Taos Tourist – Taos, NM – Fujifilm X100F “Agfa Scala”
Acros is one of the most popular film simulations available on Fujifilm X-Trans cameras. It looks incredibly similar to the black-and-white film that it was named after. In fact, in my opinion, it produces the most film-like results of any settings on any camera! It’s easy to see the draw to the analog-esque results produced by the Acros film simulation.
I love Acros and I have used it as the base for a bunch of different film simulation recipes. It’s possible to achieve a number of different interesting looks straight out of camera by adjusting the settings. I plan to create even more film simulation recipes using Acros in the coming months. As I do, I will add them to this article.
Below you will find all of my different film simulation recipes that I have created that use Acros. If you haven’t tried them all, I personally invite you to do so and see which are your favorites! My personal favorite is Tri-X Push-Process, but they each have their own usefulness and charm. Let me know in the comments which recipe you like most!
Even though the different recipes say X100F and X-Pro2, they are completely compatible with any Fujifilm X-Trans III or IV camera. For example, you don’t have to use the X100F recipes exclusively on the X100F. You can use any of my recipes on any X-Trans III camera.
My favourite of your film simulation is the Ilford HP5 Plus. I’ve tweaked it slightly but it produces beautiful monochrome images. Thank you.
I appreciate the feedback! What tweaking did you do? I’d love to know. Thanks!
Hi Ritchie! I´ve been using your recipes lately and i couldn´t be happier about it.. I just simply grab my camera and go out and shoot, as if I put a roll on the camera.
I shoot film also, and I use a nikon EM and a canonet ql17, which is nearly identical to my x100f. And yesterday something made me a “noise” in my head. I was using the “not your” tri-x simulation, and also just developed some actual tri-x. The difference that I´ve found is on the tonality I guess. On actual film scans I see a slightly sepia tone compared to the simulation in which is purely black and white. Idon´t know if it is a scan thing or not, have you compared actual film to the simulation? Maybe your hp5 recipe compared to actual hp5 film.
Anyway, I love your blog, and I´ve just suscribed to your youtube channel.
(sorry for my english, it´s not my first language)
Thanks so much! I appreciate all your kind words! I also love that using the film simulation recipes is kind of like loading a roll of film into a camera and going out shooting.
As far as the tonality question, I would say that is probably the scanner. That raises the issue with these film simulation recipes that I struggle with, and that’s how was the film processed and viewed? One film can vary significantly, and it’s impossible to simulate every possible aesthetic, or even most, with one recipe. I’m actually hoping that some of the new tools Fujifilm is including on the X-Trans IV cameras will help with this. We’ll find out once I can afford one….
As far as side-by-side comparisons, that’s something I have wanted to do on this blog for awhile. I think it would be great to do! That’s something that takes time, money and careful planning, so that’s why I have put it off. I have compared different film simulation recipes to actual film samples for my own purposes while creating them, but at some point I would love to do a bigger experiment and share the results with everyone here.
Thank you for commenting!
Any chance you can investigate building a Kodak Panatomic-X 32 film Simulation??
I would love to. I would think the challenge would be producing clean enough result, but I will try.
I tried to do one myself, but not sure it is true to the film. I do like it though.
Acros + Y/Acros +R
DR = DR100
Highlights +4
Shadow +4
NR 0 or possibly +1
Sharpening +3
Grain effect = off
ISO auto (200-800)
Exp comp – outside -1 ish (I need to test more)
Inside 0
This looks like a good guess. I’ll try it out and let you know what I think.
Thank you, much appreciated!!
I’m not nearly finished playing around with this, but I think highlights should be +3, NR set to -2, Sharpening to +1, and I’m not sure about the ISO, I’m thinking ISO 800-1600 gives a good result. Exposure comp -1/3 to 0. Like I said, I’m still experimenting, so I could change my mind about these settings.