According to a Source, who was right in the past, the Fujifilm X-Pro2 will feature a new black&white film simulation called “ACROS“, like Fuji’s Professional black & white negative film, the Neopan ACROS 100.
At AmazonUS you can find some ACROS reviews and samples.
As always, everyone has different needs and different tastes, but for me film simulation are fun and I’m looking forward to this one, too.
I also got a hint from an anonymous source about this (thanks).
stay tuned,
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Fujifilm X-Pro2 Rumored Specs
TRUSTED
– APS-C sensor (TS + AS + AS)
– 1/8000 of a second mechanical shutter speed (TS + AS)
– Joystick for quick AF-point slection (TS)
– Exposure Compensation Dial with “C” function for exp.comp from +5 to -5) – (TS)
– Combined ISO/Shutter dial, with little window on shutter dial to show ISO value (TS + SRP)
– coming late 2015 (TS + AS)
– delayed to 2016 (TS)
– Coming after CES (TS)
– Announcement on 15th Janaury 2016 (TS)
– weather sealed (TS)
– 4K video (TS + NeS)
– No 4K for the X-Pro2 in Jan. 15 (TS)
– Faster Processor EXR III (TS)
– No Tilt Screen (TS + AS)
– No IBIS (TS)
SOURCE RIGHT IN THE PAST
– Black & White Acros Film Simulation (SRP)
– Sync Speed faster than 1/180th (SRP)
– coming in January 2016 (SRP)
NEW / ANONYMOUS SOURCE
– ISO200-12800 (AS)
– 1/250 flash sync speed (AS)
– more than 200 AF points (2/3 are PDAF) – (AS)
– Hybrid EVF as X100T (AS)
– 24MP sensor (AS + AS) – More than 16MP (AS)
– about the same size of current X-PRO1 (NeS)
– dual SD card slot (NeS + AS + AS)
– tilt screen (AS)
– WiFi (AS)
– Price about 20% to 30% more expensive than the X-T1 (AS)
– Two X-PRO2 version, one 24MP APS-C and one 25-27 MP APS-X, compatible with XF/XC lenses (NeS + OS)
OTHER SITES
– coming September / October (OS + OS)– Non organic APS-C X-Trans sensor (OS)
– smaller than X-PRO1 (OS)
66 Responses
Sounds great!
I have to say these film simulation modes are pretty amazing, and that’s as someone who pretty much never uses presets. It’s great to have more high-quality options in this area. Shooting b/w is particularly nice when using an EVF camera since you get a live preview, but the raws always retain the full color detail for more complex post.
However, I’d love to see them finally enabling all film simulations for all X series cameras inside of Adobe Camera Raw/Lightroom. Right now it seems like a completely artificial restriction and not at all in the spirit of allowing us to make the most of the camera we have.
Especially when using ones older primary camera as a backup or second body, it becomes close to impossible (or at least impractical) to match the images from the two when the desired film simulation can only be used with raw files from one camera. In some cases, that can even rule out using a newer film simulation on the newer camera, which is really unfortunate.
Agree with you Peter.
I agree and would love that, but I guess something as mundane as ‘no more firmware memory space’ might be a deciding factor here, unfortunately
I’m talking about the Adobe raw converter here where there are no such limitations and where they would be ridiculously simple to enable without a lot of adjustments considering that most X series cameras use the same sensor. The cameras are a different story, of course.
That may explain the delay on the new FW. Don’t want to steal the x-pro2’s thunder by giving the x-t1 a cool new feature first.
Unlikely to even be considered for such a small tweaks FW update (that was to be released before the X-Pro2). But certainly possible later.
I’d love to see this as a firmware update to some of the other cameras as well – this would be great in the X100T 🙂
Adding Film Simulations is a great + as more and more people shoot jpeg with their Fuji cams.
I’d like to see Fuji 400H as well 🙂
Fuji 400H equates to the pro negative film simulations already in the camera; pick the one with the contrast and saturation to match how you like to process 400H film. Try Pro Negative Hi with DR set to 200% to get the most common 400H look. (And force ISO 400). Do remember that 400H film, perhaps more than any other Fuji film, has a particularly cool colour cast to it, so you need to set your white balance a little cooler than usual, too. With that in mind, yes, 400H is already in there.
If true, that’s a very odd choice. B&W film simulation is made largely—not entirely—defunct by standard channel mixing, and even for in-camera .JPG files, there’s already four B&W formats, with only really a B7W + orange filter option being left out. (And of course you have the contrast and dynamic range adjustments which really make a huge difference to in-camera B&W .JPGs.)
