Mastin Lab Presets | A New Experiment and Goal #46

One of the photography related goals on my 101 Goals in 1001 Days (v.2.0) list has been to try out Mastin Lab presets.

Kirk Mastin, a photographer based in Washington, developed his presets to emulate the look and feel of film.  From their website, their mission is:

We create tools that preserve the timeless look of film for the digital era.

Our goal is not to replace film, but introduce it to a new generation of photographers. Our hope is that people unfamiliar with the look of real film will fall in love with it through our presets, and start shooting film along with digital.

By increasing the demand for film, we can save it.

Its no secret that I’ve been playing around with film for the last year.  If you’ve been following along I’ve been documenting my journey on my Film Friday posts. Right now, my film work is an added bonus for my clients and I haven’t really been doing much to make the two similar.  My film photos are film and my digital photos are digital. However, as I’ve continue to play with film, I started thinking: what if I could make my digital look a little more like my film photos? Would it change how I shoot a wedding? An engagement shoot?  Would I push myself to do more with film? To be more of a hybrid photographer?

At the moment, I don’t know the answer to these questions.  But I’m entering a phase of experimentation where I’m playing with my digital files and seeing how I can work them seamlessly with my film files.

And let me tell you, I’ve been really happy with Mastin Lab so far! With just a little tweaking on the film end and the presets on the digital end, I’ve gotten my files to look pretty similar to each other.

Take a look!

Left: Film, Right: Digital

Right now I’m experimenting with the Fuji Mastin presets, since Fuji 400H is one of my two favorite film stocks.  However I plan to give their Portra presets a whirl in the near future to see how I like it.  It would be great to be able to emulate the contrast and vibrancy of Portra 800 that I love.  If I give it a whirl, I’ll report back with an update–stay tuned!

For now, that’s another goal checked off my list. Yippee! (Goal #46)