One of my favourit features about Fuji digital cameras are film simulation recipes. The main reason for that is that I hate post-processing. I want to take photos and get what I wanted without having to import them to some kind of software on my Mac to edit it until I like it. Therefor I experiment a lot with this functionality. This time I tried to recreate the look of an analog film I really liked. No, it is not Portra 400, I’m talking about Amber T800. This is not a film you hear a lot about, which is a shame in my oppinion. I took some of my absolute favourite photos using this film stock. The photo of the casctus in this post for example was taken using Amber 800T and a Leica Minilux.
Example photos of this filmsimulation recipe, which I took using a Fuji X Pro 3, can be found at the end of this post.
The Look
What I like about Abmer T800 is the slightly colder and not too saturated colors as well as the way shadows are treated, it is a Tungsten balanced film after all. In my recipe I use auto whitebalance to make it easier to shoot with in different lighting conditions, while still keeping its overall look by adjusting it to be less red and less blue, giving it a “greenish” tint, which in my oppion simulates the Tungsten look pretty well. Even though real Tungsten balanced film does not work that way, why not benefit from the possibility to “cheat” like that with a digital camera.
The Recipe
To create this look I use the following settings on my Fuji X Pro 3:
- Film Simulation: Classic neg.
- Grain Effect: Off (you can turn that to weak or even high, if you want the “full film experience”)
- Color Chrome Effect: Off
- Color Chrome FX Blue: Weak
- White Balance: Auto / R: -3 B: -6
- Dynamic Range: 400
- Tone Curve: H: -2 S: -2
- Color: 0
- Sharpness: -2
- Noise Reduction: -4
- Clarity: 0