How do they get THAT lovely desaturated look?

FujiLove

FujiLove

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There's a trend at the moment, which seems to be lead by the fashion industry, for this lovely desaturated 'film' look. Here are a few examples:

http://istillshootfilm.org/post/78674964044/film-photography-submission-by-diaan-bronica
http://istillshootfilm.org/post/77831254893/film-photo-by-larry-gloth-winter-walk
http://istillshootfilm.org/post/72441709834/film-photo-by-caitriona-gallagher-jiuzhaigou

You may have spotted that they all seem to be shot on Kodak Portra. Clearly, these are beautiful shots taken by skilled photographers, by my question is: does Portra film alone (and by 'alone' I mean the film + the lighting conditions) create this 'look' or are there other factors involved? I'm wondering whether they are using particular filters (real ones, not in post), lenses or are they simply editing the scans to enhance the look?

Sorry if this is a blindingly obvious question, but I haven't shot film for a long time and never used Portra. Hoping someone on here is achieving the 'look' (without tinkering in Lightroom!) and can share the details of their equipment and technique.
 
I watched The Hunter (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1703148/) last week and this looked like it had been shot on something like Portra! Although they probably 'colorized' it in post production. It's worth watching for the beautiful cinematic shots and amazing scenery.
 
Porta can have, in my experience, a desaturated look to it under certain light. It all depends on how the negatives have been digitised and if any post production has been applied to the scanned image
 
Portra does that without any manipulation in my experience - lovely muted, unsaturated colours under soft lighting conditions. You're right that a lot of digital photographers also go for this look by playing around in Photoshop or similar. They could of course just use the real thing instead, like in those examples.
 
To me, each of those looks quite different in terms of colour handling. IF that's a geniune straight image then I'd guess they're fiddling with the chemistry used for development - I don't think any kind of filter would produce that desaturation.
 
Wasn't Portra designed for scanning, that does imply (to me) they've designed it to be fairly low saturation than can be easily bumped up in post with out anything going nuts.
 
It does have a look all of its own. This is the previous incarnation of Portra, when it came in Natural or Vivid flavours, this is the VC version and is straight out of the camera apart from some dust spotting.


CNV00001 by Raglansurf, on Flickr
 
Yep that's classic Portra. Fuji 160NS will do the same although it has a different colour balance, more green and purple where Kodak is much more blue and red.
 
Hmmm... Do these Portra shots look desaturated? I've shot with it so much that it looks like normal levels of saturation to me, but perhaps it is slightly desaturated. These are the scans straight from the lab:








I think that Fuji Pro 160NS can give some nice colours as well though. These too are from the lab scans:




 
Hi RJ, it seems very clear to me that those lovely images aren't saturated. [EDIT: Compare them in your mind to a shot with Velvia, or even Provia...] My general feeling is that Portra usually gives that sort of look, unless boosted as Steven says. Whether that's specifically "un-saturated" in the OP's sense, I'm not sure.
 
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ChrisR said:
Hi RJ, it seems very clear to me that those lovely images aren't saturated. [EDIT: Compare them in your mind to a shot with Velvia, or even Provia...] My general feeling is that Portra usually gives that sort of look, unless boosted as Steven says. Whether that's specifically "un-saturated" in the OP's sense, I'm not sure.
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Hi Chris, yes, I agree that those images will look quite unsaturated compared to Velvia or Provia. That said, I view those slide films as having boosted saturation (turned up to 11!), so I suppose views on saturation are probably quite relative. I'm now wondering what film most folks would think has normal or natural saturation?

While Portra is probably slightly desaturated, I find that it often has a slightly yellow tinge unless the lighting in the photo is really flat.
 
Love what portra does with skintones too...very flattering IMO (obviously, I suppose, since that is what it was largely designed for).
 