And, of the B&W films to further emulate, Acros is a particularly odd choice. Film simulation makes sense when trying to replicate aparticular colour rendition or style of contrast of film stock, but Acros doesn’t have a style. It’s the most generic B&W look you can possibly get, other than taking a colour photo and desaturating. Acros is essentially just Neopan film optimised for longer exposures. It has neither high nor low contrast, it doesn’t have an unusually wide or narrow dynamic range, it doesn’t particularly favour any colours over others, and in fact the only things which do set it apart are things which are not relevant to film simulation, i.e. sharpness and grain, and its ability to cope with exposures well over a minute. It’s not like Fuji can change the noise pattern of a simulation, and they can’t make one simulation more or less sharp than others, other than by forcing a noise reduction setting higher or lower than the user has selected. (And I don’t think it really needs to be pointed out how stupid it would be to force a particular noise reduction setting on people.)
So, with no notable characteristics to emulate, and B&W already covered by these cameras… what exactly would this be providing?
“what exactly would this be providing?”
The Acros brand name obviously.
… Fair point.
Though, is it even really a brand name? Most people I know simply refer to it as Neopan, or Neopan 100 at a push.
Well they decided to push Acros this time. .^^
Maybe it’s a hint that there is also a monochrome XPro2 in the planning?
Possibly, that would certainly b a strong option. Though this particular film style still wouldn’t make much sense, unless it is simply a way to rename shooting Raw/a flat profile. Acros is literally the most middle-of-the-road, generic B&W film you can get.
Which would make it a good choice to test whether a monochrome XPro2 should be made. I know it’s a bit of a weak supposition, but if people actually like (and use) the Acros simulation then a monochrome XPro2 might just sell more than five units.
I think you’re missing the point. It’s not that a generic B&W option wouldn’t be used, it’s that it already exists in these cameras.
If this is true, it’s great if they set it for the x-t1 also. When I shot film Acros 100 was a favorite. I would love to have it as a preset for sure!!!
It’s good to see more film simulation. It’s thanks to fuji and the xpro1 that I went back to shooting film. Having a film inspired digital camera got me enjoying photography again. my main film is acros for my pinhole work and Ilford hp5 for everything else. Cheers, jon
….and in other news Bigfoot is getting a pair of new Nike’s.
It would be great if Fuji added Neopan option for their presets too, it would be the only camera company that have in built filters to mimic their analogue film products, meaning this would truly set them apart from the mundane other camera manufacturers by keeping true to their history and tradition in the manufacture of analogue film by giving the customer digital replica options of their signature analogue mediums.
Acros is Neopan. Its proper name is ‘Neopan 100 Acros’. Why the 100 speed film is labelled ‘Acros’ and the 400 and 1600 aren’t, I have no idea, but either way it’s all just Neopan rated at different speeds.
Interesting…
Acros is more or less the raw-file of the darkroom. If you dont want to add any characteristics by your film choice and leave all doors open for postprocessing in the darkroom, acros is an exellent choice. With its very fine grain, normal contrast, straight DR curve, very low reciprocity, high resolution and rather clear base it is one of the filmes that gives the copist most free hands to form the looks of the final print by choosing, paper, paperdeveloper, contrast, toner, drying method and so on.
In the digital world we allready have raw files for this, so what are we missing here?
Exactly. It’s the blandest black & white film you can possibly get. Other than simply renaming the plain monochrome effect, I can’t fathom what they would be trying to achieve with this.
I would think of this as a portrait BW simulation: with very soft rolling of high lights and gentle contrast.
I like the site but you’re a terrible writer. But I guess it’s okay since this is just a guy writing a blog about things ppl tell him.
Upvoting your own comment though, i think that’s worse.
The guy probably has a Sony…;)
He did that on all the comments he wrote. He’s terrible !
Yeah, he insults the website owner and then pats himself on the back to congratulate himself. Sad.
Trolling name, upvotes his own insult – I think it would be just fine for the Admin to delete the comment – it has no value.
I think it’s great, but personally i would prefer more color films.
And other brands, e.g. Kodachrome or my old pal Agfa HDC.
You do know they already have Classic Chrome that was just named that way because Kodachrome is probably copyrighted, or they just didn’t want to appear like they’re copying something of another brand, but we all know what it was inspired by. 😉
Not familiar with Agfa HDC, but i’m sure it’s nice. The more the merrier =)
Hopefully they can work out a better raw converter.
Each to their own, but I find these ‘film’ presets gimmicky, unnecessary and something for the Instagram crowd. Anyone who truly cares about the result of their images would just shoot RAW and be done with it, because that gives you the greatest latitude to work your shots in post. (Hard disk space and transfer speeds are hardly an issue in 2015!)
A PRO camera should have *less* features rather than more, where those features are polished and polished to the point of perfection before they are released. Choosing what to exclude is part of good design. Loading a camera with unnecessary stuff just increases the chance that things can go wrong, and diverts development attention away from where it’s needed most.
