Hasselblad 500cm… click - cerchunk!

I’ve been using this beautiful camera all week and it’s given me the opportunity to compare a bunch of different film and digital development options:

I’m shooting in a studio with a mix of strobes, a projector, and ambient light. I have a prism viewfinder for the Hasselblad, but the inbuilt light-meter is useless for this project (it measures ambient light only and not flash).

Because of that I’ve been using my Panasonic GX8 to test the light, transfer the settings to the Hasselblad, then duplicate the shot on film. As a result I have almost identical shots from my Digital camera and film.

There are some inevitable differences. Even tho the ISO, Shutter Speed, and Aperture are equal on both cameras, the Panasonic has a minuscule sensor next to the Hasselblad’s massive 6x6 120mm film back. Basic physics means that the 5.6 aperture on the Panasonic will result in almost everything being in sharp focus, whereas on the Hasselblad I’ll have far less Depth of Field.

But the biggest difference by far was the colour of the files!

Here is the RAW digital capture from the Panasonic (processed with Lightroom, no presets applied):

Compare that to the Hasselblad photo, shot on Kodak Portra 160, scanned with an Imacon flextight 848 drum scanner:

They’re both perfectly good photos - but what a massive colour difference! (for the record I much prefer the Hasselblad’s tones).

Now what if there are shots on the digital camera that I prefer, but I want to match the colours to the film versions?

I could use a preset, for example VSCO’s Kodak Portra 160 Lightroom plugin (Used in Standard mode, VSCO don’t offer specific profiles for Panasonic cameras):

Well… that’s not close at all. I’d have to spend a lot more time matching those tones manually!

The 2nd option is an interesting piece of software called 3D Lut Creator. This will look at my film photo and create a custom Look Up Table (LUT) that I can add as a non destructive layer in Photoshop. Here’s a screenshot of it in action:

The result is far closer to the film colours and tones than anything I could hope to achieve manually. There are still problems, but it’s a great starting point:

Here are the two of them together so you don’t have to scroll back up!

Hasselblad Imacon scan on the left and Panasonic GX8 with custom LUT on the right: