getting a national geographic look with digital

i'm interested in how to emulate a certain national geographic 'look'

with images shot from digital slrs. NG images, particularly the low-

light, hand-held ones, have that consistent look of sharpness and

high-grain with ruddy saturation. i believe this was the product of

mostly pushing kodak 200 chrome 1 or 2 stops, and a specialized

darkroom process used only at NG. are there any plug-ins out there

available to emulate this look, ie: adding grain density without

adding noise, as well as adding a bit of 'pop'?

I tried Virtual Photographer by Optikvervelabs and liked it. It's free so no risk if it still does not reach your needs. www.optikvervelabs.com

Try having your digital images printed bulk in a magazine via CMYK.

 

While a lot of the attributes of National Geo shooting is due to the staff's historic reliance on K64, Velvia, and warming gels on their flash fills, it's also due to their publishing technique. You haven't seen the original chromes.

I'd say its exactly what Scott said. I visited their labs a year ago and saw shots and things on light boxes and on screen being edited. They have an editing crew that does extensive retouching and fine tuning of many of the images.

If you look online at nationalgeographic.com you will find an excellent archive of recent years' articles complete with details on what films, settings and techniques the photographers used. I've learned a lot from looking at their pictures and comparing to the information from the photogs. Just click on an edition, and then on an article, and look for selects of certain photos along the vertical banner on the left-hand side.

 

http://magma.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/archives.html

 

Enjoy!

 

Adam

I dropped my NG subscription a few years ago. Picking it up recently, I was shocked at how their standards have changed. Lots of hyper-noisy ("grainy") high-ISO digital stuff that's not sharp -- and too often, not compelling either.