- There is an important sort of sub-culture within Fuji photographers who are more traditional in the style of photography that they do, they're more minimalist in their workflow. They work very hard to get
everything right in-camera. They utilize Fuji's Filmic profiles and JPEG in-camera processing to achieve their artistic vision without having to involve a computer at all or minimally and for these type of photographers, this is the closest that
they can get to shooting in the style of film photography
in a modern digital camera that they would like to. And that process appeals
to them as it is true, in some regards, to the Filmic tradition where the profiles that
they develop in-camera closely resemble film in both style and in creative constraint. And the term that this group of Fuji photographers use when they talk about their in-camera JPG
processing is, recipe. This was a term coined by Ritchie Roesch, the author and founder of "Fuji X Weekly", which many of you will be familiar with. Ritchie was one of the first
who started experimenting with recipes and making his
recipes available for others. But we'll come back to
Ritchie in a minute. But for those of you who hear
the phrase I repeat often, "Digital art with an analog heart" and for whom that phrase resonates, you will appreciate the appeal
of an in-camera process. But it may come as some
surprise to you guys that I don't actually shoot
with in-camera JPEG very often. During the last four years
or whatever of shooting Fuji, four, five years, our process
has largely been the same. Denae and I both shoot
with the same cameras and often on the same memory card in RAW. Denae typically does
the culling and editing, once we've got a card ready and by edit, I use the more traditional
term where she's choosing the shots that we keep
and those that we do not and then I go in and do the retouching. It's during that retouching process, whether in Capture One or Lightroom, where I ultimately decide
which Fuji color profile to go with as a basis and
then we tweak the colors and curves and exposure after. But typically, unless we're talking stylized fashion photography or something with more modern feel, I'm gonna just go with a
Fuji's Filmic profile like, Portra, Astia, Classic Chrome or Acros and only make very
small tweaks after that. And in that process, often
Denae and I do a little back and forth to find a neutral happy ground where we're both pleased. So for us, we share just about everything, including credit for the photography. We share an Instagram account, we often can't remember
which of us took which photo and for many of you that might seem odd, but for now it's working great for us. But because of this sort of shared vision and process of photography and also just because of
the natural give and take when it comes to the style of retouching that we do and post, for us
it makes a lot more sense to shoot in RAW. So when people ask us to share
our recipes that we used, which actually is a
question we get very often, I can't give you an answer. But lately, as I have
been experimenting more with Fuji X RAW editor as well as Fuji's in-camera processing,
I've come away enjoying the results I'm getting from
Fuji's in-camera processing far more than I am with
Capture One or Lightroom for multiple reasons that maybe
this isn't the right video to get into all of that. But additionally, the older I get, the less desire I have to
sit in front of a computer and retouch photos. I derive a lot more satisfaction
out of the whole process when I can get everything right in-camera and take a photo straight off a photo dump and feel good about it
being ready for print, for sharing or for archiving
without a big fuss or to do. For me, it really has brought so much more life back into photography and so I've been diving
deeper into recipes and experimenting with them. So over the past month,
I decided I would choose a specific recipe or I
guess family of recipes and see what affect that
it had on my photography. As many of you know, I
absolutely love Classic Chrome and you can see my video
here to get my full thoughts on that profile and why I love it so much. But the promise that it
was the modern Kodachrome, that always felt a bit hollow
the more I got into it. It wasn't until I studied the
photos of Ritchie Roesch again from "Fuji X Weekly" that
I finally felt like someone had nailed that Kodachrome look. And had unlocked what
Classic Chrome could be and that is that it could
be a modern Kodachrome if it was tweaked slightly. Now, for those of you who
don't know what Kodachrome is and why it's special, just a
little bit of history for you. Kodachrome was one of the oldest and longest running color
slide films available. It went through many iterations
in its time over decades but it was well-known as being flexible for documentary
photographers, in particular, more than most films and
at least slide films. And that means that it had more
dynamic range and latitude, so if you messed up exposure
in the heat of the moment, it was gonna be more forgiving than many other types of films. Not only that, but it
