Thank you Oehagen! Hopefully it will over time. It’s a bit esoteric, so it will likely take time to find the audience it’s intended for. Thank you for your support!
10 months for me. Looking at changing brands, for portability reasons and wanted to understand the film simulations. I shoot film also, so this was an excellent way to learn. Thanks.
Agreed! I’ve been shooting Fujifilm since 2012 and this is extremely useful detail and the most thorough explanation. There are differences between bodies and lenses. I immediately noticed that the XT5 has more contrast than the XT4, and the 56 f1.2 WR is much warmer than the 18mm f1.4 or 33 f1.4, so images from the new 56mm need to be about 400-500K cooler than the other lenses. I was also a Mastin Labs tester and find those film presets to be an excellent starting point while editing.
This is not the run of the mill RU-vid video about simulations, it's a masterclass Color Science of Film. Excellent work, thanks for sharing your knowledge with us.
I've been saying for years that the real power of film simulations would be unlocked if Fuji were to add an HSL adjustment for individual colors. Great video!
As someone with tetrachromacy (someone who can see more colors than the average person,) I have always had a love/hate relationship with colors. I’m the type of person, who, when choosing a paint color, has to get really scientific about and crazy absorbed in all the nuances of each color option. Color ocd, if you will. As I’m sure you can imagine, this has (unfortunately?) translated to my photo editing as well. It’s a blessing and a curse, but what I’m getting at here is this: your video has been one of the MOST helpful I have ever seen in terms of explaining and unpacking the finer details of the wonderful world of Fujifilm simulations. You broke things down so scientifically and did such a lovely job of explaining how hints in a way that was easy to follow and understand. This video was the reason I subscribed to your channel today. So, all of that to simply say: THANK YOU!
I'll second some of the comments below in saying that this is an exceptional explanation of how to better understand and implement Fuji film sims. I'll also add that every video that comes out of this channel is amazing. If I could double subscribe to this channel I would. Keep up the amazing work.
With the DR200 and DR400 modes the amount of analog amplification is reduced. So, when you take the a photo, it'll be underexposed and highlights are preserved. Then a specific DR200 or DR400 tone curve is applied in camera software to get the right exposure. (These DR200 and DR400 tone curves are different as the DR100 one, otherwise the camera would blow the highlights again and this would all be for nothing.) In the end you'll have a photo with the right exposure, but with far more details in the highlights and a tiny bit more noise - mostly in the shadows. This also works for RAW photos. IMHO It gives a bit of a film look to the photos - especially with ACROS with it's special noise algorithm. I love photography, but using my camera, not my computer. So I am a Fuji SOOC JPEG shooter and I almost always shoot with DR400. I set my ISO to 800 (auto ISO 800 - 6400), because ISO800 produces less noise as the ISO640 that is minimal needed for DR400 on my XT30 camera. Only when situation demands, I reduce the DR to 200 or turn it off by setting it to 100. I use the same settings on my X100S. Modern day digital cameras are so incredible good at higher ISO, especially Fujis with X-trans sensors. With the X-trans sensors you'll won't spot those ugly high ISO purple and green blobs on your photos between ISO 160 - 6400! The noise looks rather organic. More film grain like.
For me 6400 is waay too grainy on x-trans 1 an 2 sensors, but 5000 is still okay. Sad that it is only possible to limit auto ISO at 3200 or 6400 with nothing in beetwen.
Wowww …. Tremendous video, so practical and powerful. This is why I joined the fuji community after years of shooting Nikon. It’s so much more than camera gear. It’s also about controlling the image quality in terms of all the parameters that render the image.
I loved your explanation of film color and emotion, I’d listen to you talk for hours about why certain film were given characteristics to evoke certain emotions
Very kind comment! Thank you!! I'm always super fascinated by this stuff - but some of it is no longer really researchable. Lots of proprietary/trade information that is withheld from public access, or those who designed them may not longer be alive, etc. Much of what we know is just what was printed or communicated at the time, which is insightful but rarely the whole story.
Man... I have seen a lot of videos about this topic... but yours is definitely the best one and the more complete. On point with every topic mentioned!
Thank you so very much!! Yes, it’s nice to know that they will always remain two different mediums - but it’s also good to know what aspects of filmic images we like so we can manipulate some of those things in our digital images. Ultimate control over your image-making should be the end goal.
Thank you for this indepth evaluation! I have a X70 and a X100v. Film simulation is where the fun is for me. Profesionally i use Nikon and Blackmagic. I turn to Fuji to only enjoy the process of quick snap, both these camera’s give me a lot joy. On a personal note, its always enjoyable watching your videos. You have a relaxed natural vibe that really makes it easy watching start to finish.
