I’ve been shooting with a Fuji X100F for three years now, having gotten a used one for $800 CAD just prior to the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Since purchasing it I’ve shot well north of 100,000 photos, and retained approximately 12,000 after culling.
In mid-October 2021 I built or adapted a recipe for monochrome images. In mid-2022 I found a ‘Leica-like’ colour recipe which I’ve kept in camera, though not used all that often. During my ownership of the camera I’ve made a lot of other recipes and just not really used them.
I’m back in isolation for the second time in 6-7 months and so took the time this weekend to update my Custom profiles. I know that others find these kinds of profiles/recipes helpful and so I thought I’d post them for others who are interested. In the case of Custom One and Custom Four I include a small selection of images that were made with the respective recipes.
Global Note
Ages ago I set my White Balance to Auto (R 2, B -2). My preference would be to have the white balance associated with each Custom mode but that’s only possible with the X100V, so I just have set this and left it.
Generally, I wanted to make sure that Custom One was the most commonly used recipe that I used. Previously, this was set to Customer Five which was fine (I had muscle memory on flipping back to it in the menu) but added more work than should have existed. I then tried to batch the ‘key’ monochrome and colour profiles together; Custom Seven is a default Acros but I don’t really expect to dig that deep into my Custom Recipes to get to it all that often.
Also, for the past year or so I’ve kept a Moment Cinebloom 10% on the lens, which gives images a slightly softer image and blooms light.
Custom One—“My Classic Monochrome”
I have shot a lot of images with this recipe, probably to the tune of retaining about 8,000 frames over a year and a half. Generally, I find that in hard lighting (with strong shadows and bright highlights) that it benefits from dialling the exposure down by -⅔ to -1.0. In brighter light, however, I find that it works best to dial up exposure by at least ⅓ and often ⅔.
- DR: 200
- Film Simulation: Black and White
- Grain Effect: Weak
- While Balance: Auto
- Highlight Tone: 2
- Shadow Tone: 2
- Colour: 0
- Sharpness: -1
- Noise Reduction: 0
I do find that with this profile I sometimes use the Brush in Snapseed to either Dodge & Burn or increase exposure on faces when they’re hidden in shadows.
Custom Two—“Ilford HP5 Plus”
This is the recipe from Fuji X Weekly. I haven’t shot with it as of yet, but am curious to see how it looks as compared to my ‘normal’ (Custom One) monochrome recipe. Based on the settings it should naturally have a stronger contrast than comes normally with Custom One.
- DR: 200
- Film Simulation: Acros
- Grain Effect: Strong
- While Balance: Auto
- Highlight Tone: 4
- Shadow Tone: 2
- Colour: 0
- Sharpness: 0
- Noise Reduction: -3
- Exposure Compensation: 0 (Normally)
Custom Three—“Astia Kodak Ektar 100”
Another recipe from Fuji X Weekly! I like this as it’s punchy but somewhat soft in its nature. I’m going to be a bit curious to see how this looks with my Moment Cinebloom 10% Filter.
- DR: DR-Auto
- Film: Astia
- Grain: None
- White Balance: Auto
- Highlight Tone: 1
- Shadow Tone: 3
- Colour: 4
- Sharpness: 1
- Noise Reduction: -3
- Exposure Compensation: 0 to ⅓ (typically)
Note: while the recipe calls for 3 Red and -2 Blue, my white balance is set to 2 Red and -2 Blue.
Custom Four—“Leica Colour”
I have no idea where precisely this came from but it’s been the only colour profile I’ve used for the past year or so. I really like how saturated and bright it is, but really have no idea how much what comes through is really ‘Leica-like’. This was just the description provided by wherever I copied the recipe.
- DR: 200
- Film: Standard
- Grain: None
- White Balance: Auto
- Highlight Tone: 1
- Shadow Tone: 1
- Colour: 3
- Sharpness: 1
- Noise Reduction: 0
Custom Five—“Punchy Classic Chrome”
I have a love of Classic Chrome, and added this to make it a little more saturated than typical. I also wanted to see about adding more dramatic contrast between highlights and shadows, which is something I often tried to do in post when I first shot Classic Chrome a few years ago.
- DR: 200
- Film: Classic Chrome
- Grain: None
- White Balance: Auto
- Highlight tone: 2
- Shadow Tone: 2
- Colour: 1
- Sharpness: 1
- Noise Reduction: 0
Custom Six—“Punchy Pro High-Neg”
I…haven’t really ever taken a photo with Pro High-Neg before. So I don’t quite know how this recipe will play out or even how much I might use it.
- DR: Auto
- Film: Pro High-Neg
- Grain: Weak
- WB: Auto
- Highlight: 1
- Shadow: 1
- Colour: 1
- Sharpness: -1
- Noise Reduction: 0
Custom Seven—“Acros Bland”
This is a pure Acros recipe with no changes. I just want it present to be able to quickly flip to it and try it out at some point.
- DR: 200
- Film: Acros
- Grain: Off (Acros increases grain normally as you exceed 800 ISO)
- WB: Auto
- Highlight: 0
- Shadow: 0
- Colour: NA
- Sharpness: 0
- Noise Reduction: 0
Excited Pixels 