What do I mean by that? Well, how much do you guys want to bet that there will be some silly bugs in the first firmware of the X-Pro2? The less functionality, the less that can go wrong! Get the basics right first, Fuji.
Well, I’m just an enthusiast. I don’t want to spend hours tweaking my raw files. Even for professionals, it’s the same.
Hi MV!
There are bugs in pretty much every first firmware of every camera maker so your bet is safe 😉
As for the film simulations, it’s not that much different than “pro” DLSRs with their Faithful, Portrait, Landscape, etc. “simulations”.
You’re right, but
A) the film simulations and .JPG colour renditon are a huge selling point for Fuji—it’s just about the only selling point their bodies have—so they’re here to stay and of course they’re going to push them, and
B) there are some fields of work where you don’t have time to shoot raw and convert; you may be required to submit your files within 5, maybe 10 minutes of the photos being taken. In these instances, pros absolutely are shooting .JPGs, and more colour options for those .JPGs is very handy.
I certainly do prefer my cameras to have as many features stripped out as possible—I spent the extra to buy the Canon 1D bodies over the 5D bodies specifically because the 1D bodies simply don’t have a mode dial—but the film simulations are a bit of a different deal. Of course there is going to be in-camera .JPG saving and converting, you can’t launch a camera which strictly only saves a raw format (at least not if you intend to make any money) and ‘film simulation’ is really just a fancy way of saying ‘picture style’, as Canon would say, or ‘picture controls’ as Nikon would say.
That is to say, this is not one of those features which can actually cause problems. Alternate focusing modes, alternate exposure modes, video modes, burst modes, panorama, HDR and other blend modes; there are many features that are put in cameras which can cause problems and waste space. One more film simulation/picture style/picture control? Not going to change a damn thing.
I take your point that film simulations are hard to get wrong. And you’re right that they’re a selling point for Fuji (among many other things though – not least the operation of the cameras and styling!), given the company’s history.
But moving on from the film sim modes, I’d like to make a broader point about ‘less is more’:
Instead of looking at it in the way of ‘Fuji has to sell more cameras that have broad appeal, so they can keep making cameras that please us Fuji enthusiasts’, I’d rather they were a company that *led* the market; that educated it towards becoming better photographers. By that I mean: choosing carefully, start at the top of the range (X-Pro) with a slim feature set. Just the basics (and as I said, polishing those features until they are perfect). Then let that filter down to the rest of the range, testing carefully at each step to maximise acceptance.
I’m not saying we need to all be shooting manually in black and white to be great photographers. But the philosophy of bloat – while it might more inclusive and better for Fuji’s bottom line – isn’t something that drives photography forward.
Fuji’s bottom line is Fuji’s challenge to think about; not that of its customers — we pay Fuji so we don’t have to think about it. All we want are great tools to take great photographs.
As someone who used a Pentax S1a for nearly thirty years, I kind of like the advanced built-in lightmeters, priority modes and such of the X-T1. It allows me to focus on composition, rather than the technical details.
I also find the film simulations wonderful, as I tend to pick one I like, use it for a few months and then when I’m bored with it I change to a different one. Then in my “album” I always look back and recognize my saturated or B&W phases.
I completely disagree
Many professionals who have to work with short production times or high volume of images must rely on JPG images to speed up their workflow and film simulations are specially useful for them.
Also consider that these film simulations are so good no RAW conversion can get them quite right.
And by shooting in RAW you’re just using the “presets” defined by the writers of the RAW converter. Ever noticed how most Adobe-processed images look kind of … alike?
For me, this would only be useful if they provide their own bare-bones raw converter, as I prefer to shoot in RAW and I don’t want to use the in-camera converter anymore
Give me better micro contrast instead. Switch from RAF to DNG so we don’t have to buy 2 raw converters.
I do agree that a dng container would be nice. One can make LR convert on import though, so no biggie. Neither would it improve LR’s performance. It’s not the container adobe can’t handle well, but the data itself.
However!
Too much micro contrast is one of the major contributors to the general ugliness of most non-xtrans digital images. Going there would be a betrayal to all the photographers who have found themselves a safe haven in the x system.
yes please!
Lovely, but I never use them as I shoot RAW. The jump (or not) in sensor quality will make or break Fuji this time, I think, and I don’t mean resolution alone, but serious DR, etc.
They need to make some real C-AF and other AF (e.g., eye-AF) progress also, to remain in the same ballpark as their competitors. I personally believe these basics will sell far more cameras than whatever preset we can achieve in LR anyway.
I don’t ‘love’ my A7rii like I do my Fuji, but honestly compels me to admit it’s a hell of a picture making machine – very, very impressive. Fuji and the others have their work cut out, and I for one would like to see them step up.