was great for archival. So from a practicality standpoint, it was the photojournalist's
color film choice for decades, being used extensively or even exclusively by photographers such as
Steve McCurry and Alex Webb. Sadly though, in 2009 Kodak
discontinued production of Kodachrome, owing the
processing required to develop it. Unlike C41 or even E6 color films, it's impossible to process
Kodachrome at home. Developers had to utilize
and maintain large machinery with specialized chemicals
and without Kodak maintaining a fleet of Kodachrome
development machines, the film became extinct. As far as characteristics,
Kodachrome 64 is known for having a lot of warmth and saturation when provided a lot of natural light. It really shines out of doors. It tends to subdue the
luminance in the blues and it has high contrast. In many ways, it's
similar to Classic Chrome, though not as cool and
more saturation in the reds at least from what I've seen. And for me, who didn't
find a love and passion for film photography until long after the death of Kodachrome, but who feels so much inspiration from photos taken on Kodachrome,
it's a very sad thing. Lately, I've been going through
my grandfather's slides. He was an amateur or
enthusiast photographer and he shot a lot on Kodachrome. It makes me feel connected with him and I really wish I had a chance to shoot on Kodachrome today. So naturally, as I began looking
into some recipes to try, looking at Ritchie's
"Fuji X Weekly" articles about the different
Kodachrome inspired recipes that he'd created, that
struck a chord with me. So I bit the bullet, I switched
my camera to RAW plus JPEG, and I began punching in these settings to see what I could get. Now, there are several
different iterations of the Kodachrome profiles
on "Fuji X Weekly", so I started with Ritchie's
Kodachrome Vintage. For this one Ritchie tried to follow an older Kodachrome style
which has different qualities than later Kodachrome film, which you can read all about
on his articles that he has, I'll link to those below. And that's a fun one and
it can work really well in the right type of light, but I did find that it did some unnatural
things to skin tones. You can see in the fall-off
from the highlights to the mid tones some strangeness. There isn't a smooth fall-off, all mid tones are sort
of treated identically and a little bit muddy. So I think if you're photographing things, this can work pretty good and it's very interesting Filmic profile but for skin-tones, I think it has issues. (calming music) So, next I moved on to
Ritchie's Kodachrome 64 and Kodachrome II profiles. These two are very similar with
only a couple minor tweaks. They really are nice,
more subdued in saturation but it is higher contrast. This feels closer to Classic Chrome to me but has a warmth to it with
deeper browns especially. For me, I enjoyed this one a lot on how it treated skin tones. In these examples, I can't really remember which were Kodachrome 64 and
which were Kodachrome II, I should've taken better notes but they'll at least give you an idea of what you can expect here. (calming music) So, my next step was to make this my own to more of a degree and
I did this by bringing these shots up in Fuji X Raw Studio and for anyone wanting to
really dial in a recipe or get a set of recipes
that work well for you, I'd recommend trying this out. This software allows you to
make adjustments to your photos using the camera's JPEG processing engine, so you have to plug your
camera in while you use it, it's a little bit kludgy
but this will allow you to play with the settings until you feel like you've got a recipes dialed and I'd recommend taking a variety of raw shots representative of the types of shots that you'll get
in various circumstances, pulling them up here and figure
out which sort of settings are gonna resonate with you. Once you've got that figured,
it becomes a simple thing to punch those back into your camera and save these as new custom profiles that you can switch between later. So in case any of you are interested in the Kodachrome inspired recipe that I've come to appreciate
the most over this process and which I can guarantee
that I will be using much, much more in the future, as long as Denae is
okay with it of course, is the recipe in your screen now. This is pretty much Ritchie's
Kodachrome II profile but with some less contrast. (calming music) If you enjoyed this but felt like maybe it was a little over your head, I'd encourage you to join the channel at the mentorship level. I'd love to provide you some
more hands-on instruction as well as give you the opportunity to work your way through
my many workshops designed to help you master your Fuji device and the art of photography in general. I'd also encourage you to subscribe to "Fuji X Weekly" updates and I want to give a big
thanks to Ritchie again for all his experimentation
and sharing of knowledge. The Fuji community has
benefited a great deal from that work and it's
done a lot to inspire a lot of people, including me. But that's all I've got for now guys. Remember to do some good with
your Fuji Filmic profiles and we'll talk to you again real soon.
