I fell in love with my X100 all over again. - Post Processing Discussions on Fuji X Series Camera Forum - Fujifilm X-Pro1 X-E1 X100S X100 X20 X10 XF1 X-S1

Gnesix

Greetings,

I'm new here, I've been having my x100 for ~~more than one and a half years~~ (recalculated and its actually almost one year that i've had it). I enjoy doing street photography. But i had a little problem with the x100 when i first got it. I always thought that the default setting on the x100 was a little flat and low in contrast, couldn't achieve the effect i want.

I love the x100 for its superb iso capability but the downside was, its almost impossible to see noise produced on the pics! I WANT NOISE!!! Then i first came out with the solution of using a software called "Alien Skin Exposure" to batch process my pictures so they'll look more "street".

Here's a few shots i took in a Bangkok trip (with ASE)

Fujifilm X100 x Kodachrome II - (1962-1974)

Had been using this software for quite some time and i always wondered if there's any way for me to get a "perfect picture" without going through any pp. Till recently i came up with a camera setting that i loveeeeee. This setting produces more contrast and also better colors. More suitable for my personal preference & also less time spent for pp.

Here's some shots with my personal setting taken in Guangzhou this morning.
Images straight off from camera without editing (other than resizing images to 800px)

mattmaber

Nice, what settings have u used?

Manveru

beautiful! what settings are you now using? would be nice to know. :)

p3t3or

lol at the last one.

cosinaphile

let me guess , shooting raw with these paremeters astia low color , raw color set low
shadow tone up toward hard , highlight tone toward soft noise reduction set to low
4000 iso , or at least that general direction

at ep1 . net lightroom setting and presets are all the rage with some member coming out with very unique and filmlike digital files due to their inventions

i like what youve done , come on out with it !! lol i want to try it on my x 100

cosinaphile

or is highlight tone kinda hard too?

dannybligh

Wow these are great shots.
I'd love to know the settings also.

Gnesix

My personal street settings.

I'm not too technical when i'm on the streets & i only have my shots taken in large jpegs. I do my street work casually and i think shooting in large jpeg is enough for what i'm trying to achieve. Basically what matters most to me is to find interesting subjects and also to have the framing in your head before clicking the shutter.

Aperture
I set my aperture at a fixed f2. I realized that it isn't as sharp when shooting at f2 compared to f2.8 and onwards but the slight blurriness is what i would like to have in my shots.

Shutter
I shoot in Aperture Priority mode most of the time. I'm not really an 'all manual settings' kinda guy. I usually set my camera to ease my job and i use the ev dial to brighten or darken my shots.

ISO
This is the only thing that i have to change manually from time to time.
Sunny @ iso 200
Cloudy @ iso 400
Indoor (Depending on how much light i'm getting) @ iso 800 - 1600
Night @ iso 3200

I'll drop the iso a little lower to achieve a blurred/motion shot.

Color & Contrast
To achieve the look you saw on my Guangzhou trip, all you need to do is to change your Highlight Tone & Shadow Tone to Hard.

OVERALL SETTING
IMAGE SIZE - 3:2
IMAE QUALITY - FINE
DYNAMIC RANGE - 100%
FILM SIMULATION - STD
ND FILTER - OFF
COLOR - MID
SHARPNESS - STD
HIGHLIGHT TONE - HARD
SHADOW TONE - HARD
NOISE REDUCTION - LOW

Manveru

whoa, thanks for that! like cosinaphile i was guessing it was in astia film simulation. your settings give a professional feel for the captured photos. :)

cosinaphile

Manveru said:
whoa, thanks for that! like cosinaphile i was guessing it was in astia film simulation. your settings give a professional feel for the captured photos. :)

cosinaphile said : "shadow tone up toward hard"

i was on the right track ,lol

its a nice look , playing with the raw converter to make custom jpegs in camera is the way of the future imho,

its not really post processing in lightroom or photoshop its "out of camera jpeg with your own custom engine , if it has not left the camera it isnt post work i have been reccomending it quite a bit in many threads on the forum .... well done there!

that whyi shoot raw with x series cameras , for my gxr and my epi gf1 i do jpegs only

cosinaphile

cosinaphile January 26 QuoteEdit (1 month)Flag
Posts: 482
or is highlight tone kinda hard too?

i was on the right track on that too lol, ive been playing with the custom jpeg engine

thats what fuji should have called it.the custom jpeg engine

people would have understood its incredible utility
and versatility
instead most people are down on the raw button which is what you press to "set" the
new jpeg , considering it useless and gimmicky ....notheing could be further from the truth
fuji should have used the ok button to set instead and used the raw button as a Fn2

Gnesix

Manveru said:
whoa, thanks for that! like cosinaphile i was guessing it was in astia film simulation. your settings give a professional feel for the captured photos. :)

No probs. Glad you liked it. :D

blahblahblah

thanks for sharing the settings!!! loving it!

