Custom Film Simulations on Fujifilm Cameras

One of the main reasons I decided to buy a Fujifilm camera (in my case, the X-S10) earlier this year was the film simulation modes that Fujifilm includes in its cameras. These simulate the look of several of Fujifilm's film stocks and are simple to use - just turn a dial and select which one you want. 

Here are two examples from our cluttered and somewhat neglected back yard. The first is Velvia, which has vivid, saturated colours and high contrast, which makes it ideal for landscapes. The second is Provia, which is the default simulation on Fujifilm cameras.

On my camera, there are 18 choices, covering a wide range of film types, including black and white and ones that are more suited for video.

You might think that 18 choices are enough, but the built-in simulations are designed to emulate only Fujifilm's products. What if you want to emulate a Kodak film like Kodachrorme or Tri-X? 

Fujifilm's cameras let you save custom settings and there are a lot to modify. People have been creating "film recipes" that you can input and save into your camera's custom settings (on my camera, there are four) to emulate other films. I started by saving two: Kodachrome 64 and Tri-X 400, which here two films that I shot a lot of back in the day when I was using film cameras.

Here are examples of the Kodachrome 64 and Tri-X 400 custom simulations.

I will have to try the Kodachrome 64 more but on first glance I like the openness and warmth of the picture. The Tri-X simulation captures the grittiness and graininess of the original film and I will probably use it as my standard black-and-white simulation. 

The Fuji X Weekly website contains film recipes for more than 100 film simulations. There's also an app for mobile devices, although it just contains the recipes and examples; it doesn't load them onto your phone (as far as I know, there's no way of doing that). 

This article contains instructions on how to enter and save custom settings as well as some other useful links. If you want, detailed information about Fuji's film simulations, this article will tell you pretty much everything about them, and it also explains why it's difficult to simulate them in programs like Lightroom (although you can come pretty close).