Classic Negative: in-camera or Capture One 12—an early look
Note to self: try to use shorter titles (this looks ridiculous on smaller screens).
I couldn’t access the raw files during the time I had the X-Pro3—the camera was obviously not supported yet. But I still needed to provide those files to Fujifilm so I shot everything with the camera set to RAW+Fine. Thanks to a recent Capture One 12 update however, I’ve finally imported those raw versions into my catalog. Honestly, I like the Classic Negative JPEGs just fine. Apart from a few cases where I’d pushed either ends a bit more than I should have during capture, I don’t see the point of reprocessing any of my selected images. But I WAS curious to see how well Capture One’s version of Classic Negative compared to the in-camera film simulation.
First glance? Man, everything looked way off. Then I remembered I’d used a custom camera preset, lowering both highlights and shadows to -2. So I used a couple of pictures to figure out how to replicate this correctly with the C1 toolset, saved this as my own RAW Classic Neg style, did a few A/B comparisons and I was off to the races.
Bottom line: it’s not bad...but it’s also not there yet imho. Overall I’m just not seeing the same curve and colour rendition. In the images below I see a softness in contrast on the JPEG (left side), as well as a slight orange tint, both of which are missing from the raw version which feels “harder”:
Can I replicate that in-camera look using the raw file? Of course I can. But it does require a trip to the Color Balance editors (the differences are much too subtle for a white balance adjustment). And while I’m closer, I still don’t consider this a perfect match (I also didn’t adjust for lens distortion). You can judge for yourself:
Color Balance tweaks: colour added to midtowns and highlights. Luminosity dropped on highlights.
On the next images there’s a clear shift in overall tones. Again, easily fixed but worth noting.
But on this brighter image, the results are much closer. Notice how vignetting has been fixed in-camera however (this is the 35mm f/1.4):
Now the X-Pro3 isn’t available yet, so maybe the profile will be adjusted before it hits the shelves—take these first tests with a large grain of salt. All images were also shot with a pre-production camera, which is also important to note. And those tweaked camera settings I used may account for the discrepancies I’m seeing as well; a lot of variables at play and I won’t be able to verify anything until I get an X-Pro3 again.
That said, let’s not kid ourselves: there will always be differences between in-camera simulations and their software counterparts. And although raw files are de facto “better” in terms of headroom etc, Fujifilm simulations shine in JPEG (or in the company’s own X Raw Studio because it uses a camera’s processor). Everything else, no matter how well done, will always remain an approximation. Sometimes awfully good, sometimes slightly off. And at the end of the day it really doesn’t matter all that much: unless we’re hellbent on doing side by side comparisons, the reality is that we’ll use whatever starting point we have on hand and go from there. In most cases, going back and forth between a JPEG and a raw version will lead us to a dark pit of despair and madness. The paradox of choice is killer stuff.
This is simply curiosity getting the best of me ;)
Later
P.S One more thing I noticed about accessing those raws: as part of the X-Pro3’s new firmware, the Multiple Exposure mode now allows up to 9 images—which is certainly very cool in itself. But the camera also saves all the individual images as raw files, ready to be re-composited in an external editor or processed on their own. Nice surprise.
