darktable preset inspired by LuckyC200

What the style changes

The style sets five darktable modules. It aims at Lucky C200 as reviews describe it on the Lucky C200 film page: saturated reds and greens, subdued blues, firm contrast and visible grain. No manufacturer datasheet exists, so it is built from reviews only. All figures below come from renders made with darktable-cli 5.6.0 at 1000 px, measured in CIELab.

• Saturated reds and greens, restrained blues. rgb primaries makes reds slightly pinker and purer, greens more saturated and blues less pure. The color equalizer adds saturation to red and green (×1.15) and takes it from blue (×0.70). Sky chroma drops from 27.5 to 17.9 and sea chroma from 22.2 to 14.9, about a third each. Skin chroma rises from 16.4 to 21.4 and the pink T-shirt’s from 33.7 to 44.7.
• A slight magenta drift. Reviews disagree on the film’s cast. The style follows the most cited one, magenta: a faint tint in the midtones, green-cyan in the shadows and warmth in the highlights, through a color balance rgb instance named “film”. The sky and sea hues move 6° to 8° toward violet.
• Firm contrast, short latitude. The RGB tone curve steepens the midtones and bunches up the highlights. Contrast rises (Lsd 14.3 → 17.0 on photo 0775, 30.7 → 32.8 on photo 1014), and the 95th lightness percentile goes from 75.2 to 81.3 on photo 0775.
• Visible grain, stronger than the Kodak 200 styles, with an estimated size and strength.

What it leaves alone

• Your base development. The style contains no exposure, no sigmoid or filmic, no white balance and no LUT.
• Your color balance rgb. The style’s instance is named “film”: it is added next to yours, which stays untouched.
• But not your tone curve, rgb primaries, color equalizer or grain. When you apply a style from the lighttable or the darkroom, each of its modules replaces the instance of the same module with the same name, if the photo has one, and is added otherwise. These four modules carry no instance name in the style, so they replace any settings you had already made in them. Your earlier settings remain in the history.
• Your pipeline order. The style file carries no module order list.

Exporting with a style, or rendering with darktable-cli, works differently: every module of the style is added as a separate instance. Our measurements were made that way, on darktable’s default rendering. See Install and apply darktable styles.

Limits

• No datasheet. Contrast, grain and sensitivity rest on reviews alone.
• The reviews disagree on the cast (magenta, cyan, warm). The magenta drift is an interpretation.
• Weak basis for grain. The value (1500 / 18) is estimated from qualitative comparisons.
• Weak basis for greens. The green saturation (×1.15, purity 1.08) follows one sentence from Analog.cafe and is not measured: none of the four test photos has a green area.
• Skin. One review found skin drifting toward magenta. The style leaves skin hue almost unchanged (44.2° → 41.1°).
• Not simulated: the dots and banding of the first batch, and the behavior in long exposures.
• Pale, lilac skies. The sky becomes fairly pale and lilac: watch it on very blue skies.

Tips

• Check skies on very blue scenes and raise blue saturation in your own color equalizer if the lilac is too strong.
• Apply it early. If you plan to fine-tune the tone curve, rgb primaries, color equalizer or grain yourself, apply the style first.
• Everything stays editable. Each module the style sets is an ordinary instance: adjust the grain strength or the “film” color balance rgb afterwards.
• Installation: see Install and apply darktable styles.