Got my XH2s yesterday, great timing. Im neck deep trying to decide which film sim i want most for each type of subject. Also, it's damn criminal you only have 36k subs, this channel is amazing.
Very well done video. However for those that want a true film look, I suggest shooting some slide film. Seeing a well exposed slide on a light table is an eye opening experience.
I have just acquired a Fujifilm X-T5, and I'm on a steep learning curve. This is a BRILLIANT video. Much to digest, and it will no doubt take me quite some time to get my head around the many subtleties and details, but I feel as if I have a much better grasp of this subject (about which I knew nothing 2 weeks ago!), than I did before. I'll be rewatching this for sure. (As an Aussie viewer, I also appreciate the ironic sense of humour! 😉)
Thanks for the great words! Happy to have a new, enthusiastic viewer! Sadly the algorithm likes to hide our videos sometimes. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ But we’re happy you found us!
A trick I use to avoid the delay when using the clarity parameter in a custom profile is to shoot in CL mode instead of S mode. This prevents the camera from displaying that annoying “STORING” screen
Fantastic explanation of the differences between the simulations. I am learning how valuable understanding them can be. I didn't know about the fast shadow roll-off on Astia before, or recommendation for nature as a compromise between Provia and Velvia. For interior shots, even indoor naturally lit portraits, I have noticed that classic chrome, which you seem to like, is a great choice because lighter coloured walls (espec white) really stand out and give the interior a cleaner brighter look (if that is important in your photo). Thanks!!
What a cool video. I'm constantly in and out of weird affair with Fujifilm and other brands. On the one hand I love getting baked in JPEGs so I don't have to edit...because I hate editing. But I can get better files using RAW, especially from my Canons/Sony/Nikons, and then just use presets to get "close enough" to the film simulations.
I’ve read that when shooting “Blow Up”, Antonioni painted trees, grass, roads, and houses (remember the row of red houses?) to achieve a heightened reality. This is also mentioned in the documentary, “Blow Up of ‘Blow Up’”. Antonioni made the producers get a tons of different shades of red to test for the houses, seemingly so many that it annoyed them a bit.
Great information here! I personally haven’t liked most of the recipes I’ve seen because they just don’t look like their film counterparts. After dabbling with them, I went back to shooting RAW and working with a few presets I like. As someone who shot Kodachrome a lot from the 70s through the 90s, I can say Kodachrome was known for punchy color, and Classic Chrome is much too faded to look anything like it. From what I’ve read, Classic Chrome’s creators were going for the memory of Kodak-ish transparency film, not actually trying to replicate Kodachrome. Wouldn’t it be great if Kodak went back to building sensors with Kodachromey color!
I appreciate the great comment. The tricky thing about matching to film, especially colour film is that the lenses, subject, and most importantly development play a huge role in the look, regardless of calibrated chemistry. So, if someone is matching to Kodachrome, my question would always be - to what image or set of images. Also - only recently have some advancements been made in translating the additive colour mixing science into a decent representation of subtractive colour properties. From what I can tell it’s still only available in post and is not an easy nor inexpensive process. Thus, simulations IMO should be treated more like instagram filters. Just another way of making your jpg’s seem unique and a bit more special - or custom created to a shooting scenario.
@@vistek I agree. I have a few Kodachrome presets and none of them get the colors *and the skin tones* all right, but they’re better than nothing. And better than recipes. Kodachrome was processed very specifically by machines and chemicals provided by Kodak, and the great majority of the few labs with that capability were owned by Kodak, so I would think that developing at least was pretty consistent. But for sure all the other variables you mention applied. Plus the fact that there were several generations of Kodachrome, so as you said: which one are you matching to? Great channel! I just found you but I am enjoying your well thought out content.
Eterna is actually one of my favorite recipes to mess with and tweak in post. I need to start making and messing around with more SOOC images, but Eterna's been my go to as a base to start editing on for the past few years at this point, as well as Acros. Also when using Acros, turn the grain setting off, the recipe itself actually has it's own grain that shows more in the shadows. If I want more grain out of that recipe, i'll shoot at a higher ISO for it to look more natural.
Well, you certainly can’t have Fujifilm style looks in a Sony. You can do quite a bit of futzing with picture profiles in Sony cameras - and perhaps you can create some nice recipes. But I don’t know if it’s something that will match what FF can do. I’d say that Nikon or Panasonic (S5II) offer a closer experience with their custom LUT/Look feature.
Jumping off of Sony, which I dearly love, for the XT3. I've spent more time creating film emulations in programs, and less time actually shooting. I prefer my OM1 from 1974 for the ultimate satisfaction, and the XT3 filled that spot perfectly. I can now extract the joy of just ripping JPEGs as I scoot along on certain travels. Video also!
