This Fujifilm film simulation gives that New England washed-out effect
The first day of sunshine in the last week allowed me to wander the shores of Gili Asahan without either getting soaked or blown away. Although this tiny island has only a few residents, there is a small ship-building industry on the shores and plenty of photo opportunities to examine some of the beautiful textures here.
Once again, I’m picking up my APS-C sensored Fujifilm XE2S rather than my full-framed Sony. I’ve mentioned previously how I ‘get’ the whole Fujifilm craze, especially when it comes to replicating that film experience. It’s been debated to death, but it’s not until you play with a Fujifilm camera that it becomes apparent, even with an older model like mine. I’m not saying it replaces my A7C though. Much of my photography requires either fast performance or the ability to see in the dark, and that’s when I’ll pick up the Sony over the Fuji, but if it’s a gentle saunter down a beach in slow-motion, the XE2S brings a lot of pleasure.
And what I particularly love for these aimless beach wanders is the Classic Chrome film simulation. There’s something about the look it produces that reminds me of a beach-side, New England interior: all washed out and muted.
Seas and skies in particular are rendered towards cyan rather than blue. In my videos I’m not a fan of this look and spend considerable time getting my sky blues to look, well, sky blue. But as stand-alone images, Classic Chrome works wonders.
It’s always tempting to edit these photos more than they need to be. Throwing these files through Adobe Camera Raw is an opportunity to mask the subject, add vignetting, increase contrast, and so on, but that kind of defeats the object of shooting an in-camera film simulation.
Shooting something like Classic Chrome means you think less about the post-production, and more about getting it right in-camera, letting it do the processing for you. There are times when I’ll hit that ‘auto’ button in ACR to pull some more detail, especially in the shadows but really, all I’m doing here is straightening horizons.
By the way, all of these shots were taken with the TTArtisan 50mm f2, which I wrote about here. I said it before and I’ll say it again, it’s a lovely little lens and easy to nail focus with.
The image above was taken by the ‘ship-building’ area of the beach, and when I say ‘ship-building’, all I mean is a small spot where the locals construct their out-riggers for their spider boats. To be honest, I rarely see any activity there but there’s always a pile of bamboo shavings to give the impression that they’re hard at work!
It’s a shame I have to optimise these images for the internet because you’re not seeing the full effect of that shallow depth-of-field sharpness from that TTArtisan 50mm. The image above, taken at f/2, gives a good idea of the bokeh it produces. No doubt bokeh snobs will have something to say about its rendering, but it looks fine to me. What do you think?