Why Fujifilm’s Film Simulation Matter also for RAW Shooters (Including the New REALA)

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Almost here – First Camera with REALA film simulation

Reala

It was a wonderful sunrise with golden hour in full power overlooking the Dolomites, when we told you that Fujifilm will launch a new film simulation on September 12 called Reala, the digital version of the much loved Reala film stock.

Make sure to check out the video… it’s worth it for the view alone.

Now, personally I am very thrilled about it and can’t wait to see how it looks like.

But as usual when we talk Film Simulations, there is a good number of people who says: “who cares, I shoot RAW anyway”.

And that’s totally fine. Everybody has different needs.

But there is a basic misconceptions here that we need to root out once for all.

The Film Simulation Misconceptions

Film Simulation are not only for JPEG shooters, but can be extremely useful also for hardcore RAW shooters.

Why?

Let’s make an example.

When I photographed the wedding of my best friend, I obviously shot everything in RAW (+JPEG).

I came home with tons of images and narrowed it down to 129 images I wanted to edit.

Now, my starting point when editing was setting the right vibe and mood by adjusting the colors for each image.

Some images just screamed for a charming vintage look (Classic Chrome), others needed more poppy colors while retaining good skin tones (Astia), some others instead worked beautifully in black and white (Acros) and for others instead, especially the indoors ones with tricky artificial light, the film simulation ProNeg Standard or High just nailed the colors best.

For me, setting the right mood with the right colors is a crucial part of the editing. And thanks to Fujifilm, it was also the fastest part of my editing, because all I did was simply to scroll over the various film simulation options in Capture One and pick the one that worked best for that particular image.

So, in just a matter of seconds, the whole color editing was done thanks to Fuji’s film simulations and then I moved on editing other aspects of the images (cropping, sharpening etc.)

That’s why to me it’s a misconception that Film Simulation are good only for JPEG shooters, because as I’ve shown you with the example above, I find great use for them also when editing RAW files.

I love it that Fujifilm takes care of the color part of my images when I shoot RAW, because it speeds up my post processing immensely.

And I love it that on September 12 Fujifilm will give me even more options to chose from when editing my RAW files thanks to the new Reala film simulation.

The Irony of it All

It’s funny that some of those who call themselves online “pure RAW shooters” and mock Fujifilm Film Simulations as a gimmick, then at the same time want to sell you their Lightroom presets so that you can quickly obtain a certain look by applying their (paid) preset to your images.

So, the film simulations that come for free with your Fujifilm camera are are gimmick, but their presets that you have to pay for are a precious editing speed boosting tool.

Sadly for them, I personally feel less need to buy their presets, because Fujifilm gives me a nice extensive selection already in my cameras.

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