The DR200/400 setting to my knowledge samples highlights at base iso, and the shadows at the higher iso. Or in other words it provides 1 or 2 stops of highlight retention/shadow boost depending on the setting. If you know you’ll be developing in-camera, it does what I’d be doing anyway in post for people shots-trimming the highlights and boosting the shadows. Works excellently. What I don’t know is if the information is embedded in the RAW and usable in LRC. Fujis film simulations are fantastic and I love them. That said, your detailed review explains why I am generally always shooting raw-even when my “stock” JPEG settings work well, there is always a need for subtle tweaks or sometimes a totally different film sim. I love Astia for example, has the contrast I want sometimes, but it can be too yellow. Love provia, but it can be too flat. And so on. It’s nice to have a profile setup-as it makes creating JPEGs in-camera much faster.
Great video, thank you. I've been wanting to switch to a Fujifilm camera just for the film simulations. I also think tweaks in post take to long and and not always render the same results. I'm getting the X-T5.
I watched this a few days ago. It came up again on my "recommended for you" feed. (Ha!) I didn't leave a comment the first time, but I will this time. This is an excellent explanation of Fuji's film simulations. Well done and thank you. Subbed!
Turn of raw. Stop , think, act. Get rid of FOMO and delete photoshop. Just shoot. If it’s not good, try again next time. Probably not if you’re not good but charge people for it. Then you need to have the backup to edit. But if it’s private ? Holiday ? Take a picture and breath. Take another one. If you do not have a perfect picture of every 20th second in your holiday you will not loose followers. FOMO kids shoot raw.
Wow! What an awesome video! I do have one basic question, and it may well be a stupid question, but if I start messing with a recipe based on say Astia but decide my adjustments are rubbish, how do I get back to the original settings for Astia?
U R a 💎 ❤ 🙏👍. As usual great help for Fujifilm user or any other so far. Great great great help man. We’re so grateful to have someone like u🎉. Thanks Maestro 🙏
Thanks for the rad comment!! I so very much appreciate the super kind words. More than anything, I am making the content that I want to see - so just happy others can enjoy it too.
* cries in x-trans 1 * Even with the limited film sims though, there are some recipes that get me closer to the fujifilm films I shot a lot - like bumping saturation and contrast on Velvia to get a little closer to Velvia50 and some other good stuff in Monochrome.
Thank you SF! Great question - here's what I think... Grain is something that responds differently based on luminance (i.e. it will have a different appearance in the blacks vs mids vs highlights). Different stocks, different development methods can all effect this as well. So, when we look at real film grain we should see some irregularities in its appearance - sometimes obvious, sometimes subtle. That all being stated, I find that the samples I show 'at first glance' seem to be very similar. But if you dive deep into the images you will see that the Kodak film stock shows softness and raised blacks. Part of film grain is that it reduces resolution and the more grain, the lower the contrast. So a tell-tale sign of fake grain is grain overlayed on a sharp, high contrast digital image - regardless of how "organic" the grain structure is. If you compare the grain structure of the Fujifilm and the actual Kodak stock, you will see they are a very close match. Fujifilm also does a great job of softening the image. But the blacks are still a bit too digital, IMO. For me, the Fujifilm image still looks a bit digital. The Adobe result is good - I tried to match the grain as best I could, but it's a finer grain and the image is still very sharp with deep blacks. I suppose I could have gone in and kept tinkering with the Adobe image to match the blacks and softness better. Short answer: There are so many variables, but if if you can understand what effect grain makes on an image (organically), then you can make adjustments in post to try to get you as close as possible. The balance is just personal taste.
The difference between the film and the sensor is that film should be considered as something with a built-in "look" baked in while digital raw is look "ignorant" and you should do this "look" thing yourself. Just to add a fun fact: A lot of people find that digital is worse than film, is because when the digital transition happens, for most people with normal budget cameras, they hurt the most. Until the very late that I realized, in the early days when I was a kid, what I actually shot on my family point-and-shoot was actually a 35mm FULL-FRAME equivalent 5K-8K sensor with a dynamic range of 12-15 stops...... That's just about the same specs of my current camera Sony A7R2..... No wonder all those old photos ---- even though all taken very unprofessionally, on a point-and-shoot, still looks really good now...... Because back in the days no matter what camera you have, we all shoot on a FLAGSHIP FULL-FRAME SENSOR....... And that point-and-shoot I use as a kid is actually the equivalent of the full-frame Sony RX1....... Just how ironic!
