An Ode To ACROS: “A Game Changer, My Favorite Film Simulation by far!” :: And about the Best ACROS (or B&W) Settings!
I LOVE FUJI COLORS
Old habits do NOT die hard!
I once was an almost pure RAW shooter, but when I switched to Fuji, my old habits changed quickly. I found myself keeping more and more JPEGs. The main reason was that I immediately Loved & Trusted the look & colors I was getting from Fuji’s film simulations.
The magic Fuji X box delivered (mostly) perfectly finished images, that did not need any (or just little) tweaks in post.
Luckily, Fujifilm never stopped to develop new Film Simulations. With the Fuji X30 they gave us Classic Chrome, which quickly became my favorite Film Simulation… and it’s not over yet.
An Ode To ACROS
With the X-Pro2, Fujfilm introduced a new film simulations that seems to be highly appreciated amongst photographers, ACROS!
One of those is Ted Vieira, who posted this Video, where he basically declares his Love to the Acros Film Simulation. He used ACROS+G (Green Filter) and says:
I shoot RAW+JPEG, and I have both files in front of me, but I’m not looking at the RAW file at all, I couldn’t care less about the RAW file, the JPEG is so beautiful, so gorgeous, so warm. It has that real film-like quality. […] To me it really adds a lot of emotion and just adds more to the story and to the feeling of the photograph. […]
I have to say that after seeing the ACROS film simulation, this could be kind of a game changer. […] To me, Fuji, this is a Home Run, this is my favorite film simulation… by far!
The Best ACROS Settings
In case you’ve missed it, here is Damien Lovegrove‘s ACROS blog post. For his portrait session he used ACROS-G (green), because “skin contrast is higher and the lips are more clearly defined irrespective of skin colour. […] For landscapes, the R and B options are very popular and for street and architecture the regular Acros is generally considered the best.”
Also Kevin Mullins fell in love with ACROS, he calls it here “the new love of my photographic life.” He apparently likes the ACROS+R (red) combo, which is by the way also great setting for landscape photography, since it adds more contrast between sky and clouds and gives you more dramatic looking landscape images.
The filter I use quite often in my Black&White shots is the Yellow Filter (B+Ye). This filter adds overall a bit of contrast to the images. For the same reason, the Yellow filter is also the favorite one of mirrorlessons, as you can read here (in this case Acros+Ye).
Bad News: As I already told you in my Top 10 Resons why the Fujifilm X-Pro2 surprised me, ACROS is limited to the X-Processor Pro engine, which means that only the X-Pro2 and following X-Processor Pro cameras (like the Fujifilm X-T2) will have ACROS.
And what about you? Did you find the time to play a bit with the ACROS film simulation? Then feel free to share your personal favorite ACROS Settings here and in the comments down below.
I hope this was a bit interesting and useful for some X-shooters out there. Now all you have to do is to go out and shoot, and have a lot of fun playing with the different B&W / ACROS filters :-)