Is Old Fuji Color Better? Or Even Different?

Yawlen Z wrote:

Lettermanian wrote:

To my eye, with the cameras I've had and have, the X-Trans III colours are more pleasing than X-Trans IV. I rarely use Velvia but it looks almost unusable on the X-S10, whereas on the X-H1 I did like it in some circumstances. Same with Classic Chrome and Provia. These are all at default values in-camera. I also had a favourite film sim recipe on my X-H1 I called "Warm Chrome", but I am really struggling to replicate it on my X-T3, and haven't even tried on the X-S10. So I think there's something to the difference claims that perhaps are not easily measured with controls

That's all OK with me and I won't contest any of it. It's just we're curious cats so at what concise length would you paraphrase the – perhaps overall – differences that you found out about? After all I'll need to deal with gen. IV coloration character for some while to come. And rely on SOOC redevelopment mostly.

It's so subjective which is why I qualified my statements above with "to my eye". I should say that I have had my X-T3 and X-S10 for only a few months, compared to about three years or so owning two X-H1's, with two side-trips to full-frame in between (Nikon Z5 and Panasonic S5). Overall I would generalize the difference I see in film sim colour to be less subtle, less nuanced in the newer sensors compared to the older ones. Another way of putting it is that the colour tones seems a bit harsher, almost "garish" in some circumstances. Classic Chrome is one of my favourite film sims, but I seem to see differences in the blues and greens the most. Velvia on the newer sensor seems to blow out certain colours in certain conditions, which I don't remember happening too often with my X-H1's, or other cameras before that (X-T20, T10, T1). Provia seems to be duller and unremarkable. Keeping in mind these are all default SOOC jpegs I'm talking about; I don't really enjoy or have time to do much post-processing so I try to get the results I want out-of-camera as much as possible, but I do indeed adjust the jpegs in post when necessary; blasphemy, I know

All that said, after reading this thread I decided to spend an hour or so experimenting with and tweaking film sim recipe's for my X-T3 from the Fuji X Weekly app/website, and I think I have a couple that look good to me. I now have a Warm Chrome that comes very close to what I remembered from my X-H1 days. I especially like it for fall photography. I also have tried a Dramatic Mono recipe which I am happy with after trying them out yesterday. I have decided to sell the X-S10 though; it's a powerful little camera but I will use the X-T3 more.

[ on a wide-angle view to the bunch of both new and revived threads on all this I've even started to wonder if maybe it was necessary for Fujifilm to tune down several profiles, if just to ensure that the engagement of FX boosters would not go blow out colour channels beyond their clipping point all that soon. (?) ]

I don't know, someone would have to do some in-depth testing to see if that has happened. As I said, I would state (subjectively) that there seems to be a loss of colour subtlety, but I can't prove it