How to Make Digital Photos Look Like Film (Without Using a Preset)

I love film photography just as much as the next guy, but I hate how slow the process can be. Digital cameras make it even more challenging too. Most people start with a preset, add grain, fade the blacks, tune their colors for that Portra look. But what if the reason your photos look digital isn't entirely the edit? What if it's the lens?

Modern cameras and lenses have become EXTREMELY great at clinical, corrected, clean, high contrast images. It's funny because camera manufacturers spent decades engineering every flaw out of camera lenses just for people to go to Lightroom and immediately put the flaws back in.

But the lens matters more than you think. I've tried vintage lenses, filters, presets and grain emulations. The lens does a lot of heavy lifting.

Some of the key characteristics of a film photo would be softness, flare, blooming, vignetting, imperfect edges and weird contrast. A lot of this can be accomplished with the right optic.

I spent nearly a year chasing this right optic. If you know me from YouTube, then you know I've made some very cursed lenses for my mirrorless camera. I've tried taking glass from old lenses, aquarium stones, little optics from 110 film cameras and there's one optic that seems to do the best job yet.

That would be a disposable optic.

And before you click off, I know, there are several products on the market that sell this disposable optic. I felt like all of them were more like toys than tools. So I made my own with some clever features.

Disposable cameras are basically the opposite of everything modern lens manufacturers are trying to accomplish.

The optic is incredibly simple. It isn't trying to win a sharpness test. It isn't packed full of corrective elements. It isn't designed to make the corners of your image look as good as the center.

And that's exactly why I like it.

Put one of these optics in front of a modern digital sensor and you get a really strange combination. You still have all of the conveniences of a digital camera, but the image itself is being formed through this incredibly simple piece of plastic.

Highlights can bloom. The edges aren't perfect. You can get weird flare and vignetting. The image is softer without just looking like someone dragged the clarity slider to -50.

The imperfections are happening before you take the photo.

That's the big difference.

We spent decades removing every optical flaw — then opened Lightroom and put them back in.

If you really want the disposable camera look, use a flash.

Seriously.

Some of my favorite photos I've taken with a disposable optic have been with a flash pointed directly at whatever I'm photographing.

Modern photography has taught us that direct flash is ugly. Bounce it off the ceiling. Diffuse it. Get it off camera. Make it soft.

Or don't.

Disposable cameras don't give a shit about flattering light. You press the button and this tiny flash blasts your friend in the face.

That hard direct light, combined with an imperfect optic, gives you the exact kind of chaotic snapshot look that people spend a ton of time trying to recreate in Lightroom.

Point your camera toward the sun. Put a bright light right outside the frame. Let something flare. Don't immediately correct the vignette. Don't panic because the corner isn't sharp.

One of the weirdest things about getting into vintage and experimental lenses is realizing how many things we've been taught are “problems” can actually make a photograph more interesting.

None of this means presets are bad.

I use Lightroom. I color grade my photos. I'll add grain. I'll change the contrast. I'll screw around with the colors until I like them.

The difference is that I don't want Lightroom to be responsible for creating the entire look.

If the optic already gives me softness, flare, blooming or weird contrast, my edit gets to build on top of that instead of trying to manufacture it from scratch.

I'm not anti-preset. I just don't think the preset should have to do all the work.

This is probably worth mentioning because “film look” has become a ridiculously broad term.

Portra doesn't look like a disposable camera. A disposable camera doesn't look like expired film. Slide film doesn't look like either of them.

So instead of asking yourself how to make your digital photos “look like film,” it might be more useful to ask what you actually like about film photos.

Is it the grain? The colors? The softness? The direct flash? The imperfect focus? The flare? The fact that every photo doesn't look clinically perfect?

Once you figure that out, recreating the feeling becomes a lot easier.

What started as me putting increasingly stupid pieces of glass in front of my camera eventually turned into Adapted Optics.

I liked what I was getting from disposable-camera optics, but I didn't want the lens itself to feel disposable.

I wanted something I could actually focus. I wanted to be able to change the aperture. I wanted a proper focus ring that felt good in my hand. And because I was already going way too far with this project, I wanted people to be able to customize the damn thing too.

That's how I ended up making the Everyday Lens.

At its core is a recycled disposable-camera optic, except now it's inside a purpose-built manual-focus lens system. It focuses from infinity down to around 10 inches, uses interchangeable aperture plates and can be built for six different mirrorless camera mounts.

Is it going to replace the expensive glass in your camera bag?

Absolutely not.

That's not what I made it for.

I made it because sometimes I don't want the technically best image my camera can produce.

Sometimes I want the weird one.

Want to see what I ended up making?

The Everyday Lens puts a recycled disposable-camera optic inside a proper manual-focus lens system for modern mirrorless cameras.

EXPLORE THE EVERYDAY LENS →