What could be the best solution to emulate 16mm film without any plugin or editing, just by adapting your setup ? I went for a CCTV lens paired with a 4x digital zoom in camera.

Step 1 : Shrink your lens

16mm cameras often had C-mount lenses. It's a smaller screw mount that is also used in CCTV cameras. Its flange distance makes it easy to adapt on mirroles cameras.

Important point : they are dirt cheap. You can buy one for less than 20€ on Aliexpress.

I chose a 8 to 50 mm zoom that is not parfocal. It has a three-bladed aperture and is very sharp. The image circle varies depending on the focal length. One the wide end you have to be at 4x magnification to avoid vignetting but on the long end the image circle will cover your sensor area with a 2.5x magnification. I always stay at 4x however, that's actually the second step to achieve the 16mm look.

Step 2 : Shrink your sensor

Modern camera sometimes have a digital zoom function. Everybody hates it. But you'll be surprised how high megapixel photo cameras can preserve quality with a digital zoom in video mode.

My Sony α6300 is 24 megapixel and can record 4K video with full sensor readout at 25p. Needless to say the image crazy sharp. You can digitally zoom 2x and not notice any difference in definition. With a 2x crop you still have 6 megapixels to work with. Remember our full HD screens can show 2 megapixels, not more.

With a 4x zoom you have 1.5 million pixels left :

24 ÷ 4² = 1.5

At this crop factor you really start to see a difference in quality : the image is a little bit blurry and the grain is more coarse.

My point is that this change in quality is an effect we can work with to achieve a more textured look.

Step 3 : the settings

• Set digital zoom at x4

• Set voluntarily your camera to 1000iso to get visible grain

• Chose a cine gamma from the picture profile menu (I went for Cine 3)

• Adjust saturation (my camera is full spectrum so infrared washes out the colors : I ended up cranking the saturation at +32)