My 5 Favourite Fujifilm Recipes
One of the main reasons I bought a Fujifilm X-Pro3 back in 2022 was to be able to shoot with Fujifilm ‘recipes’. I (like many others) saw the recipes featured on Fuji X Weekly and was impressed by the results coming straight out of the camera. So when my Fujifilm X-Pro3 arrived, the first thing I did was load it up with a bunch of recipes I found on the Fuji X Weekly App, and I went out to shoot.
Honestly I was kind of unimpressed at first. The recipes and images featured on the Fuji X Weekly website looked nothing like the images I was getting with my X-Pro3. The main reason for this I concluded was that the light in Ireland (where I live) is very very different to the example images I had seen.
That’s when I decided to design my own… Fast forward to today and I now have a whole bunch of Fujifilm recipes on my website that I’ve created and designed myself over the last few years. You can check out all of my recipes here…
Something I get asked a LOT over on Instagram is for recipe recommendations and so I thought it would be a good idea to write this post and feature ‘My Five Favourite Fujifilm Recipes’. Enjoy!
Recipe One
Nurture Nature
When recommending Fujifilm recipes I always start with the safest and most well-rounded recipe I probably have ever created… ‘Nurture Nature’. This recipe was designed to work in almost every environment and lighting situation however it definitely shines brightest when shot with outdoors in the sunshine.
This recipe was based on the Provia Film Simulation for its beautiful, natural colours. I designed it with medium Dynamic Range, added contrast in the Tone Curve, gave it Weak, Large Grain and warmed Auto WB for a sunny feeling.
For ease of use this recipe has also been given a Clarity setting of 0 so it can be used on high speed continuous modes without the camera taking like 3 seconds to save between each photograph. Obviously with this and any recipe, feel free to change the NR, Sharpening and Grain to suit your taste.
Provia
Dynamic Range: 200
Highlight: +2
Shadow: +1
Color: +2
Noise Reduction: -2
Sharpening: 0
Clarity: 0
Grain Effect: Weak, Large
Color Chrome Effect: Strong
Color Chrome Effect Blue: Off
White Balance: Auto (R2 B-4)
Recipe Two
Daily Astia
This recipe is (boringly) named ‘Daily Astia’ as it was designed to be my Astia recipe for every day use. Think of it like ‘Nurture Nature’ but with extra punch! This recipe is obviously based on the Astia Film Simulation and is designed to work in nearly every scenario producing crisp, contrasted images with rich, saturated, vivid colours.
The colours of Astia sit somewhere between Provia & Velvia. Because Astia is a little bluer and more saturated than Provia I decided for this recipe to shift the White Balance quite heavily to the warmer side.
This recipe has Weak, Large Grain and Sharpness at -2 (probably my favourite combination of these settings), the Color setting is right the way up while the Dynamic Range is right the way down so be careful when exposing this recipe that you don’t lose those highlights. If you find this recipe too saturated, try turning down the Color setting until it feels right to you… (I like it hot)
Astia
Dynamic Range: 100
Highlight: +1
Shadow: 0
Color: +4
Noise Reduction: -4
Sharpening: -2
Clarity: +4
Grain Effect: Weak, Large
Color Chrome Effect: OFF
Color Chrome Effect Blue: Strong
White Balance: AUTO (R4 B-4)
Recipe Three
Crisp Chrome
Probably one of my most popular recipes is ‘Crisp Chrome’. It was one of the first recipes I ever designed back in 2022 and honestly it’s still one of my favourites. Using the beloved Film Simulation ‘Classic Chrome’ as its base, this recipe adds to it with extra Color, contrast in the Highlights and Shadows, a little grain and a slight warm WB push.
Due to the Auto WB and the medium Dynamic Range, ‘Crisp Chrome’ works in pretty much every scenario making it a super useful recipe. It might sound a little boring, but if I’m struggling to decide on what recipe to use my fall back is usually this one. If you like the colours of Classic Chrome then you’ll love ‘Crisp Chrome’. Let me know if you’ve tried this one for yourself!
Classic Chrome
Dynamic Range: 200
Highlight: 0.5
Shadow: +2
Color: +4
Noise Reduction: -4
Sharpening: 0
Clarity: +2
Grain Effect: Strong, Small
Color Chrome Effect: Strong
Color Chrome Effect Blue: Weak
White Balance: Auto (R2 B-4)
Recipe Four
Salted Slate
Before designing this recipe I had only ever made two other B&W recipes, both of which have the Film Simulation ACROS+R as their base. ‘Salted Slate’ started as an experiment to branch out and test some of the other filtered versions of ACROS and after doing lots of tests, I took some shots combining ACROS+G, DR100 and Strong, Large Grain and loved the results so ‘Salted Slate’ was born. Ever since this recipe has been my go-to black and white recipe, I love it and am super proud of how it turned out!
I named this recipe ‘Salted Slate’ as my favourite results with this recipe come when you underexpose the image and let the DR100 provide the contrast. When underexposed this recipe shows a lovely dark grey tone which reminded me of slate and the Large, Strong Grain in the recipe made me think of grains of salt.
I recommend underexposing this recipe by 1/3 or 2/3 to darken the look and to protect your Highlights from blowing-out. If you’re finding the Highlights are consistently blowing out, maybe try change the Dynamic Range to DR200.
ACROS +G
Dynamic Range: 100
Highlight: +1.5
Shadow: +4
Monochromatic Color: WC:0 MG:0
Noise Reduction: -4
Sharpening: 0
Clarity: 0
Grain Effect: Strong, Large
Color Chrome Effect: Off
Color Chrome Effect Blue: Strong
White Balance: AWB (R+3 B+3)
Check out more results from this recipe in this YouTube video I made…
Recipe Five
Rust Roamer
This recipe is my soft, warm, gritty, grainy, rusty, little gem of a Classic Negative recipe. It came about by accident but over the last few years I’ve grown to love it! Here are some example images below…
You can see this recipe is super warm and rust in colour (hence the name). It works super well in lots of scenarios but is definitely a good bit more stylised than some of my other recipes. It’s not based on any one film stock but it definitely is very film-like which could be down to the Strong, Large Grain, the Clarity setting of -2 or the flat Highlights of -2. The WB on this recipe is locked in at Daylight with a very warm push making it very reliable (as in you know exactly the look you’ll get every time).
Give it a go for yourself and let me know what you think. I reckon this could be a good recipe for sunsets, road trips, street photography and maybe some more like ‘grungy’ portraits. I’ll have to use this one again soon.
Classic Negative
Dynamic Range: 200
Highlight: -2
Shadow: +2
Color: -2
Noise Reduction: -2
Sharpening: -2
Clarity: -2
Grain Effect: Strong, Large
Color Chrome Effect: Weak
Color Chrome Effect Blue: Weak
White Balance: Daylight (R4 B-6)
Enjoying my Fujifilm Recipes? Why not drop a little something in the tip jar below to say thanks…