If you use a recent Adobe raw converter (Lightroom, or the ACR module in Photoshop/Bridge), the film simulations are available in the form of profiles in the Camera Calibration section. Adobe’s raw converter defaults already include things like a hidden contrast increase even when all sliders are zeroed out, so you may not get exactly the same as from the in-camera JPEG engine by default (in particular, Blacks seem to be slightly crushed if you don’t change any settings), but it’s pretty close to the actual thing.
You can even avoid some problems of the Adobe Standard profile this way, like the very ugly saturation clipping they still haven’t fixed. It’s still not comparable in quality to other raw converters (such as Capture One or the Fuji on-camera converter) when using the Fuji profiles, but it’s certainly not as bad as with the Adobe profiles.
Indeed. I did a straight, factual comparison of Fuji’s profiles vs the versions in Lightroom and ACR, using an industry standard colour panel, and I found the majority of the Adobe versions were barely any different from the Fuji ones, and the few areas they do differ in are consistent enough to compensate for perfectly with the basic H/S/L controls in LR/PS. The thread should still be on the forums.
The standard Adobe profile sure does miss the mark with Fuji processing, but yup, Adobe’s copies of the Fuji profiles are just fine.
What don’t you love about your A7Rii? Okay, maybe the looks and the menus.
But 42 full frame megapixels and some great glass, no?
I love Fuji cameras but to keep making them Fuji have to sell them and appeal to the broader market for cameras and not just us Fuji enthusiasts. To that end the film simulation modes are fun and a selling point even if you don’t use them yourself. The mirror-less market has been a technological arms race of late and Fuji has slipped behind.
I have an XE-1 but the issues that need improvement are speed of operation and speed of auto-focus. Also the EVF in bright conditions has to be better. Improvements in low light and DR would be very welcome too. Video is a selling point and they need to have good quality 1080p if not 4K. Hopefully the XT-2 will have IBIS (I believe the rumors are that the xpro-2 wont). This is for the primes and adapted lenses. and once again is a selling point for some (although Not me)
If you want a fast AF on the X-E1, try using the 27mm on it … magic!
Did you ever try the X-T1? the X-E1 is a rather old model with old hardware compared to the X-T1.
Just another interesting link: https://www.flickr.com/cameras/fujifilm/?nomodel=1
if x-t2 is half the price of x-t1, we will see a very steep acceleration of that trend next year..
The less appealing bnw film, to me. Low contrast, “straight curves”. Basically it’s a flat bnw file from where you should start the editing.
While instagrammers will probably use it (doubt it), I don’t see how or why someone would use these filter professionally: I still havn’t met a pro who shoots filtered jpeg only.
Some kind of photography uses them, I think about fashion photography, but I doubt they rely directly to the out of camera jpeg files.
As someone wrote below, sometimes you’re in a hurry and need to send the images as quickly as possible (photojournalism, reportage), then you use jpeg files. But these, at least it’s what Associated Press asks, must not be altered in any way.
All of this to say that I don’t see it as a “pro” feature on a pro camera.
When I like the look of one of these presets though, I will shoot RAW + jpeg and use the jpeg as a reference file when doing my editing. My RAW’s invariably come out better than the in camera jpeg, but sometimes those jpegs really help me arrive at an interpretation that I probably wouldn’t have come up with on my own.
If this is true, then it makes the camera even more attractive. I consider this as very strong selling point for me. The previous B&W where very nice, with this it will be fantastic.
These types of film updates shouldn’t be body specific. When they release a new one all bodies should receive the same treatment… It just smacks of being a bit manipulative I think…
I’m pretty sure this will “trickle down” to the XT-1 and I really hope my X100S..
I shoot RAW these days, but with the built in converter it’s easy to process the image into a JPEG in any rendering you want. I was never a huge Acros fan as I preferred the Iilford line of films… But, it was an excellent film, just a bit pricey I thought.
They can’t be universal because colour rendition is different for each sensor. Most of the current Fuji cameras can share simulations because the 16mp X Trans II is what most of them use, but the older, 12mp X Trans sensor can’t make use of the film simulations made since the X Trans II and the X Trans II won’t be able to make use of simulations made for the new sensor, either. It’s no different than, for example, a Canon camera not being able to use the same rendering as a Nikon. Different sensors, even within the same brand, can’t just copy & paste over colour profiles.
Where’s my Superia?
Where is my Portra? Ok, It’s kodak not fuji but they added kodachrome, err classicchrome, already sooo… I’m sure many wedding/portrait photographers would appreciate that.
I loved shooting Acros and look forward to a faithful profile on the new X-Pro2. Now I having fond memories of Acros and Agfa’s Scala.