The new Film Dial on the Fujifilm X-T50 has become one of the most controversial features ever included on a Fujifilm camera. There’s been a lot of hate for it expressed on the internet. There seems to be two camps who dislike it: those who shoot RAW, and those who use Film Simulation Recipes. I believe that the Film Dial has been largely misunderstood, and that it will become more appreciated over time.
The RAW-only group dislikes the Film Dial because they don’t care much for in-camera film simulations. Some will say that they don’t use film simulations at all (of course, they say this while using Provia… film simulations cannot be disabled, so they’re always using one…), and some will say that they apply the film simulations in-post using Lightroom or Capture One, and not in-camera. For this group, the Film Dial is a complete waste of space, they say.
The Film Simulation Recipe group dislikes the Film Dial because you cannot program it with Recipes; it only changes the film simulation and nothing else. They would prefer that each “film” on the Dial could be custom set as a Recipe. That would be really cool, actually, and think that’s a great idea—maybe Fujifilm could do it in the future. Also, a C1-C7 Dial (or increase it to 10 or 12 or more) would have been most ideal. Still, the Film Dial can be useful for this group by utilizing a “universal Recipe” technique, which I used extensively in August traveling across the country. So I think there are two parts to this: 1) a frustration that it could have been implemented better, and 2) not fully realizing the potential that it does have in its current iteration. Nothing can be done about the first point (aside from Fujifilm changing it either with a firmware update, or how it is implemented on future models), but for the second point its a matter of getting the word out—once people try my solution (or something similar… Reggie’s Portra works pretty well for this, too), I think it will be much more liked.
This year I’ve traveled quite a bit, and met hundreds of fellow Fujifilm photographers across the country, and even some from other countries. In doing so, I’ve learned that there are a variety of ways that people are using film simulations and Recipes. Some of these things I would have never even thought of. It’s truly amazing! I want to briefly share them with you.
The number one way that Film Simulation Recipes are being utilized is for straight-out-of-camera photography. This is how I use Recipes, personally, for my own pictures. Basically, the JPEG produced by the camera is the finished photo, aside from sometimes cropping/straightening and maybe some small/minor adjustments occasionally. This saves so much time, and can make the processes more enjoyable—I could list a whole bunch of benefits, but that’s not the point of this article. Straight-out-of-camera photography was once highly shunned by the photographic community at large, but now it is much more acceptable and common, and I believe that—as a pendulum swing response to years of over-editing and now AI—photography as a whole is moving in this direction; authenticity is a big buzzword right now. Another approach is to shoot RAW+JPEG and utilize X RAW Studio or the in-camera RAW reprocessing to change the Recipe after-the-fact.
Another way that people use Recipes is similar to above, just in-conjunction with more robust editing. The SOOC JPEG isn’t the end, it’s the starting point. Camera-made JPEGs have a lot more tolerance for manipulation than they used to, and a light-to-moderate amount of editing is perfectly ok. So the camera gets you a significant distance to the finished picture, and a little editing finishes the job. Sometimes this group will shoot RAW+JPEG and edit the RAW instead of the JPEG when faced with a challenging light situation.
Some people use Recipes, but they shoot RAW+JPEG and don’t usually utilize the camera-made JPEG. If a picture needs to be shared quickly, the JPEG is there, but otherwise the RAW is used. Since software can/will apply its version of its interpretation of some (but not all) of the JPEG data to the RAW file, the Recipe provides a shortcut to a finished RAW-edited picture. It shaves off a little time at the computer, while also producing a ready-to-share JPEG whenever that is needed.
A much less common use—which I was actually quite surprised by but it makes a lot of sense—is Recipes for pre-visualization. JPEGs are rarely or never used; instead, the Recipe allows the RAW photographer to get a better idea of what the finished picture will look like while in-the-field. Utilizing a Recipe that is similar to the photographer’s aesthetic, they can basically see the end result even before opening the shutter. It’s such a great tool for the RAW photographer, but it seems to be highly underutilized, likely because it just never occurred to most to try it.
One last method, which might surprise a lot of you, is the combination of RAW and JPEG photography. There’s an extraordinarily talented photographer (there’s a good chance you’ve seen his pictures) who told me that one of his techniques is to shoot RAW+JPEG with Recipes, edit the RAW file, then blend the SOOC JPEG overtop of the edited RAW. He told me that he does this because the camera-made JPEG has a certain quality or soul that can’t be replicated with RAW-editing and he doesn’t want to lose that, but he needs a certain level of control for his style of photography, and by combining the two, he has the best of both worlds. Amazing!
There’s no right or wrong way to use film simulations and Recipes, there’s only what works for you and your photography. It’s your art, so do it however you want to. My point, though, is that the Film Dial, which I suspect will make its way onto more Fujifilm cameras in the future, can actually be quite useful to both groups who have decried it. I think the potential has yet to be fully explored or understood.
I bring all of this up because Fujirumors posted an article entitled Reframing the Debate: Fujifilm Film Simulations as a RAW Photographer’s Ally and with the subtitle Stop Hating Film Simulations. This is my two cents. There was such a big (and generally unfair) stigma towards JPEGs for such a long time; since film simulations have been heavily associated with SOOC photography, some people look down on them and their use. They see it as being beneath them or for amateurs-only. In doing so, they might be overlooking something that could actually be much appreciated. So I think it’s important to bring awareness to how film simulations and Recipes are being used—perhaps they can be helpful to your photography, but maybe you’ve never tried or have never considered how they might be. My hope is that this article will be enlightening to some of you, and that someone reading this will give Film Simulations Recipes a try for the first time.
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