Fujifilm X-Trans II film like qualities?

FuzzyDice wrote:

Have you guys checked out the recipes that people have made for Fuji cameras? If you really want to recreate some of those looks, there has been some good success with these recipes.

Nikon’s picture sets also help create some really nice nostalgic looks.

Hi FuzzyDice,

No I haven't. I've seen them but I normally only take RAW and use the fine jpeg (RAW plus fine) as my "contact sheet" to see which raws I actually want to download. I then massage the selected RAWs in C1 to get a balanced image with any geometric distortion removed and then on to Silver Efex. Silver Efex (and Analog Efex) gives preset film simulations and amazing amount of control of global contrast, local contrast (called "soft contrast" in the program). You and amplify either blacks or whites or both and you can do so preserving detail in either end which allows compression or expansion of tonality. There are brightness settings for global and for shadow, midtowns and highlights plus a slider of "dynamic brightness" which often gives nice results. Structure can be added globally or to highlights, midtowns and shadows independently.

By using "control points" local adjustments can be applied.

Each film simulation has a default spectral response and grain. All those can then be edited using a slider. It also has some nice toning options - some of the most realistic toning simulations I have seen. There is also provisions to simulate the effect of classic type lenses through the lens falloff options.

I would say while I start at default - by the time I am finished no two images have had the same exact process applied unless it was by accident. That was pretty much the way I worked in the dark room - each image had its own recipe and if I later reprinted an image the recipe would most likely change depending on my mood, the phase of the moon and how mad my wife or girlfriend was at me.     I could if I wanted save the settings to apply to a different image but it would only be a starting point. I probably like the post processing part of photography more than the actual taking of the RAW images. For me - that is where the fun begins and the magic happens.