What is FilmConvert?

Ever since the introduction of Digital Cameras, digital evangelists have been saying how Film would eventually be superceeded and replaced. After several decades, this is finally happening. However, for many people, the look of the digital footage still leaves a lot to be desired and doesn't look as good straight out of the camera.

What is it about film that people like so much?

Some people say that film has a 'magical' and 'organic' quality that can never be achieved by a digital camera. We take a more scientific approach. For many years, the film workflow has been to have the film scanned and then graded digitally. Both formats end up as digital files, we can compare them and find out the specific the differences.

Our tests have shown that film responds to colors in a different way. Let's look at an example - shot on Fuji Pro 160s, and the same image shot on a Canon 5D Mk II. Look specifically how the trees seem to 'pop' in the film image.

Film - Fuji Pro 160s	Digital - Canon 5D Mk II
Ignoring the grain for the moment, zooming in shows that the hue and saturation of the trees is quite different:
Film - Fuji Pro 160s	Digital - Canon 5D Mk II
Let's take an average of the colors:
Film - Fuji Pro 160s	Digital - Canon 5D Mk II
The film trees are warmer, containing more red than the digital trees. To get the digital to match the film we should: Increase the amount of Red by 20% Increase the amount of Green by 15% Increase the amount of Blue by 7% Increase the saturation from 38% to 50% To make these changes in your grading software would be technically possible, but to do so you would need to know what the green color of the film was supposed to look like, and also make sure that you made the change only to the green colors in the image. Now imagine performing the above analysis on every hue and saturation of the color spectrum, adding accurate grain, modeled on the grain response of the film stocks. This is FilmConvert!

FilmConvert changes the colors of Digital footage to match Film

Below is a color chart shot on both film and digital. Hover on the buttons to see how FilmConvert changes the colors to match the Kodak film stock.