Look closely, either there is a smudge on the center of the lens in all the shots or there is something going on as there is always a subtle light spot in the middle of the shots.
(Maybe those hoofers and kickin' in, muahahahaha!)
The Fuji S3 Pro has that color profile in .jpg in camera. Set everything for organic and Adobe color space, and the colors and contrasts seem muted about like the ones in the images in the slideshow in the link. It gives a very wide dynamic range with those settings.
eta,
Maybe that's just the actual colors in that place. Way back in the 30's and 40's most of the world was black and white. I know that because my son told me that it used to be black and white when he was about 5 or 6, 'cause none of the old movies had color.
what am I missing? just looks like a bunch of people at a theme park.
The colors are vaguely washed out, slightly pastel looking, and the color balance seems slightly on the cool side. The effect has a sort of a retro, 50's look to it, especially by comparison to the hyper-saturation so many of us (ahem...ermmm...) are prone to using in the digital age.
I'd be looking at duping the base layer, making a lower-contrast b/w of the duped layer, then duping THAT layer; set the top layer in color mode and the middle layer in soft light mode. Adjust color by fading the top layer, and adjust contrast by fading the middle layer. Possibly add a very slight cooling filter on a final layer, not sure.
That's just an off-the-cuff stab at what might work for me, I haven't tried it.
To me they look like old photos, so slightly strange colours :)
I was shocked when opening it for it to be the town just up the road where I worked!
I loved that kiddies theme park, Joy Land when I was little!!!!!
Maybe someone who is fashion savvy can date the photos by the clothing. If they are more than 10 years old, they were probably shot with film.
Another factor may have been a very bad or dirty lens. Some lenses just do not render good contrast, which might produce an effect similar to Bear_Music's processing suggestion.
Bear, i tried to make an action to replicate the look and basically did the same thing that you had suggested along with some selective hue sat and selective color layers. it isnt perfect but definitely achieves the same effect
