I use VSCO Film presets for most of my wedding work and love the film feel they give to my work, and having seen a quick preview of the new set Film 05 set I thought I’d try them out. They are based on the readily available film that we bought back when we were taking family snaps and before digital photography was widely used – they are what VSCo are calling the “golden era of analog” and what were used in the “mass market”. I still have a couple of rolls of Kodak 400 hanging around the house somewhere, having found some at the back of a cupboard.
I usually use the Kodak Portra set from Film 02, tweak them and desaturate a little, so by comparison I found the new set to be quite warm and vibrant.
Here are a few examples using a frame from an autumn shoot – hopefully this gives you a good idea of how they look across the colour range. There are some options for a ‘portrait’ preset of some film types and even though I found these were a bit too warm for this shot, there are lots more adjustments in the new Toolkit that you can apply. I haven’t run any tools over these but I removed the grain from all of the images. There are also options for cool, warm, softening the highs and fading contrast.
For comparison the sooc image is on the left.
Ok, I’m going to start with my favourite – this warms the skin tones up and cools the grass (I’m not a big lover of yellow-green grass).
Kodak Max 800
Kodak Gold 200–
Kodak Gold 100
Kodak Ektar 100–
Kodak Max 800
Agfa Vista 100
Agfa Vista 400–
Agfa Vista 800– (another favourite)
If you have some of the other VSCO Film packs you may not feel the need for any more b & w presets but I think the tones in these are gorgeous >>
Top left – Fuji Neopan 400 soft highs, Top right – Fuji Neopan 400, Bottom left – Fuji Neopan 400– , Bottom right – Kodak BW400CN
So what do you think? Personally I like them. They are warm and vibrant with good contrast and I think they work really well with the cool light we have most of the year in the UK. I don’t know if I’d edit a whole wedding with them ( watch this space ) but they would be fab for those couples portraits and wide landscape shots.
You can get hold of VSCO Film 05 here and watch the video for the latest info here.
The full set of images from this autumn styled shoot were edited with VSCO Film 02 Kodak Portra 160 if you’d like to take a peek.