Last weekend I had the chance to visit a “Festival du Bois” in Coquitlam, BC. This festival celebrates French culture with fantastic live performances, exhibits and cuisine. Since I had my Fuji X-Pro1 and XF 35mm F1.4 with me, I took a few images.
We usually shoot RAW and process our images with the Capture One Pro 7 and Lightroom 4. However, since many people like to shoot JPGs (for good reasons), we got many inquiries to present some images straight from the camera. Our only comment: to our eye, Fuji has the best Jpegs of all camera manufacturers, period. This is especially true for photographing people – skin tones are just marvellous. See for yourself.
All images are jpegs from the camera. Astia (S), Saturation +2, Sharpening +2. WB – Auto, only minor contrast adjustments in Lightroom 4.
“few images” but quite great stuff. One simple question: OVF or EVF ? (or both ?)
In this case EVF. Thanks for visiting.
Olaf
Hey Olaf,
Cool series. Very punchy images. I like the clown with balloon shot.
I’ve struggled to find the ‘right’ .jpg settings for my tastes for months now, as well. Have owned an X Pro 1 since June of last year with the 35/1.4 and various legacy lenses and, no matter what film simulation I choose, they never quite look right. Astia was the closest to the right look for me but I’d inevitably tweak in post. Color balance has always been a bit of a mystery to me but I see that you have a good grasp on it. Nice work.
Thankfully with LR 4.4/RC1 I’ve abandoned .jpg and just shoot in RAW and change the color around after the fact to suit my preferences.
Thank you for your comments. I found that the Astia setting works pretty well with people. The only thing I have to do is to adjust contrast. However, some may find low contrast images attractive.
How do you like a conversion in LR4.4? I haven’t had enough time to test it extensively yet.
4.4 is much better, but still not as simple a proposition as it might someday be. .RAFs stand up to sharpening in Lightroom much more as one might expect, but getting too aggressive with the sharpening still produces ‘watercolor’ artifacting, albeit to a lesser extent.
The results are satisfactory to my eye but do require some post processing to get the most out of them (as is to be expected with any RAW file).
Just wonder why you would want to set the saturation to +2 since Astria mode is quite saturated already? It made the whole since lot more orange. I love the 6th photo lady portrait. The contrast is just right.
Gunston,
Thank you for visiting my blog. I don’t think Astia mode is oversaturated (Velvia certainly is – when applied to people). Your point is very interesting one and I will tackle the topic of colour in my next post. Stay tuned.
All the best,
Olaf
Yup, certainly I always shoot raw in canon. But I sold all my L lens and MarkII to get the xpro1 with 2 primes. Still trying to figure out “best” setting since the SOOC jpeg is very usable in Fuji x system. Personally, I think Astria would be better for portrait and its skin tones at least for my taste, just wonder why +2 would add more contrast?? However some ppl do like Pro Std for more natural skin tones, but it looks pale to me.
It would be good that some analysis by you for which is the best mode to use in certain situation. I vote veil is mode is for landscape.