A convenient model happened by....
I was catching up on my Fuji lore when I happened upon a YouTube channel hosted by Omar Gonzales. He's a Fuji user and he grabbed my attention with a headline that read something like: "
Loading Film into the Fuji Xpro3." I dived right in. Omar seems like a smart guy even if he does go on a little long and a little slower than I'd like, but the gist of his video was that there is a site dedicated to making film profiles for Fuji cameras that mimic classic films we used to cherish.
The site is: Fujixweekly.com and if you are a Fuji shooter it's like Christmas morning. I immediately started scrolling around to see if they had a profile for my favorite film of all time: Kodak's Tri-X. Yes. They do. It's right here: https://fujixweekly.com/2020/06/18/fujifilm-x100v-film-simulation-recipe-kodak-tri-x-400/
The recipe includes shadow, clarity, chrome, WB tweaks and much more. I won't lay it out here because you should reward Fujixweekly.com for their fine work by paying them the visit.
I sat down on the couch with my laptop open to the Tri-X page and dutifully changed all the parameters as suggested. There are about 12 steps so it's nothing cripplingly difficult. While there are many, many profiles to chose from they are divided into sensor types in the Fuji family. The reason is that Fuji keeps adding more and more controllable parameters with each new generation of sensor and processing.
The profiles I'm most interested in are the ones that are tweaked for the current 26 megapixel sensor cameras since that's what I'm shooting with right now. All the profiles can be used across the Fuji line but older cameras won't have things like color chrome effect available.
Some of you have questioned me about why I have both a chrome and a black X-100V camera. My rote answer is that one should never go on a trip or a job without a back-up camera, and I'd take that a step further and say no one should venture out without a back-up camera that operates in exactly the same way and which takes the same battery, the same filters and the same memory cards. Hence two copies of the X-100V, differentiated by color.
Now I have a new answer. The black camera is for Tri-X/Monochrome photography while the chrome body is dedicated to color. When the black one is in my hand I'll know I'm about to start shooting my new, digital Tri-X camera. When it's the chrome body I'll know I'm about to start shooting color slide film. Easy to remember and no struggle to juggle settings on the fly.
I might need to tweak a bit (or I might not...) but here are some of the test shots I took this morning while walking over to the state capitol building to see if anyone was there fomenting trouble and trying to tip our nation into facism and white nationalism. I am happy to report that there were only a few tourists on Segways in front of the fence, snapping pix. All clear downtown. Here are the pix:
click to make the images big, big, big.
