Effect of film simulation on RAW images

[gary payne]

<p>I just acquired a Fuji X-E1 and I'm in the process of trying to understand the camera. My question involves the film simulation, Velvia, Provia, etc. Back when shooting film Velvia was my choice for all landscape like images. Now, I shoot RAW and post-process with Lightroom. When the X-E1 is set for RAW, film simulation can still be selected, as can dynamic range and other in camera settings. Seems to me that film simulation and other settings like dynamic range should have no effect on the RAW data, as they are probably used in the JPEG conversion algorithms. Is this correct or do the settings somehow effect the basic RAW data? Thanks for your thoughts.</p>

[howard_m]

<p>It'd be interesting to use a non-Fuji raw converter and compare to the software supplied w/ the camera</p>

[ariel_s1]

<p>You are correct; the film simulation and other in-camera settings apply to the JPEG, as the RAW is an unprocessed image. I don't have an X-E1, but that is the definition of RAW, that no settings such as color space, saturation, white balance, color shift, etc have been chosen yet. You can recreate Fuji's choices on your computer, with Lightroom, by adjusting the various settings in the "Develop" pane, or you can just search for various user-created Lightroom presets that have attempted to do the same. You can do a quick google search of some creative search terms, such as "Lightroom velvia," "Lightroom velvia preset," "mimic Velvia Lightroom," etc. Here are some links I found through my own searching which should be helpful:<br>

http://x-equals.com/blog/smooth-as-velvia/<br>

<a href="https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/exchange/index.cfm?searchfield=velvia&search_exchange=25&search_category=-1&search_license=&search_rating=&search_platform=0&search_pubdate=&num=25&startnum=1&event=search&sticky=true&sort=0&rnav_dummy_tmpfield=&Submit=">Link</a><br>

http://www.lightroompresets.com/<br>

http://www.dxo.com/us/photo/filmpack</p>

[gary payne]

<p>Thanks guys. Howard, Lightroom works well with Fuji RAW, but the Fuji supplied software will not work on the latest two MAC OS operating systems. Fuji simply says "not supported".</p>

[Carl Stone]

<p>Everyone has a pet peeve, or two. One of mine is the erroneous capitalizing the word raw, to make it appear as an acronym. In digital photography raw is not an acronym, raw simply means unprocessed, as in in an unprocessed image. If you were talking about creating that image with a Nikon camera then the correct acronym for that raw image would be NEF, for "Nikon electronic format". Cameras from other manufacturers that shoot raw images have their own designation for those raw images, NEF is just Nikon's version, but RAW is never correct. ;o)</p>

[bill_tuthill]

I think that dynamic range (DR) can affect the ISO. It does on non-EXR Fuji cameras, or on EXR cameras set to full size, and I don't see why X-Trans would be different. Although there really is no such thing as digital ISO, just amplifcation, I believe the ISO setting can affect the Raw image.

 

Gary, you might want to investigate in-camera Raw conversion. For example, if you don't like the standard Provia setting, you can ask the camera to re-convert using Velvia profile. Given the continued superiority of Fuji JPEG over commercial Raw converters, you might want to shoot Raw+JPEG.

[bill_tuthill]

I think that dynamic range (DR) can affect the ISO. It does on non-EXR Fuji cameras, and on EXR cameras set to full size. I don't see why X-Trans would be different. Although there really is no such thing as digital ISO, just amplification, I believe the ISO setting can affect Raw images.

 

Gary, you might want to investigate in-camera Raw conversion. For example, if you don't like the standard Provia setting, you can ask the camera to re-convert using Velvia profile. Given the continued superiority of Fuji JPEG over commercial Raw converters, you might want to shoot Raw+JPEG.

[r.t. dowling]

<blockquote>

<p><em>"Everyone has a pet peeve, or two."</em></p>

</blockquote>

<p>Ain't that the truth!</p>

<p>Mine is that the "Velvia," "Provia," and "Astia" settings in these cameras <em>don't actually look like</em> Velvia, Provia, or Astia film. Not even close. I say this from the standpoint of having actually <em>shot</em> those films back in the day.</p>

[andylynn]

<p>I just got one of these myself. I tried the raws in Lightroom on Mac and installed the Fuji software on a Windows PC.</p>

<p>The Fuji software does not appear to be able to do the same processing as the cameras. It's not like Nikon raws where the Nikon software is exactly the same as the camera JPG converter. This is too bad, because the camera is really good at the conversion. (Actually, the included software, on Windows, is terrible. Lightroom is better.)</p>

[ariel_s1]

<p>Carl, RAW is used as a file type, not an acronym, and that's why it's capitalized. It's all-encompassing, so that people don't have to individually state and inherently be aware of each manufacturer's specific raw formats, such as NEF, CR2, RW2, etc. If Gary had started this conversation talking about RAF files, I would have had to turn to googling to find out what he was talking about. File types such as BMP and DOC are capitalized as well, even though neither of those are acronyms.<br>

http://styleguide.yahoo.com/editing/treat-abbreviations-capitalization-and-titles-consistently/file-names-types-and-extensions<br>

So, I guess my pet peeve is people having unfounded pet peeves :p</p>

[Carl Stone]

<p>Au contraire. </p>

<p>http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/understanding-series/u-raw-files.shtml</p>

<p> </p>

[lex_jenkins]

<p>Carl is correct. It's raw, not RAW as an acronym. It's also not worth getting raw or RAW underpants over.</p>

<p>From the Fuji in-camera JPEGs I've seen, the results are passably close to the generic Fuji slide and color negative film look. Reasonably reminiscent of Sensia and Reala. I'm not seeing any JPEGs that resemble Astia. And the Provia look would need the telltale blue shadows that people griped about 10 years ago.</p>

<p>I don't know about Fuji digicams, but not all camera raw files are totally unprocessed. Nikon seems to be doing some cooking of raw files in the 1 series like the V1, and Ricoh is almost certainly doing some gourmet cooking of the GRD IV raw/DNG files which have far less noise than previous GRD and GX100/200 DNGs, while still preserving resolution. Hard to tell for certain since camera manufacturers and sensor fabbing contractors are tight lipped about their mojo.</p>