Fujifilm X-Trans II film like qualities?

EOS GUY wrote:

Truman Prevatt wrote:

EOS GUY wrote:

John Gellings wrote:

eabeukes wrote:

I have a X100S and actually sold my Canon 5D kit to get a XH1 as I liked t he look and feel of the Fuji so much. I now also have a XE2 and while it’s great for street, the magic you are after is in the X100 series. There’s a definite film feel to images out the camera, and a magic quality that’s not present on the later ones.
try an older x100/s/t - they’re not too expensive now and you’ll see what everyone means by the magic!

The only X100 with a different sensor than other Fuji cameras is the first one... and it doesn’t look like film. Maybe you like the lens in the X100 series...

I wonder if the people who think it looks like film have shot film?

I've shot film and only film really looks like film.

Digital is not film no more than a water color painting is an oil painting. It doesn't matter if is an XTrans, Bayer or a CFA designed by Joe the garbage man who claims it is better than canned beer. It is not film.

It is interesting that there seems to be a real desire to make this new medium look like film.

I do have prints that I could (possibly) convince you and others were from film but that is only down to PP and picking specific papers.

These two printed on a good high gloss do look quite filmic for example, Especially the first one.

I don't go out of my way to make them look like film, it just turns out my preferred aesthetic does look a lot less digital. I crank up saturation, I like a nice warm WB and go for high contrast while reducing HL (Film HL's are much more subtle) and boosting midtone to compensate with strong shadows

As I mentioned I love sensors that look as least close to real life as possible and prefer Canon and Fuji thus. Nikon really does to me reproduce natural colour best and Olympus looked TOO real for me! Sony (no offense to anyone) looks like a video clip, so true to life (but often with odd casts and artifacts on the A6000 I tested and other Sony camera sample reviews I've seen, just my opinion YMMV etc) I'd have to PP the heck out of it for my tastes.

This one I find looks somewhat 'Portra' like in the reds and yellow. If I crushed the shadows a bit more, and +10 saturation, even moreso. Again I don't try to emulate film, I just noticed my own PP aesthetic does look a tad closer to it

I think though if I DID want to emulate film I wouldn't waste my time with a digital camera and processing.

I'd do this crazy thing called 'shooting with film'

EOS Guy,

Your points are very good. Personal preferences are the key. A photograph can be a lot of things but as a creative medium - it is a representation of how one views the world or using an image to express an emotion or tell a story. Your point about how film and digital handle highlights is a key to any discussion on photography. Film is a physical/chemical medium. Photons react with silver halide crystals of irregular size and shape and chemistry is used to react with this modified silver halide. More importantly the dynamic range of film is not linear and the dynamic range of digital is linear. It is the shoulder/toe that give film much of its unique look. In color print film there is a fair amount of latitude in recovering highlights and shadows in the dark room or from a good scanned version. In B&W film there is even more exposure latitude because of the non-linearity of the toe/shoulder.

My preference is B&W because I find stripping the color allows one to address the key elements of the subject and color often changes the emotional context of the image. So in that regard, I process the snot out of my images. However, as W. Eugene Smith said, “Negatives are the notebooks, the jottings, the false starts, the whims, the poor drafts, and the good draft but never the completed version of the work… The print and a proper one is the only completed photograph."

I've been toying with picking up a Leica M10 monochrome.  There are pluses and minuses for doing that vs. converting B&W.  However, I already have the filters so I don't see it as a big issue and 50 years of experience in B&W.  I suspect at some point I will.

But it never ceases to amaze me all the conversation of what seems to be a positive attribute of some digital cameras to produce images that are "film like."  Personally I don't see many images out of the camera that are film like.  I know I have to work pretty hard at times to produce a good B&W that reminds me of the beautiful silver gelatin prints with glowing highlights like those that come out of the darkroom.