Gnesix

you're welcome. time for you guys to share some of your pics with this setting. :D

dannybligh

Chiming in to say THANKS for sharing your knowledge - that's what these forums should be all about.

danm

"I've been having my x100 for more than one and a half years."

How's that possible since the X100 was launchedin Feb 2011?

Gnesix

lol. danm. you got it right. Sorry for my bad calculation i got it on April 2011. It does feel long though. Stocks for the x100 was low during that time due to the japan earthquake. Found one in Singapore & grabbed it straight.

Gnesix

you're welcome dannybligh. :)

dannybligh

Am I correct that these settings really only affect anything when shooting in JPEG as apposed to RAW? Are all of these settings "secondary" settings that will have no effect on your imported RAW file?

Edit: I've answered my own question - it makes no effect on RAW images whatsoever - so looks like I'll be testing this out in JPEG. Thanks again for the awesome tip!

mattmaber

@dannybligh no if i understand correctly the exact opposite

Gnesix said:
My personal street settings.

DYNAMIC RANGE - 100%
FILM SIMULATION - STD
ND FILTER - OFF
COLOR - MID
SHARPNESS - STD
HIGHLIGHT TONE - HARD
SHADOW TONE - HARD
NOISE REDUCTION - LOW

Effects the JPEG and NEVER the RAW - which is erm, RAW and un-sullied.

dannybligh

I thought that's what I had said - these settings affect the JPEG only and have no effect on the RAW images

mattmaber

@dannybligh my bad, I misread

cosinaphile

i leave all the setting all default when shooting raw +jpeg , its only when i do a raw conversion [ which Fuji should have called custom jpeg engine] that i adjust the parameters.... when i press raw it gives a preview of the resulting jpeg, which you can lock in with the ok button, or press back to re change a parameter up or down .

heres my setting that i experiment with with many shots i take ...

it can give a very unique look to an image

1] momochrome or monochrome with green filter

2] a slight push pull 1\3 stop if necessary

3] noise reduction set to low

4] highlight tone low

5 ] shadow tone low

it opens shadows and highlights in a way as to give a unusual look ....its not for every shot once you see it , but sometimes its awesome... i try it often thankfully the raw is untouched should it not be a good call

benp5d

I really wish Fuji released a desktop version of the RAW converter so I could make as many JPG iterations as I wanted directly on my iMac. I'm always conscious of all the wear & tear I'm putting on the camera buttons I need to push – repeatedly – to make each one JPG variation.

cosinaphile

very good point a cut a circle of screen protector material to put over my ok button that has started to wear slightly

[i was horrified]
that was 2 months ago the circle has stuck well and shows no sigh of falling off

p3t3or

I don't know if it is just me, but I've seen absolutely no need for shooting outside of RAW, except perhaps to get the higher ISO which I have still yet to use. I can only think of one or two musical venues where I would probably need max ISO. Or, I suppose I could see shooting in JPEG if you didn't have Lightroom or Aperture (which I highly recommend to support the wonderful machine you have).

mattmaber

@p3t3or I shot in RAW for months, converting using Aperture. Then did a test of the same images Raw vs JPEG and the JPEGs are much sharper and less noisy. In general much better images.
I understand about shadow and highlight recovery with RAW etc but the compromise of a little less control after compared with the better images and smaller files means for me Im now solely JPEG.
SO yes, whilst on my Nikon D90 RAW is the way to go, on the X100 (for me) it is not

dannybligh

@mattmaber - Actually, I couldn't agree more. I've had the X100 for a few months and shot RAW with it since day one. Just a few days ago I finally decided to start shooting in straight JPEG with it. This was for a few reasons.

The RAW images produced by this camera DO look soft are noisy. Night time RAW images actually look horrible in my opinion
I just couldn't justify the file size for shots from my secondary camera
The camera is frustratingly slow to write and process RAW images

For my professional stuff I shoot with a D700 on RAW (could never dream of doing that any other way) - but the X100 is my 2nd camera - so at the end of the day, how much post processing "power" do I really need to have of my cup of coffee at Starbucks or my friends dog? That's the kind of stuff I mostly use my X100 for - for those times when I want a nice image without carrying a suitcase full of camera gear.

collierportraits

Danny, you make a good point. I've shot strictly RAW for years mainly because (for me) the post processing is SO much faster. I'm not sure why, but LR deals with Raw images so much differently and for me, it's a lot faster. Of course, the added control is great, but frankly the speed is paramount to me. The difference of taking 8 sec per image or 15 sec isn't much but when you're going through 2,000 images, it makes a HUGE difference.

