Over the Easter Long weekend back in early April, I went on my first proper photowalk in 2021 with my Fujifilm X-T4 camera with the Fujifilm 23mm f2 lens. It was the first time I was using The X-T4 for full on a casual walk. So far I’ve only used the X-T4 for client work and just haven’t had much free time this year to just do photography for fun. For the walk I decided to use Ritchie’s Kodachrome II Film Simulation recipe. It has a bit of an old school nostalgic look.
You can check out his blog post for the details on the recipe, but here’s a quick summary:
Kodachrome II Film Simulation
- Classic Chrome
- Dynamic Range: DR200
- Highlight: +1
- Shadow: +2
- Color: +1
- Noise Reduction: -4
- Sharpening: +1
- Clarity: -2
- Grain Effect: Weak, Small
- Color Chrome Effect: Strong
- Color Chrome Effect Blue: Weak
- White Balance: Auto, +3 Red & -4 Blue
- ISO: Auto, up to ISO 6400
- Exposure Compensation: +1/3 to +2/3 (typically)
The photo walk started around 4pm so the afternoon light was fantastic down in Fremantle. It was very experimental more than anything. I didn’t get any keepers as such, but I really enjoyed the process of just getting out there to shoot for fun and with the intention of sharing the images in JPEG. While I did shoot JPEG + RAW, it was mostly for me to be able to compare the unedited JPEGs straight out of camera with editing my raw images.
It’s been a while since I walked around Fremantle. I always enjoy photographing the mix of old and new buildings as well as some usual suspects like the wharf and ferris wheel.
My favourite creative image of the day is the silhouette of the trees in the reflection on the window. The warm afternoon light shining upon the colonial architecture Esplanade Hotel was also pretty neat, especially contrasting that against the blue sky.
I thought it would be fun to do a compare and contrast between the Kodachrome II Film Simulation JPEGs straight out of camera with no editing, against the edited RAF files. The images on the left are JPEGs and the images on the right are edited RAF files.
Which do you prefer? The muted tones of the Kodachrome II or the slight more punchy edited RAFs?
Thanks for stopping by today and happy shooting.
Generally Kodachrome film emulsions had a much more magenta tint to the sky, rather than the cyan-turquoise look here. At least, during mid-day. Some shots in golden hour take on a cyan tint to the sky, which come to think of it some of your shots are that time of day. If you get that tint to the sky mid-afternoon though, you might want to adjust the color settings a bit if possible (I dont own a fuji so I am unsure what specific controls are offered for film recipes).
A good example of what a Kodachrome II sky should look like can be seen here
https://dqcaas.com/photographic-collections/anthony-phillips-1962-slide-images/
And various kodachrome shots can be seen here. The specific emulsions aren’t listed,
but from the dates you can figure that anything before 1955 must be the original Kodachrome 10 , anything after 1955 but before 1962 the Kodachrome 12 or 16 (K-11 process) film, anything from 1961 to 1974 either Kodachrome II (available as ASA 25 and 40) or Kodachrome X (ASA 64) which were K-12 process films, and anything after 1974 are the K-14 process updates to Kodachrome II/X, just called Kodachrome (available as ASA 25, 64, 200).
http://radoslawpujan.com/blog/kodachrome/
Anyway your photos are very nice! I don’t mean to nitpick about the sky color, all that really matters is they look good !