It was a clear day in the forest and I was using a 40-year-old Nikon film camera loaded with Kodak Portra 800 – a relatively high speed colour film that is ideal for landscape and portrait photography. But something about the composition told me the image revealed more about shape and tonal variety than it did about the shades of forest green. I decided to convert the image from colour to monochrome and chose a sepia palette.
The process is available through Lightroom, an Adobe program related to Photoshop, and I recommend it highly to any photographer who wants to explore the potential of post-processing. If you begin with a film-based image, you will find any number of options in Lightroom technology to ensure that the look and impact of film photography will remain intact.
If you have a film camera, all you need to do is submit your completed images to a photo lab and request a high-resolution scan along with your print. The cost is modest and the lab will probably send you a file by e-mail. You can then import the file into Lightroom, where you can adjust countless settings such as exposure and dozens of colour settings and alterations.
Experiment, and don’t hesitate to combine old and new technologies.
“One sunny moment, moving inexorably toward sepia.” ~ Jonathan Galassi
Location: Sunnyside Acres Urban Forest, South Surrey, British Columbia
Date: February 2026
Source: Nikon FE film camera, Kodak Portra 800 film
