It’s always interesting to see which recipes you are shooting with. I don’t have a good method to quantify just how popular specific Film Simulation Recipes are. The best metric that I have is page-views—the more times a recipe has been viewed on this website, the more popular I assume it is. I can’t say for certain that there’s a direct relationship between page-views and actual use, but it seems reasonable to suspect that such a correlation exists. This list is the most popular Film Simulation Recipes during the month of June 2022 (so far… there are couple of days left in the month…), as determined by how many times the recipe article has been viewed.
No surprise to me, color recipes are more popular than black-and-white. I love monochrome photography, but color is clearly king. Still, I’m happy to see that my favorite black-and-white recipe made this list, even if it was at the bottom. Also not surprising to me, those recipes with the names Kodak, Kodachrome, and Portra are the most popular. Kodak was top-dog of film (probably still is), so it’s logical that those aesthetics are the most desired. What is a surprise to me is that a few “new” recipes made this list. Ones that have been out for awhile are well established, so they tend to get more views than the new-kids-on-the-block. Brand-new recipes are at a disadvantage for these types of lists, yet three recipes published in June—Reggie’s Portra, Low Key, and Bright Kodak—made it into the top-ten. Yea!
Without further delay, here are the Top 10 Film Simulation Recipes of June:
5. Low Key
7. Bright Kodak
10. Kodak Tri-X 400
Find these Film Simulation Recipes and over 200 more on the Fuji X Weekly — Film Recipes App!
Hi Ritchie, have you analysed the sources of the page view? Do you know if the traffic originates mainly from the west or the east? Kodak Portra film is known to accentuate yellows and reds, which makes dark skin look yellowish or magenta. Fujifilm 400H film has richer blues and greens, which does a better job of rendering dark skin.
The statement that Kodak Portra film renders accurate skin tones angers me whenever it gets repeated. I’ve used actual Portra 35mm film and your recipe, and neither works well when photographing my family. I want to make a version of the Portra recipe but colour balanced for darker skin. I’ll do my experiments. I’ll photograph my wife and me and see which of the above film simulations works best.
Have you read about Shirley cards?
https://www.npr.org/2014/11/13/363517842/for-decades-kodak-s-shirley-cards-set-photography-s-skin-tone-standard
By a large margin, the U.S.A. is the number one traffic-source country, but after that it’s all over the place—China is #3, for example. Portra, being manufactured by Kodak, was mainly designed for caucasian skin. I do agree: Fujicolor does tend to render darker-skin better than Kodak, and I think it’s because of where it was manufactured and marketed. For some reason, I’ve had good results (and others have reported the same) with the Kodak Gold recipe (rendering darker skin well), so be sure to try that one with your experiments. Also, be sure to report back your findings, I’d love to know what you discover.