Film grain or digital noise: which do you actually prefer?

I shot Kodak Portra 400 for ten years straight then switched to a Fuji X-T30 last summer and realized I missed the grain more than the color shift, so is it really about the look or just nostalgia?

2 comments

2 Comments

lee_grant971mo ago

My buddy Mike shot a wedding on his old Canon 5D Mark II last year, the one from like 2009, and the couple actually asked him to add grain in post because they said the digital noise looked "too clean" and "fake." He spent three hours trying to match the grain from his old film shots but it never quite looked right. Meanwhile, another couple he shot for last month wanted everything perfectly smooth and sharp, no noise at all. So I think it really depends on what vibe people are going for, not just nostalgia. For me, grain has a texture that makes photos feel more real and less like a screen, but noise just looks like a mistake from a bad sensor.

henryf531mo ago

Yeah "too clean" and "fake" is something I hear more often now. People want that film look but dont want to shoot film. Your buddy should try using something like Dehancer or just a really subtle grain overlay from an actual scanned film stock. Lower opacity and change the blend mode to soft light, it works way better than trying to make it in Lightroom or something. Noise reduction is a whole other beast though, you cant fake that with grain. I learned that the hard way shooting a dimly lit church once.