Velvia lives!
Tuesday, June 28, 2011 at 4:48 PM 
I've just done a few test shots with Velvia film emulation after applying the 1.10 update to the X100. It's good. Very good. It might even become my default setup.
When I first got the camera I tried Velvia and found it a bit too garish; Then I found I could do some slight processing in Aperture and get some really cool results with it… until I realized the blacks tended to sometimes get completely crushed.
Fuji says in its 1.10 release notes: "Image quality captured by Velvia / ASTIA mode is improved on mainly shadow tone (dark area), when dynamic range is set to 200% or 400%."
I set dynamic range to AUTO which probably explains why I wasn't always running into the problem.
The trick with this mode is to add contrast back with a strong S curve and lower saturation a tiny bit as it tends to create files that are very colourful but a bit flat overall. But the results are very different than using the default Provia — it really does feel like using a different film stock: skin tones are silkier and everything feels richer and… rounder if that makes any kind of sense.
Here's some of the shots:
Below is Provia as a comparison. It might not be super obvious from these web sized files but believe me, the difference is more than a placebo effect.
Equipment used:
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Reader Comments (1)
You know Jonathan, while I do miss the versatility of raw shooting at times, I'm really enjoying the fixed aspect of the X100's JPEGs. It's like a little lab I get to play around in.
Plus I keep being blown away by their quality. It feels as though the engineers meant this to be the main output instead of a quick shortcut to raw.
Btw, I finally got around to reading your review/opus: very good job my friend.