Here are my first results from our most recent trip to France. Carl Zeiss G Hologon T 16mm F/8 Pancake lens, Pro, 1994. 35mm rangefinder cameras - Contax G1 (1994) and Contax G2 (1996). Both cameras have a sleek design and a durable body.Contax G system. A system consisting of two autofocus 35mm rangefinder cameras - Contax G1 (1994) and Contax G2 (1996), made by Kyocera, with fully electronic mount, electronically controlled shutter and TTL exposure meter, which supports aperture-priority automatic exposure metering. For now, I am using José Villa’s colors.139x80x45mm.
Contax G2 For Plus Ultra Is
José kindly shares his magic recipe in interviews, in his book and workshops.So how does José achieve this distinct look?I don’t want to dive too deep into his technique (if you would like to learn more you have to ask him directly, buy his book or attend one of his workshops), but the essentials are:The non-plus ultra is good light. He was one of the first wedding photographers who re-discovered film and had a tremendously huge influence on the whole wedding industry and the general revival of film photography.Photographers around the world are raving about the airy feel in José’s photographs and are trying to replicate his look for their own images and clients. He is also the reason why it seems half the photographers that are featured on Style Me Pretty have sold their digital gear on Ebay and switched to Contax 645 medium format film cameras. His excellent eye, unique style and beautiful bright pastel color palette define the term Fine Art Wedding Photography. It’s really worth it.José Villa is one of the best and probably the most copied imitated inspiring wedding photographer in the world. But wait a minute, two steps back… in case you don’t know José Villa, which I doubt, please go check out his incredible work first.
The lens equals a 50mm f1.2 on a full frame camera. Film on a medium format camera gives you a wonderful latitude for exposure. Film on a Contax 645 with a Carl Zeiss 80mm f2.0 lensMedium format relates to the 35mm format about how 35mm (full frame) relates to APS-C (crop). Back lit subjects and warm directional light help a lot with a good picture.2.
He then exposes for the shadows which results in another one to two stops. This means he overexposes by one full stop per default. The Carl Zeiss 80mm f2.0 also has a wonderful bokeh and a great color rendition.José usually shoots Fujifilm Pro 400H and rates his film at ISO 200.
If you are into a soft dreamy look for your images, you have to shoot a fast prime lens wide open (for example a 50mm f1.2 or f1.4). Here is how it looks straight out of camera:How does José’s look translate into digital photography?First of all: Good light is essential, no matter if you are shooting film or digital. And as you might know, I am very interested in replicating the look of film in digital photography (here you can find my experiments with emulating Portra 400 NC).The above image was shot with a Nikon D700 and the Nikkor 50mm 1.4 G lens. A good lab is essential, not only for processing and scanning but especially for color work.Do you need these magic ingredients to achieve this look?I love and shoot both, film and digital. With film, it adds contrast and saturation and, depending on the light, colors get a brighter pastel look.Richard Photo Lab is one of the best labs available in the US and does scanning and processing for most well-known film photographers. If you try that with a digital camera you will very likely blow out all of your images.
You can distinctly see in José’s images that his highlights normally look light caramel or pink. You also have to add a little bit of color to the highlights. Try lifting your mid-tones and slightly clip your highlights. To get this bright look with pastel colors you only push your exposure by around 1/3 to 2/3 of a stop and work with curves and levels instead. If you overexpose too much, you will blow out your highlights and lose a lot of detail.You can see in the above example that I didn’t overexpose the original image. Different than film, a digital sensor is not very forgiving.
And that is what I wanted to demonstrate here: Color work is very important in both mediums.This technique works especially well if you are shooting a Fuji X-Pro1/X-E1 as these cameras give you a very distinct Fuji color palette already. But it looks a lot closer to me than what a lot of photographers get out of their Contax 645. You can also crop your pictures to the aspect ration of 6×4,5 (like I did with my first picture above to show off my imaginary Contax) but that would mean you lose information as that’s not the native ratio of most digital cameras.Of course this look isn’t exactly identical to José’s. It shouldn’t be too obvious, only enough to get some texture into the picture.
A lot of good film photographers nevertheless invest a significant amount of time in their color work after they get their film back from the lab or work with the lab to get their colors right.This is the very reason why Richard Photo Lab offers custom made color profiles. Film very often requires extensive color work, but different to digital, that is usually done by a lab and not by the photographer. In the example below, the image on the left is straight out of camera, the one in the middle would be the technically correct one and the one on the very right shows an extremely bright and poppy result:One of the most common misconceptions about film is that it doesn’t need to be post-processed.
The results below show normal exposure (“0”) to four stops overexposure (“+4”).These shots are uncorrected scans from a Fuji Frontier. But it’s important to find your own unique style that is an reflection of your personality – not a copy of someone else’s.Thank you all very much for your feedback on this post.I received a lot of comments and emails from photographers who don’t agree that film does need to be post-processed and that it’s possible to get results like that directly from a lab, without any retouching.To make my write-up a little more plausible I asked my wife to borrow her Contax 645 (no joke this time) and shot a roll of Fuji 400H with an exposure bracket of five stops. Your work will never in the world look like any other photographer’s work – because it’s not about film, the gear they’re using or their colors, it’s about their eye – and you can’t copy that.I think it’s good to have people that you look up to and it’s ok to get inspiration from other photographers from time to time. Not to copy someone else’s look but to be able to visualize what you see with your own eye when you are taking a picture.José Villa’s work looks amazing because he is an amazingly talented photographer, not because he shoots a Contax 645 and has his own color profile with Richard Photo Lab. In my opinion it is worth spending time trying to understand colors and light.
With digital it’s important to not expose too bright so that you have enough highlight-information in the picture while you brighten it up in post-processing.2. The most important thing to get right in this workflow is the in-camera exposure. I personally use Lightroom 4.1. The picture was shot with my Hasselblad on Portra 160, rated at 100 and exposed for the shadows:I also promised to share my workflow as a short tutorial.Here are four simple steps that you can reproduce in any software.
Contax G2 For Series Above And
If you shoot a Fuji X-Pro1, X-E1 or X100s, you won’t need step 4 as the Fuji color palette is great to work with. The last step is color work to give the final image more accurate film-inspired colors.I share my exact settings for the series above and it shouldn’t be difficult for anyone to re-create the general look in Lightroom. It lifts the mid-tones, softens the blacks and gently clips the highlights.4. In step three I apply a special RGB-Curve to the picture. I also adjusted Clarity, Vibrance and Saturation.3.
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