I thought it would be interesting to compare Kodak-inspired Film Simulation Recipes on my Fujifilm X-E4. So I pulled out my phone, opened the Fuji X Weekly App, and selected Filter by Sensor (choosing both X-Trans III & X-Trans IV) and Filter by Color. Then I used the Search feature to find all of the recipes with “Koda” in the name—I didn’t search for “Kodak” because Kodachrome would have been excluded. The App displayed 36 recipes. Some recipes, like Reggie’s Portra, Old Ektachrome, and Elite Chrome 200, didn’t show up because “Koda” isn’t found anywhere in the recipe title, despite the Kodak-inspired aesthetic, so I had to search those out separately. Then I reprocessed an exposure (captured in Morro Bay, California) on my X-E4 with all of these recipes.

Let’s take a look at how these 41 Kodak-inspired Film Simulation Recipes compare to each other!

Note: This article was a part of the Creative Collective, but now it’s available to everyone.

A little note about the methodology before we dive in. Not all of the recipes are 100% compatible with the X-E4. Those recipes intended for X-Trans III and the X-T3 & X-T30 cameras need some modifications in order to be used on newer X-Trans IV cameras. For those recipes that don’t call for Color Chrome Effect and/or Color Chrome FX Blue, I set those to Off. For those recipes that don’t call for Clarity, I set that to 0. For those recipes that don’t call for a certain Grain size (Small or Large), I did this: if the recipe required Weak Grain I set the size to Small, and if it required Strong, I set the size to Large—the only exception that I made was Stephen Shore Kodacolor because it’s supposed to be based on medium-format film, so I set Grain to Strong Small (and not Strong Large). This might not have been the best way to deal with Grain size, but it’s what I did. For those recipes that call for DR-Auto, I chose DR200 because I believe that’s what the camera would have chose in this instance.

There are two recipes that I didn’t use for this project. The original Kodak Portra 400 recipe requires a difficult Custom White Balance, which I don’t have set in my X-E4, so I didn’t use it. The Portra-Style recipe uses D-Range Priority, and I couldn’t reprocess the file to that recipe because I didn’t capture it using D-Range Priority—the option is greyed out. So those two recipes weren’t used in this article. Including the Bright Summer recipe was maybe a stretch, as it wasn’t based on a Kodak stock, but instead based off of a look that’s loosely based on a Kodak stock.

Because there are so many recipes to compare, I have divided them into different six groups. There’s Kodachrome, Portra, Kodacolor, Other Kodak Negative, Other Kodak Slide, and Other Kodak. Let’s dive in!

Kodachrome

Portra

Kodacolor

Other Kodak Negative

Other Kodak Slide

Other Kodak

I hope that there are a few recipes in this article that jumped out at you as ones you want to try. Perhaps the way a certain recipe rendered this scene is particularly interesting to you. If so, let me know in the comments! It’s really fascinating that so many different looks—some only very subtly different and some quite drastically divergent—can be produced straight-out-of-camera, mostly using the Classic Chrome film simulation.

Which of these recipes is a current favorite of yours? Kodachrome 64? Kodak Portra 400? I’d love to know that, too!