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Late last year, Trevor Dayley wrote an article which introduced me to the Mastin Labs Portra 400 film emulation preset system. As a long time Kodak Portra 400 shooter I was thrilled to see side-by-side comparisons of Portra 400 against digital with the preset. They looked darn near identical. Now Kirk Mastin, the mastermind behind the presets is gearing up to release his Fuji 400H preset system and I couldn't be more excited.
Once children have learned their vowels they can start doing beginning blend sounds with each consonant. (These are not available on my blog for free download.)Click here to see aWhat’s included?Click here to see a sample week for the. So for example after learning a,e,i,o,u, they move to letter ‘b’. Letter of the week. Download version. I normally suggest teaching vowels first then move onto consonants.
With spring here, and summer right around the corner I couldn't think of a better time to try out the 400H preset system. From my experience 400H excels in beautiful greens, pinks, blues, and has fabulous highlight rolloff — making it a favorite film stock for wedding shooters. The Mastin Labs system is unique in that it isn't meant to completely replace your film stock, rather it's designed to supplement it. With these presets you can 'hybrid' shoot with 35mm/120 format and digital; seamlessly integrating the film images you take with the digital ones.
Please be aware that these presets are not meant to be a one-click editing solution, in order to match the digital images to the film ones you'll need to manually adjust exposure, temperature, and tint to taste (matching digital to film precisely takes practice). Kirk has a great little tutorial on matching digital and film images on his website (accessible with a password from your purchase). As you'll see below, it's relatively easy to match the digital files to film, once you get the recipe right, batch editing will allow you to apply the preset to multiple images in similar lighting conditions.
Over the weekend I was able to use the Mastin Labs system side-by-side with the real deal in several different situations and was very pleased with the results.
I'll display the image SOOC from my D610 (shot in NEF raw, auto white balance), digital images processed with the Mastin Labs system, then 35mm 400H film as seen below.
Left: Raw Digital | Middle: Mastin Labs | Right: 35mm Film
Here's a quick rundown of the equipment I used in this review:
35mm Film Fuji 400H
- Minolta X700 35mm SLR
- Minolta 50mm f/1.4
- Fuji 400H 35mm film
- Fuji Frontier film scanner*
Digital Fuji 400H
- Nikon D610 DSLR
- Nikon 50mm f/1.4G
- Adobe Lightroom 5 / Adobe Camera Raw
- Mastin Labs Fuji 400H preset system
* It's important to note that Kirk's preset system is based upon Fuji 400H scanned with a Frontier scanner. Lon 12 s quan crack 2. Thus good replication requires you scan with a Frontier.
Skin tones:
The preset system handles skin tones just as well as the film it's modeled after, giving beautifully rosy highlights. Skin tends to be rather demanding when using any preset system, this is no different. I spent much longer adjusting the following image to match the film than I did any of the others.
Left: SOOC Digital | Middle: Mastin Labs Digital Right: Fuji 400H Film
Left: Mastin Labs | Right: 35mm Film
Highlights:
Highlights are where 400H and the Mastin Labs system shines. Highlight rolloff from the preset is smooth and rosy, perfectly matching the film. My favorite images processed with this system have been high-key.
Left: Raw Digital | Middle: Mastin Labs | Right: 35mm Film
Shadows:
Shadows are also pretty strong with these presets. Like the film, shadows processed with these presets are crunchy, often going to full black to give a lovely filmic look. Of course, if you want more / less clipping you can easily adjust that with curves in Lightroom.
Left: Raw Digital | Middle: Mastin Labs | Right: 35mm Film
Indoors:
Fuji 400H is a daylight balanced film. This is where I thought the biggest discrepancy between the two would be, my Nikon's white balance can be altered while the film's is fixed (short of in-lab / scanner alteration). I was pleasantly surprised to find that my indoor test images turned out very similarly albeit with slightly more detail in the blacks from the digital file. The whites and silvers of the digital images have the same beautiful tones as the 400H film, lovely falloff.
Left: Raw Digital | Middle: Mastin Labs | Right: 35mm Film
Outdoors:
400H is meant to be an outdoor film. Whether you're shooting a wedding on a beach, camping in the forest, or just walking around the city the combination of mellow colors make for a perfect spring / summer film stock. The preset system certainly didn't let me down.
Left: Raw Digital | Middle: Mastin Labs | Right: 35mm Film
Mixed Lighting:
![Mastin Labs C1 Mastin Labs C1](/uploads/1/2/5/7/125754647/561417390.jpg)
These images are shot in mixed incandescent / window light. I was pretty curious to see how the 400H handled mixed lighting, typically when both light sources are equally strong I'll be tempted to process b+w but was really happy with the color from both images after the slightest big of tweaking.
Left: Raw Digital | Middle: Mastin Labs | Right: 35mm Film
What I liked:
- Ease of use. Once you dial in the exposure, temperature, it takes very little time to mimic film — even less once you get the hang of it.
- Accuracy. When properly dialed in it's really tough to tell the difference between the digital and film images — perfect for hybrid shooting.
- Education. The online tutorials have been incredibly helpful in getting the hang of editing with Mastin Labs.
- Grain. I'm a huge grain buff, it's just one of those things. The grain that comes in these presets is to die for — truly, it's better than VSCO, ReallyNiceImages, and any other preset system I've tried. The system offers two different grain types; 35mm and medium format. These are both really lovely and give grain that, to my eye, is more pleasing than the scanned film.
- Versatility. This preset system doesn't have to be used to give a filmic look, recently I've been loving using it for portraits with subtle split toning. Example here.
What could be improved:
- Compatibility. With only Canon and Nikon options at the moment Sony, Fuji, Leica, Olympus, Pentax, etc. users will be out in the cold. This doesn't mean that you can't use the system with cameras from these manufactures, it'll just take some more fine-tuning.
A note on price:
When I first purchased the Portra 400 preset last winter I was slightly intimidated by the cost of the system. at a normal price of $119 (though Kirk has been known to offer presets at special, discounted rates) the Mastin Labs system runs around the same price as those from VSCO. But assuming I spend around $6 per roll of Portra (400H runs around $10) and another $10-$20 for processing and scanning, it doesn't take too many rolls to make up for the cost of the preset system. Even if you replace one roll of 400H at every wedding / shoot over the course of a few weeks you'll more than make back your money — I have.
If you're interested in picking up a copy of your own check out Mastin Labs or their Facebook page.
Spoiler alert:
The next film stock Kirk's set his eyes on is from Ilford — there are great things ahead.
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