Online gallery to compare different films?

Question

I'm looking for an online gallery to compare different kinds films.

I know flickr.com offers a pretty good tag search function, but is there any place (has some one did this?) that I can do this easier? I want to figure out the difference between films only, and without much influence of the camera, development, scanning and digital post process as well.

Or, should I just try them myself

Answer 1

If you can't find a gallery, you could trial one or more Photoshop/Lightroom plugins that have filters for simulating different film types, and run them on a neutral digital image of your own to get an idea.

• DxO Film Pack
• Nik Color Efex Pro

Both have filters which cover a range of Agfa, Kodak and Fuji films and try to reproduce the contrast, colours, saturation, film grain of those films.

Answer 2

There are some "film" group on flickr where you can see pictures taken with it.

I'm administrator of a french one, and force users to tag their pictures with the film used and camera; and then I've created a front-end website to explore the pictures of the group: http://www.e-cerveau.com/argentique/

It's in french, but go to the "Films" page, choose a film in "Noir et Blanc" (black and white) or "Couleur" (color) and then click on the link "Voir les X photos prises avec ce film" (view the X pictures taken with this film").

However, as you said you just want to figure out the difference between films only without much influence of the camera, developpement... I think it's impossible. Because:

• a film will not give the same result in 24x36 or in medium format (6x6; 7x6),...
• the camera / lens will change the result (chromatic aberration,...)
• the way the photograph used the film will change the result (some photograph always shoot at a lower iso speed than the one specified on the film; by example shoot at 50iso instead of 100iso for a 100 iso film)
• the way how the film is developped (chimichal product, time,...) into a negative will change the contrast, ...
• the way how the negative is developped into a photo, the paper used,... will change the final result

All this is the part of the photographic process, and the developpement is a really import part in which one there a big part of "interpretation" (as you can do in Adobe Lightroom).

And the most important part is : you want to see that on the web which implied a scanning process of the final paper photo, or the negative. After scanning, we generaly post process the numerical photo, to readjust contract etc... (because a scanner will interpret what it have seen).

So you must try the films yourself.