Fujifilm film simulations are more than just cool names for camera profiles.
Film simulations are the art of the colors that Fujifilm cultivates since decades, so far that the guy, who developed the original Fujifilm film stock already 50 years ago, still works at Fujifilm and is now in charge of crafting the film simulations.
So, colors are a serious thing for Fujifilm and you can see what you can do with them over at our Fujifilm film simulation group.
Now DPRTV published a video, where they go over what they consider the 5 best Fujifilm film simulations.
Monochrome: He prefers it over Acros.
Provia: Standard camera mode. Good standard profile. Does not push things too far. Great skin tones.
Classic Neg: Great for street photography. Distorts reality, but not in a gimmicky way. Great for street scenes, knocks shadows down and makes street scenes look very dramatic, takes away some color and gives a nice vintage look. Aged, rugged look.
Velvia: great for landscapes. Gives contrast and vibrancy. Can add some punchy drama to colors that are faded and muted. Adds a bit of magenta to blue skies, which can be really pleasing in landscape photos. Not great for skin tones
Nostalig Neg: available only on GFX100S and GFX100. Mimics that classic American film stock from the 70s (Kodachrome etc.). Lower contrast but still rich saturation, warm colors.
For Video:
Eterna: For video an almost perfect profile. Very easy to grade. When he shoots high contrast scenes, he shoots F-Log, but in post he will immediately put an Eterna LUT on the file. Jordan loves Eterna
Where I don’t agree, is when they say ASTIA is boring. In fact, it is actually one of my top favorite film simulation, because it gives me a great balance between pleasing skin tones and vivid, but not oversaturated colors. I use ASTIA almost always when I take landscape images with people in the frame. I find it gives me the best results, better than Velvia, which is not great for skin tones.
When the ultra fast Fujinon GF80mmF1.7 was launched, some noticed a minimal sign of fringing when pixel peeping into images to ultra detailed pixel level. Something to worry about?
Apparently not.
According to ePHOTOzine, who just published its full technical review, the GF80mmF1.7 is able to contain chromatic aberration extremely well. They write:
CA (Chromatic Aberration) is also very impressive, centrally being close to zero as we stop down slightly. The edges are also kept well under control.
I did play around with the GF80mmF1.7 of my close friend too (he sold all his Nikon Z gear for the GFX system) and quite frankly it’s a stunning performer in terms of optical quality.
Down below you can see the Pros and Cons of the ePHOTOzine review.
I did handle the Fujinon GF100-200mmF5.6 at the store, and was surprised that it is actually so light, hence definitely portable for my hikes in the Dolomites.
However, I did put the purchase of that lens on hold, as in 2021 I already bought the XF80mm, XF27MKII, GFX100S and GF32-64, and it’s getting more and more tricky to convince my wife that we really need yet another lens.
And things have not become easier after Fujifilm launched a massive rebate on guess which lens? Exactly, the GF100-200!
For the sake of my bank account health I am still resisting, but Fujifilm keeps up fighting for my money, this time by dedicating their latest Focus on Glass episode to the Fujinon GF100-200mmF5.6.
Well, I’ve watched the episode, and here is what Fujifilm engineers and managers say about this lens:
Fujifilm wanted to make a tele-zoom suitable for handheld shooting
they needed to develop a smaller and lighter lens
at planing stage, they set their target at 1 kg
the lens has 5 stops OIS
this makes handheld shooting easier
Fujifilm hopes you will use this lens to take images that you have never experienced before with a 35mm format lens
with GF teleconverter it covers up to 221mm (35mm equivalent)
during the development tests, Fujifilm has conducted repeated toughness tests
it is a rugged lens while maintaining lightness and compactness
although it’s a zoom, resolution is superb and able to resolve the high megapixel of GFX cameras over the entire zoom range and even at f/5.6
in order to make the lens brighter and still have higher resolving power, a greater number of elements in the lens are required
but the more elements you use, the more the lens gets bigger
that’s why Fujifilm designed ever lens element to be as thing as possible
every effort to save size and weight was made
the engineer is proud of the final result
you can easily shoot handheld in places where you can bring a tripod
Fujifilm designed a small focus lock mechanism to fit in the lens
toughness test were contacted to overcome weaknesses on by one
But was is triggering my GAS more then what the managers and engineers said, is the photographers and their work shared inside that video. Definitely check it out in the video down below.
FR-reader Moritz made me notice on Twitter here, that a couple of weeks ago MacOS Big Sur added uncompressed RAW support for additional Fujifilm cameras.
This means you can now edit RAW files from Fujifilm X-T4, X-S10 and more in all major image editing apps on iPad as well as apps on macOS that use the RAW engine provided by iOS (Apple Core Image RAW), such as Affinity Photo or one of my favorites, RAW Power.
TIPA has worked very hard and made a brutal selection, in which only the very best of the crème de la crème of the top of the top could win their extremely prestigious TIPA award.
Or in other words: camera companies paid again a lot of money to win meaningless awards.
And in order to make it even easier for companies to win (and hence make more money by selling award licenses), they created tons of categories, such as “expert”, “advanced” and “professional”.
According to our sources, Fujifilm has moved the announcement of the upcoming affordable GF zoom lens from the first half 2021 to the second half 2021. Don’t worry, it won’t be delayed further to 2022. It will 100% arrive within 2021.
I don’t know if this delay is related to the shortage of parts announced by Fujifilm. Anyway, I thought it was worth to keep you up to date with the latest developments.
Anyway, it makes little difference to the substance of that rumor, which is that it will be Fuji’s most affordable G mount lens and come soon.