Thank you so much for the lovely explanation. Gave me a lot of insight as to how Film Recipes are different to just filters. I was wondering if the film simulation are overlaying the noise over the image in a way that the blacks are a bit noisier than the whites (like the screen overlay option on photoshop).
I somewhat agree - though, then it begs the question of where it stops ... then you have to add a whole bunch of other features on an app no one pays for. So it's money in a hole. Where as you could use Capture One, which is basically XRaw Studio (much of the same functionality) - but also Capture One. I use Photoshop primarily and it's never really been an issue porting over the image.
The only images that look sorta like film are the ones the original X100 produced (and maybe X-PRO1). The latest X100V and others look the least "filmy".
Thanks for all that. I'll point out that the Dynamic Range function does more than just restrict your ISO. However the higher the setting you choose, the higher the ISO threshold that lets you use the feature will be. Take a high contrast picture at ISO800 with DR set to off and set to DR400% and you'll get a massively different result, although the ISO setting didn't change. I like the feature sometimes in order to keep more highlights in the sky on landscape shots, but it does tend to produce a flat looking image that requires some post-processing to recover mid range contrast. Cheers.
Thanks for this great comment and insight. In my years of discussing the feature with FF, they’ve never revealed to me that it was much more outside of the grey point functionality. But I love this insight because obviously there is more at play. In the end, one is going to have to give up something to get something.
Thank you for such a rewarding video! Finally there's an explanation why Classic Chrome looks nothing like a real Kodachrome slide. Like my Dad's slides, Kodachrome was also highly prized for its archival properties. Why the need for all these faded simulations? Actually your examples of Classic Negative seems much closer to Kodachrome. I'll have to try it, especially now that my eyes have been tuned from viewing actual Kodachrome slides.
This video is absolutely fantastic mate. I’ll watch the first part about what each is another time. Or two I’m sure. Thanks so much for such a robust, and clear, discussion of the film sims - great for previous film shooters and digital newcomers. Great job.
Thanks for the great comment, Haerleif. Yes, I suppose that would be helpful for some. I chose to do it this way to force you to watch them all so you have context for each simulation.
Are these jpegs out of camera good enough to print? I ask as I focus on projects and limited edition prints on cotton paper. I have always thought I needed to work from raw. But, if I could just do it with a jpeg that might save me a ton of time. I don’t shoot product, weddings, or editorial. Just personal, long term reportage and limited prints.
Thanks for the comment. The TLDR answer is YES. I’d be interested to see what others’ experience are, but in my life as a photographer I’ve printed many of my images. Up to about 3x4 feet. I’ve printed from low resolution cameras and high. I’ve printed from nearly every brand, and I’ve printed from supplying the printer with tiff and jpg files. In every single case, the differences are imperceptible to me outside of native camera resolution. This is just my experience. It depends largely on what you want to see out of your image, how you display it, and the size of the print. But in most cases you’d be hard pressed to see a quantifiable difference.
Great timing on this. I just had a Fujifilm X100V delivered. It's a lot of fun, just for the film simulations. I'm trying to decide how to set it up with film simulations as there are so many options. As far as I can tell, I'm limited to 7 custom settings, thus 7 film simulations. Am I wrong?
Thanks for the comment, Sky. Yes, you are correct. In camera you are limited to the custom banks. However, in Fuji X Raw Studio you can also create custom sims and save them. It’s not a complete solution, but it does mean that you can at the very least export your raw files with (as far as I can tell) unlimited simulations.
Nice video, but here we go. PRO-via not pro-VEE-uh VEL-via nor vel-VEE-uh SEE-pia not SEH-pia If you're going to say ASS-tia, you should be saying then all the same way. I worked with a Fuji rep back in my Ritz Camera days (1980-1985, 7 Corners Falls Church VA) and that's how he and other Fufi professionals said the names. Really good tutorial though.
Question (seriously), why does it matter? Certainly the Japanese people who came up with these names aren't asking all the western english speakers to ensure their pronunciation is correct? With language, the goal is comprehension. So if I say a word a bit differently, and everyone still knows exactly what I mean - does it matter? I'm open to considering something I've not yet considered, but I can't help but to be puzzled what it matters to some people so much. Like, everyone says "bokeh" differently...
You say Fujifilm has not been in the video space. You are aware they have been in professional video space for decades right? Many of the cameras used to record professional sports on TV were done on Fujifilm lenses and sensors. Some of their lenses included the SuperCCD sensor in them.
You are correct, but so am I. Making lenses and sensors is a very different thing than making complete video cameras, from an infrastructure/R&D perspective.
thanks for the comment! I'll try to slow down, but I also don't want my videos to be an hour long. My assumption is that the audience can easily re-watch segments that they didn't comprehend in the first pass.
