I love saturated, punchy, bright colors. Always have, (hopefully) always will. Before I got this X100V, I’d typically take shots on an iPhone and apply iOS’ ‘Vivid’ filter — I can see that in a number of my older posts from 2019 and 2020. Bold colors, popping scenes, fun pictures! One of my goals with the X100V is to not edit pictures after they’re taken. That’s why I add “SOOC-JPGs” to the bottom of each ‘Gram post — it means “Straight Out Of Camera JPG”: I didn’t do any color editing, filtering, or corrections once the picture was taken. What I saw is what you get!

With Fujifilm’s platform being so dedicated toward capturing the tonalities of old film stocks, I’ve enjoyed a couple of different tones recently. When we went to Hocking Hills I was shooting a Kodak Portra style (digital) film. To me it feels like ‘the memory film’ — colors are a little muted and almost washed out. It feels like memories look. I shot a similar style when we went to Cedar Point a few days prior.

Contrast that with something like the Fuji Pro 400H (digital) film I shot in German Village and out over the Scioto River in Dublin. Definitely more contrasty than the Portra; it really pulls out a lot of the greens, Earth-tones, and reds but still has a bit of a muted ‘memory’ vibe to it.

After reading through plenty of the Fuji X Weekly digital film recipes, seeing Ken Rockwell’s Fuji Velvia 50 gallery (which is incredible, please go look at some of those shots) and seeing many of my friend Scott Walker’s vibrant outdoor shots (also incredible and very much worth a look) I knew that I needed to put together a tweaked digital film that would capture the brilliant, vibrant images I wanted. Popping skies, grasses and forests, and little details. Up to snuff for even Ken Rockwell without ever having to edit an image after-the-fact. I think I’ve done it.

I reprocessed a number of Fuji RAW photos I’ve taken in the last few months directly on-camera with this new digital film via Fuji’s X RAW Studio application and the results are just fantastic. Even for something like this quick shot out the window while driving, the clouds just seem to pop right out of the sky. Loving it.

Fantastic. Haven’t had a chance to take this out to some real bodies of water / mountains in broad daylight yet but very much looking forward to doing so.

For those interested, this is a slight variation of FXW’s “The Rockwell” for X-Trans IV sensors (a la my X100V) so credit is due there! I only changed a few details just a litte bit. Here’s the recipe:

V1

• Film base: Velvia
• Dynamic Range: DR200
• Highlight: -2
• Shadow: -2
• Color: +4
• Noise Reduction: -4
• Sharpening: +1
• Clarity: +5
• Grain Effect: Off
• Color Chrome Effect: Strong
• Color Chrome Effect Blue: Strong
• White Balance: Auto, 0 Red & +1 Blue
• ISO: Auto, up to ISO 3200
• Exposure Compensation: +1/3 to +2/3

V2

• Film base: Velvia
• Dynamic Range: DR400
• Highlight: -2
• Shadow: -2
• Color: +4
• Noise Reduction: -4
• Sharpening: +2
• Clarity: 0
• Grain Effect: Off
• Color Chrome Effect: Strong
• Color Chrome Effect Blue: Strong
• White Balance: Auto, +1 Red & -1 Blue
• ISO: Auto, up to ISO 3200
• Exposure Compensation: +1/3 to +2/3

V3

• Film base: Velvia
• Dynamic Range: DR200
• Highlight: -2
• Shadow: -2
• Color: +4
• Noise Reduction: 0
• Sharpening: +3
• Clarity: +2
• Grain Effect: Off
• Color Chrome Effect: Strong
• Color Chrome Effect Blue: Strong
• White Balance: Auto, +1 Red & -1 Blue
• ISO: Auto, up to ISO 6400
• Exposure Compensation: +1/3 to +2/3

Making V3 to get rid of the NR and drop down to DR200 to allow for lower ISO (DR400 = ISO 640 MIN) — generally just moving away from grain! Added one more notch of sharpening. ISO up to 6400 since that’s my normal now. Added +2 clarity since it does help and this film should be slow-shooting anyway

Jon’s ASTIA is the same recipe, just with Astia as the base film sim and color only +1, not +4.