Fujifilm makes a big deal about its cameras’ built in film simulations. You can recreate the look of Velvia, Provia, Astia, ACROS and a host of other famous film emulsions, we’re told.
Yeah, right.
I’ve every respect for Fujifilm in at least trying to acknowledge this interest in classic films and film rendering, but in my opinion its digital versions are way off the mark. Fujfilm’s Velvia film simulation looks nothing like the Velvia transparencies in my slide archive. It doesn’t have the saturation, the contrast, the depth, the richness, the grain, the crushed blacks or any of the other properties I associate with actual Velvia film.
I feel the same way about the other ‘film simulations’, that they are rather pale and insipid nods to older films, so tame in their approach that you’re better off just shooting RAW files and using retro presets in Lightroom, Styles in Capture One or your own home made renderings in plug-ins like Nik Analog Efex.
I think Olympus/OM System does a somewhat better job with its cameras’ ‘Art Filters’. These are not all equally good (that’s an understatement) but some do have very strong and appealing renderings that recapture some of the richness and exaggeration of film.
Other makers like Canon and Nikon offer generic ‘Natural’ or ‘Vivid’ or ‘Landscape’ or ‘Portrait’ renderings which all have one thing in common – they are all tame and tepid, and sometimes so similar it hardly matters which you choose.
It’s almost as if camera makers have never actually looked at analog film. Analog film is contrasty, grainy, gutsy and saturated – at least that’s the look that we miss most in today’s digital imaging processes.
The in-camera ‘film simulations’ or ‘picture styles’ we’re offered now simply don’t deliver the things we miss most in analog film. They are dreary, cautious and sanitized, and no good to anyone who wants to create a strong ‘film’ look straight out of the camera.
How hard can it be? My Olympus gear can add grain, as can newer Fujifilm cameras. My Olympus gear offers some quite effectives curves/contrast adjustments, though I have to go and find them and apply them manually. The thing is that the processing technology is clearly there. It’s not rocket science.
What’s actually lacking is any kind of vision amongst camera makers. They seem content with safe and insipid processing that’s made to sound interesting and useful but isn’t.