They look just a little desaturated to me, but quite different from the first image linked to by the OP. They do have less intense colours than some films, but seem to have stronger and clearer colours than the Fuji example you also show.
 
dosent slightly overexposing raise colour saturation a bit ? use portra and get the exposure as near right as possible ,im not sure id want to underexpose in case it brought out more grain .i really like those rj ,to me they look right ,,,, and they've still got that wonderful,,,well film look to them
 
ancient_mariner said:
They look just a little desaturated to me, but quite different from the first image linked to by the OP.
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Well, I think the look of the first image largely results from the scan, which is very flat to my eyes. The other images look like better scans, although the film is Portra 160 in those instances and not Portra 400. Personally, I find that Portra 160 can look great on occasion, but other times it just looks a bit too warm and old fashioned for me. Here are a few I've taken with Portra 160, which I don't use too often as I find it a bit hit or miss:






Edit: I should add that the colours do look fantastic in the third link in the original post. Perhaps, I should revisit Portra 160 at some point soon (when my stash of 160NS runs out, I suppose...).
 
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This is the reason that Kodak used to make NC and VC (and even longer ago also UC [ultra colour]) versions of Portra as obviously when printing optically you can't easily alter saturation, but its easily done digitally and few people optically print colour RA-4 prints these days so they deliberately positioned the new 160 and 400 versions to have contrast and saturation levels between those of the older NC and VC versions.
 
skysh4rk said:
Hmmm... Do these Portra shots look desaturated? I've shot with it so much that it looks like normal levels of saturation to me, but perhaps it is slightly desaturated. These are the scans straight from the lab:
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Yes! That's exactly the look that I'm referring to, and it does look desaturated a touch to me. I guess it's more than desaturation; it's also the colour balance that gives it a certain *something*. Very subtle, but it has a wonderful character that jumps out a mile for me. Thanks for the heads-up on the Fuji Pro 160NS. I'll have to check that out.

I love those shots, by the way, especially the waterfall and Great Wall. I could stare at those for hours. What camera/lens did you use?
 
FujiLove said:
Yes! That's exactly the look that I'm referring to, and it does look desaturated a touch to me. I guess it's more than desaturation; it's also the colour balance that gives it a certain *something*. Very subtle, but it has a wonderful character that jumps out a mile for me. Thanks for the heads-up on the Fuji Pro 160NS. I'll have to check that out.
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Yeah, I think the strength of the Portra and Fuji films (160NS and 400H) is that the colours are soft, subtle, and natural with pleasing skin tones. These films look especially good in medium and large format.

FujiLove said:
I love those shots, by the way, especially the waterfall and Great Wall. I could stare at those for hours. What camera/lens did you use?
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Thanks! Everything I posted was shot with my Bronica SQ-A and 80mm f/2.8 lens, save for the two rectangular Portra 160 pics, which were taken with my old Fuji GA645.
 
skysh4rk said:
Thanks! Everything I posted was shot with my Bronica SQ-A and 80mm f/2.8 lens, save for the two rectangular Portra 160 pics, which were taken with my old Fuji GA645.
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That's good to know. I've always wanted a high quality medium format camera, and only in the last few weeks have I realised that I can have one at an affordable price. I'm still stunned that you can pick up a professional quality Bronica on eBay, complete with lens, back and finder for less than £300. I recently fell in love with the square format after using the iPhone Hipstamatic app, so the SQ-A is currently top of my list. Off topic for this thread, but I would be very interested in hearing your thoughts on the SQ-A.
 
FujiLove said:
That's good to know. I've always wanted a high quality medium format camera, and only in the last few weeks have I realised that I can have one at an affordable price. I'm still stunned that you can pick up a professional quality Bronica on eBay, complete with lens, back and finder for less than £300. I recently fell in love with the square format after using the iPhone Hipstamatic app, so the SQ-A is currently top of my list. Off topic for this thread, but I would be very interested in hearing your thoughts on the SQ-A.
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Yeah, there are some great cameras available nowadays for very little outlay. The SQ series in particular offers amazing performance for the money. If you have specific questions about any of the Bronica systems, feel free to post on the Bronica Medium Format Camera Owners Thread in F&C section of the forum. I myself have an SQ-A and SQ-B with a series of lenses, backs, and other accessories and find them great fun to use.
 
FujiLove said:
That's good to know. I've always wanted a high quality medium format camera, and only in the last few weeks have I realised that I can have one at an affordable price. I'm still stunned that you can pick up a professional quality Bronica on eBay, complete with lens, back and finder for less than £300.
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A lot less, if you keep an eye out for bargains. I paid £215 for my SQ-A on eBay. I do recommend eBay saved searches and email notifications.
 
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