NC Chinese Lantern Festival and the final form of my “Fuji Colors” recipe
You know when you tweak something over time and the closer it gets to what you originally envisioned the more you feel like “oh wait maybe this wasn’t just a pointless pursuit”?. I got the giddiness that comes with that over the weekend and I’m so excited to share the journey of how we got here. I’ve been working on this “Fuji Colors” recipe since March of this year. I made a video about the first version of the recipe back in June I think. But really it was like the third iteration but the first version of my own. That might not make sense so let me explain it better. I used Fuji X Weekly to find a Cinestill 400D recipe because I absolutely love that film stock in a point and shoot camera. I took it on a cruise and to London and just fucking fell in love with how punchy and vibrant and fun it is. What impressed me the most was it’s versatility and the fact that it didn’t lean super warm like most of the Kodak films I’d gotten used to.
The Fuji X Weekly versions just didn’t feel quite right to me. I tried making some adjustments but I think the base film simulation just wasn’t what I was looking for. And then I took this photo when I was covering a college football game (I used my X-Pro3 as my secondary camera when I had the 70-200mm on my Nikon Z6III). This is one of those beautiful accidents that sparks an epiphany. I accidentally imported the JPGs instead of the RAWs and didn’t realize until after I had gone through them and thought these colors are too crazy for just the standard Provia profile right? But nope, it was just Provia without any adjustments. And then I thought “ok maybe this is the base I need for my Cinestill dream” (which is really just a punchy, crispy, contrasty, vibrant, and versatile image). I started to mess around with using Provia as a base for my recipe in Panama (May 2025) but it wasn’t until I went to Chicago a month later that I felt like I was getting close to something juicy.
And I ran with those same settings for a while but sometimes I’d feel like the adjustments were too situational. When I took photos at the North Carolina State Fair this October, I realized what I was missing.
The colors, vibrancy, and punch were there but the crispiness and the versatility weren’t. I also wanted it to be more flattering for portraits so I could use it for everyday photography. So I made some tweaks but hadn’t really gone out again to see if what I did worked. Then the Chinese Lantern Festival popped up. Its’ the 10th anniversary of this magical winter festival in Cary, North Carolina. Colors, shadows, people. All the things I wanted to get confirmation on and oooweee it didn’t disappoint. Below are some of my favorite images from my “Fuji Colors” recipe.
Is it actually the final form of this recipe? Probably not but I think I’ll leave it alone for a while and try to revisit my classic chrome recipe. Right now I have 2 really solid, almost all purpose recipes. One is black and white and then I have this color one. I don’t feel like I need a third option but I do really love tinkering with recipes so I’ll probably end up building out another one! Right now on my Ricoh GRIIIx I have 3 recipes: b&w, dreami, and crispi. I think I’d like to do the same for my Fuji (even though I can have more than 3 recipes saved).