I’m really excited, because I just published my first YouTube video in over a year! You might not be aware that Fuji X Weekly has a YouTube channel, but it does. I published two videos (not including Shorts) in 2024 (here and here), and three in 2023 (here, here and here). Those were a lot of fun, but YouTube videos are so much work. They take hours and hours and hours to create from start-to-finish. A good estimation—for those channels without a team of people—is one or two (or sometimes more) hours of editing for every minute of video published. That’s not including the time it takes to record the clips.
The video that just went live is a roadtrip to the Mission San Xavier del Bac in Tucson. This is the oldest still-used building in Arizona, and the oldest church. It’s where the city started (even though now it’s a little outside of town). The mission is a popular location for photography, and even Ansel Adams photographed it. I used 11 different Film Simulation Recipes on a Fujifilm X-E5. The adventure gets a bit wild, so hang onto your proverbial hats. I’ve included the video below—be sure to watch!
We tried a little different style for this new video. It’s a bit more relaxed, but hopefully entertaining. It gets a bit silly at times. Amanda (my wife) filmed it all using her Fujifilm X-S20 and Fujinon 16-50mm f/2.8-4.8 lens and an upcoming Recipe for video (look for more details on that in the near-ish future). She also did almost all of the editing. There were some technical difficulties; hopefully a new mic will help alleviate some of the issues on future projects. This is also the longest video we’ve ever published, nearly three times longer than the previous longest. A big hurray for Amanda and all the work she put into it!
Even though I have published videos very infrequently over the last few years, the channel has (surprisingly) grown and grown. There are over 17,000 subscribers currently. Four of the last five videos have over 10,000 views, and two have over 16,000. That’s not bad for a barely-there channel. My hope with this new upload is to kick-off a restart of sorts. While I can’t promise anything, my goal is to publish new videos regularly, and not let so much time pass between them. But, in the meantime, I hope that you enjoy this one.
Photography has always been a battle to increase acuity and banish grain. I understand artistic / client reasons for managing acuity. I will never accept deliberate grain. Different from printing to a textured media.
I wouldn’t say that. There’s some truth to it, sure, but overall grain has always been a texture and charm of film photography. It’s one of the reasons why I loved Ilford Delta 400 and shot a whole lot of it back in the day: I loved the grain. I lot of people loved Tri-X for the grain. Even Kodachrome had grain. I think a lot of people like film grain for the aesthetic of it, the texture it gives (that’s missing from squeaky clean digital images, which tend to be more clinical). So I—and many others—like replicating that with our digital cameras. I’m sure there are some who always hated film grain, but I feel like that’s a smaller crowd than those who like and appreciate it.
Fun video! I like the look of the new recipe for video.
Awesome! Can’t wait to share it 😀
I really enjoyed this video. Having seen quite a few pictures of the Arizona mission churches in books of film colour slide and film b&w – coffee table books etc – over here in Britain it was refreshing to see your new takes like the end of video b&w shot you took with the statue in the foreground and also to see the road trip with your son and daughter and Amanda and whole background and lead up. I’m not a great video watcher but this gave a lot of context to all the photos on your Fuji X Weekly site and yes it was really informative and enjoyable. Btw I had no idea video was THAT labour intensive in terms of hours editing per seconds of shooting. Will definitely stick with still photography myself and continue enjoying the film simulations!
You posed the question ‘are 11 FS’s too many?’ And gave your answer — which was more or less the same as mine would be. Personally I think it’s good to be able to program so many into the camera, although it takes a while to do, and then decide for a particular task on just one or maybe two or three. Personally I tend to boil it down to Reala Ace, K64, Portra 400 and Reggie’s HP5 but then again I shoot Portra 160, Portra 400 and Ilford FP4 or HP5 on film in an old rangefinder M4 with an incident light meter! All great fun – that’s the main thing; consistent looks etc can be worried about as secondary (just my thoughts of course). I actually find it difficult even to switch between b&w and colour on the same shoot, but I’ve probably just got into a rut that I could try to break out of.
I appreciate your kind feedback. My opinion is having 11 available is quite nice so that maybe you aren’t changing out the Recipes as often (because you have so many already at your disposal), but using 11 at any given time is way too much. Just stick with a few at most for the situation. Probably having five or fewer favorites that you use over and over and over is better than constantly changing them out each time you photograph. But there’s also a lot of fun in exploring different looks, especially if you are unsure which is your “style” exactly.