I will consider shooting JPG-L just because of what you guys are saying here...

dannybligh

To get back onto the original topic of this post - I've tried out @Gnesix awesome process on a few images that I shot around the neighborhood yesterday. I've also passed these through my "standard" custom process in Exposure 3. So far I'm having fun with the stronger contrasts and harsher tones of the above process. Here's a few images:

Gnesix

=

dannybligh said:
=For my professional stuff I shoot with a D700 on RAW (could never dream of doing that any other way) - but the X100 is my 2nd camera - so at the end of the day, how much post processing "power" do I really need to have of my cup of coffee at Starbucks or my friends dog? That's the kind of stuff I mostly use my X100 for - for those times when I want a nice image without carrying a suitcase full of camera gear.

Agree. The point of having a smaller camera with me is for me to record what i'm going through. All i want is to get home, review my shots and hope to have some awesome ones then post them up. Also i don't think that i would need to make my picture technically perfect as i'm only showing subjects in real life and somehow i think they're not gonna end up being on a humongous billboard so why bother trying to make them technically perfect (its too time consuming for casual shots). The only time that i'll switch my X100 to raw is when i'm taking a commercial type shot or something that will be printed out big that i need to keep those details.

Gnesix

Nice shots @dannybligh. Love them all :D

p3t3or

I'll take your advice and give JPEG a shot when I get my camera back. I'm curious to see exactly what you're talking about. lol maybe I'll actually use that RAW button for the first time. Also, I sold my not-so-fancy Canon DSLR for this camera. Photography is personal enjoyment for me and I could not carry around my DSLR everywhere I went so the x100 made more sense for me to have as I could not afford both. Perhaps I am treating the x100 like a DSLR in that I want complete control and quality.

JanMoller

Gnesix said:
My personal street settings.

I'm not too technical when i'm on the streets & i only have my shots taken in large jpegs. I do my street work casually and i think shooting in large jpeg is enough for what i'm trying to achieve. Basically what matters most to me is to find interesting subjects and also to have the framing in your head before clicking the shutter.

Aperture
I set my aperture at a fixed f2. I realized that it isn't as sharp when shooting at f2 compared to f2.8 and onwards but the slight blurriness is what i would like to have in my shots.

Shutter
I shoot in Aperture Priority mode most of the time. I'm not really an 'all manual settings' kinda guy. I usually set my camera to ease my job and i use the ev dial to brighten or darken my shots.

ISO
This is the only thing that i have to change manually from time to time.
Sunny @ iso 200
Cloudy @ iso 400
Indoor (Depending on how much light i'm getting) @ iso 800 - 1600
Night @ iso 3200

I'll drop the iso a little lower to achieve a blurred/motion shot.

Color & Contrast
To achieve the look you saw on my Guangzhou trip, all you need to do is to change your Highlight Tone & Shadow Tone to Hard.

OVERALL SETTING
IMAGE SIZE - 3:2
IMAE QUALITY - FINE
DYNAMIC RANGE - 100%
FILM SIMULATION - STD
ND FILTER - OFF
COLOR - MID
SHARPNESS - STD
HIGHLIGHT TONE - HARD
SHADOW TONE - HARD
NOISE REDUCTION - LOW

The color setting COLOR, is that medium high or medium low???

crispy12

@Gnesis

Ive been into these motion blurred shots and found a better way is to control the shutter speed rather than aperture. I set my aperture to 1/15 or 1/8 depending on speed of subject (eg walking person) and set a small aperture like f8 or f16.

This way much of the picture will be in focus sharply except for the objects moving; seems more appealing to me as it conveys movement rather than camera shake. If the aperture is too small, the entire photo looks a bit too fuzzy. Henri Cartier Bresson did this a lot, as a result of low ISO film available then.

collierportraits

You mean... set your shutter speed to 1/15th or 1/8th

And you also mean "if the aperture is too LARGE (or too small a number, maybe?), the entire photo looks a bit too fuzzy."

Nice observation to share, though. ;)

X10Leica

I am new to this forum, and i recently got the X10 .. How ironic - these are very much the settings im using for my shooting - and i like your look very much - this is my look too !

The trick i found is to shoot the X10 with the "shadow lifting" multi meter mode and softer provia / std film, and then push the shadows via m Hard - Hard in the Shadows adjustment - t compensate and get to this underexposed almost film contrast. Noise in the case of X10 - to M Low - "bad" things i see starting to happen at Low ..

Great stuff

dre_stylez

This is so cool!!!! Been looking for this "film" kind of look without the hassle of going into photoshop to process. Thanks a lot!

simonL

@Gnesix ...many thanks for sharing .... deeply cool

Hello Photographer!

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