1970s (ish) like?

[Retired Grunt]

Hey!!

I’ve been using an older Lumix LX5, set to the Dramatic B/W film-mode. Set to both fine Jpeg and Raw. The raw looks like blah since the camera’s internal setting is to raise the Temperature to 50,000 (Yikes) and the tint to -106 (based on the way CameraRaw looks at the photo).

The camera’s settings I control were: Manual mode, 1/1000sec, F/8, ISO 640 and zonefocused for 1.5m-infinity.

All I did with this photo was to raise the tint to -16.

Question: Is it me, or is this a great rendition of color from the 110 camera’s back in the 1970s?? I think around 1976 I got hands on my first camera, which was a Kodak 110.

[Tersha]

I think it’s the sky colour in particular that gives it that 70’s feel.

[bucweeet]

I agree with Diane… the sky colour… and then the additional noise (which is not really prevalent now-a-days)

[Retired Grunt]

@tersha @paul-3

I agree. When I was a kid, I’d take alot of photos of the Boardwalk in New Jersey and the sky was always this color in the photos.

As for the grain, for a 16 year old camera, it is some of the best grain I’ve seen for digital images.

[Robert Apple]

Like everyone else said, its the rendition of the blues.

[Rob Wood (Admin)]

That one is brilliant. Love the approach, love the nonchalant composition. Love the colour treatment.  And yeah, def has that retro thing happening.

[Anne Hornsby]

Love this, RG.  @retiredgrunt   The color of the foreground building with the sky feels very 1970s to me when hot decorating colors were terracota and teal.

[Retired Grunt]

@robertapple

@admin-2

@annehornsby

Wow, talk about neglecting to check in on a thread I started.

Thank you all for the comments. I have several photos now and I’ve discovered that ISO, the only auto setting in the exposure triangle, or literally time of day and how bright the sun is, affects the coloring of the photos. The balance between the teal, green, and red does fluctuate. Multiple photos taken in a few moments can easily be adjusted to have the same look. But photos taken another day, can’t get them to truly have a close match with previous day photos.

[Rob Wood (Admin)]

Ha ha – never mind sometimes I will come back to a thread literally months later. No pressure around these parts at all, which is how I like it. 🙂

[Retired Grunt]

Since I could not sleep last night, here is something I experimented with.

Working a “1970’s” preset 🙂

The 1st photo is the raw photo (.nef) with no edits from my Nikon Z5ii. It’s the USS Cleveland which got commissioned on 20 May and as it passed by where I live, got some shots. Here is one for this post:

I mainly use Camera Raw. I worked some edits, mainly with the color grading panel, temperature, some grain, highlights lowered slightly and whites increased slightly. Still working more green into the blues for a v2 version of the preset. Not much red in this shot, so that element has to be worked out more. I will probably go to where I took the photo of Bella’s (1st post photo) and most of the block and take a photo with the z5ii, then rework the v2 of the preset.

Here is the effect so far.

 

Thoughts?

[Robert Apple]

I don’t really know 1970s film looks. But it does look like old photos Ive seen from the later Vietnam era.

[Retired Grunt]

Yeah, need to work of the color grading. Through research, I need to work with the “Calibration” panel of adjustment to focus on the blues, reds, and greens.

Whats harder I think, is the old Kodak 110 camera’s had seriously imperfect glass, but the imperfections added to the esthetics of the photos.

Drove downtown this morning but too overcast. Need blue skys 🙂

[Retired Grunt]

OK, since there is so much blue in this scene, I worked the blues and only slight red/orange/yellows/greens.

I’ve discovered that for the tone curve panel, raise the output on the dark lower left point to +10 and the top right point to an output +240. This gives the image the slight faded look of vintage film photos.

[Retired Grunt]

Whelp, that last preset got DXed and I started over.

Here is the next photo I took and applied a new effort to adjust for a 1970’s look. Two photos actually. The second photo is from the north side the St. Lawrence River about 12 miles north of the other photo. The cloud cover began to come in so the sky is more white as we looked SW.

[Robert Apple]

These photos sent me down a rabbit hole of freedom class war vessels which cost a few hours of sleep as well.

[Retired Grunt]

Always good to do research 🙂

 

[Anne Hornsby]

@retiredgrunt  RG, I would prefer the color of the ship in your first image, combined with the muted colors of the sky and water in the second image.  The color of the ship in the second image doesn’t give the feel of metal the way the first image does.

[Retired Grunt]

@annehornsby

Hooah. I’m trying to get the settings to work out I can use for a general preset and then, based on the photo’s lighting, do final adjustments. Just the preset will save alot of time and only do minor final adjustments.

[Anne Hornsby]

@retiredgrunt   Have fun with the presets.  I’ve never used them myself. I should read up on how they work.

[Author]

Posts