I get asked sometimes how I know which film simulation recipes I used for certain pictures. Especially when I take a road trip where I might use a number of different recipes, it can be difficult to remember which ones I used when. Honestly, I didn’t have a good method for this. I would limit myself to only a few recipes, and tried to avoid using similar-looking recipes on the same day. If I still didn’t remember, I would go back into the camera and display the picture information to give myself a clue. However, I recently became aware of a much better method.
In Episode 02 of SOOC, X-Photographer Nathalie Boucry shared her smart solution for this common problem. Whenever Nathalie is out shooting, when she switches to a new recipe, the very first exposure that she makes is a snap of her phone with the Fuji X Weekly App open and the recipe she’s using displayed. Then she knows that every picture after that (until she reaches the next image of her phone) was captured with that recipe. I began doing this myself, and it works very well. Yes, it takes an extra moment “in the field” to snap an image of your phone, and it does take a little extra space on the memory card, but it can definitely save you time (and sanity) later as you try to figure out what recipe you used for that picture.
This is a tip that I know will be helpful to some of you, because it was helpful to me. These kinds of tips and tricks are what you’ll find in the SOOC live video series. Episode 03 is this Thursday, September 9. It’s an interactive program, and your participation makes the show even better, so I hope to see you then!
If you haven’t downloaded the Fuji X Weekly App, be sure to do so. It’s free, and available for both Android and Apple. If you are looking for a way to support Fuji X Weekly and all that I’m doing for the community plus unlock the best app experience, consider becoming a Fuji X Weekly Patron (available in the app)!
SHE is a VERY smart young woman!!! Great tip!
I am very humbled that my tip made it into its own post ☺️ and over the moon that you find it useful too! Yay!!
It makes a lot of sense and is very useful. Thanks for sharing it!
So simple, yet so brilliant! Thanks!
Yes it is!
I usually shoot with one recipe between dumps of the memory card. It’s what I would do if I was shooting 35mm film.
That’s how I typically shoot day-to-day: one, maybe two at most. But on a longer trip I’m more likely to use three or four, occasionally more. But definitely one at a time is a great film-like strategy.
And when you forget (like I do on every shoot), you can take advantage of Greybeard’s generosity to display your Fujifilm EXIF data with all the settings: https://greybeard.org.uk
OR take advantage of the voice memo capabilities of certain Fujifilm X camera to leave yourself an audio note. Look for “voice memo” in your X camera manual. You can record all the thoughts fo the moment that you’ll forget as soon as you make the next shot.
Those are great tips! Thanks for sharing!
Wow. Thank you 🙏🏾. Those are great tips. 👍🏾
This is a great and helpful tip. I do have that problem and this just may be the solution for shooting out in the field. However I still have that problem when working with the Fujifilm X Raw Studio and use many of the saved recipes for one image. I like to see what the different recipes do to an image but I don’t always remember which one goes with a particular conversion. Any help there? Thank you.
Take a screenshot just before you save it, maybe? That would be kind of a similar approach. Name the screenshot the same name as the image, except maybe add _b or (b) to the end?
This might help.
https://www.thewanderinglensman.com/2016/06/what-exif-data-is-captured-in-fuji.html
Hello Ritchie. Have you experimented with Dynamic Range Priority?
I have, but (interestingly enough) I’ve been rethinking it completely the last couple of days. An article will be published soon.
Too bad Fuji doesn’t just save the params or custom setting # in the Exif data.
It should save the custom preset used, but it doesn’t. I wonder how easy or difficult it would be for Fujifilm to change this?
Hello Ritchie, my “simple” solution … I wrote a Python script which reads the recipe from the Exif data of the Fuji picture.
Wow! That’s amazing! Can it tell which recipe it was by name, or do you still have to deduce it?
Yes it can tell the name of the recipe and by option it writes a lightroom compatible keyword with that name to the exif data of the picture. 😉
Amazing! Is this a program you can share? A lot of people would probably be interested.
Yes, I can share the program, but I still have a few things to do like error handling and so on. The program only works for X-Trans IV because i have a X100V.
I think we should communicate private because it’s getting to technical.
You can follow me on Instagram @r2kfoto https://www.instagram.com/r2kfoto/
We can exchange email addresses there.
Sounds great!
I’m finding the Lyn app on Mac is great for seeing Fuji Film Simulation and other info:
https://www.lynapp.com