium contrast negative film in real life, being negative film it has a more gentle roll-off in highlight and is well know for very smooth skin tones):
Excessive contrast, skin highlights completley blown, contrast very harsh in the skin tones!
Correcting exposure or contrast doesnât solve the issue.
Reducing color rendering intensity reduces the problem, but the charactestics Porta 400 look is gone well being skin tones donât exhibit anymore that harsh contrast.
Real-life Portra 400 doesnât look like this at allâŠ
Hi Fred,
Have you tried using the fine tuning contrast adjustments available in Filmpack 5 Elite? Lowering highlight contrast just slightly might help. Iâm not sure that this will work but itâs worth a try.
If you look at the background, youâll see that the colors are more vivids than withe camera generaic rendering.
This is not normal, with the exception of some specific tones (somes ranges and pinks), Porta 400 is a pretty desaturated film.
Something is clearly wrong here!
I actually choose this image because I like it (itâs my son, so completely objective here ), but also because it has several saturated colros in the background that helps to asses the film simulation effectâŠand also because the light on my son face is very soft/flat.
On images with a stronger initial contrats, the film simulation is simply unusable!
Thatâs a shame, I was hoping a few small adjustments might improve the rendering. As an old film photographer I agree with you completely. IMHO there are quite a few film emulations in Filmpack 5 that do not match my memories of what the emulated film-type actually looked like. I purchased Filmpack 5 Elite primarily for the excellent additional features that it adds to PL3, but there are occasions when I would like for an image to emulate old film-types that I remember fondly. I think maybe some reevaluation of these presets is in order. BTW(DXO staff) I would LOVE to see an accurate emulation of Kodakâs old VPS color professional negative film as IMHO it had the best skin tones of ANY color negative film.
), but also because it has several saturated colros in the background that helps to asses the film simulation effectâŠand also because the light on my son face is very soft/flat.