You find a recipe whose sample photos look great, try it, and it falls apart. Skin goes orange indoors, shade turns blue, and highlights burn out on a bright beach. The recipe isn't broken. It was built for different light. Three settings decide how a recipe copes with changing conditions: white balance, dynamic range and highlight/shadow. Learn to read them and you can tell from the settings alone whether a recipe suits what you're about to shoot.
1. White balance: Auto versus fixed
This matters more than anything else.
Auto white balance recipes let the camera neutralise the light first, then apply the recipe's red/blue shift on top. The look stays consistent from sun to shade to a café interior. These are the safest everyday recipes, and they're what to load in your main custom slot.
Fixed white balance recipes (Daylight, Cloudy or a Kelvin value) behave like real film. The colour of the light comes through as-is. In direct sun around midday they look great. At golden hour they go very warm, which is often the point. In open shade and on overcast days they go cool and blue, and under household lighting they turn strongly orange. That isn't a flaw. It's exactly how daylight-balanced film behaves, and it's why these recipes have more atmosphere than Auto ones. But you need to choose them for the light, not use them everywhere.
Low Kelvin recipes (around 2700–3200K) are tungsten-balanced, like CineStill 800T. Under warm street lights and indoor lamps they look neutral to slightly cool. In daylight everything turns strongly blue. Use them at night.
Auto white balance recipes on this site (13)
Load one of these as your all-day recipe:
- Classic '89 (Classic Chrome)
- Classic Cuban Negative (Classic Negative)
- Essenza (Pro Neg. Hi)
- Eternal Classic (Classic Negative)
- Kodak Ultramax 400 (Classic Chrome)
- Last Summer Roll (Classic Negative)
- Pro 400H (Pro Neg. Hi)
- Reggie's Portra (Classic Chrome)
- Reggie's Superia (Classic Negative)
- Summer Made (Classic Chrome)
- Superia 400 (Astia)
- Superia X-TRA 400 (Astia)
- Veloura (Classic Negative)
Fixed white balance recipes (11)
Best in direct sun and at golden hour. Expect cool shade and warm interiors:
- Classic Negative - Portra 400 (Daylight, Classic Negative)
- Ektar 100 (Daylight, Velvia)
- Fuji 400H (Cloudy, Pro Neg. Std)
- Kodachrome 64 (Daylight, Classic Chrome)
- Kodak Gold 200 (Daylight, Classic Chrome)
- Lisa Portra (Daylight, Classic Negative)
- Portra 160 (Daylight, Pro Neg. Hi)
- Portra 400 (Daylight, Classic Chrome)
- Soft Ember (6500K, Classic Negative)
- Summer '96 (7400K, Classic Chrome)
- Tokin Mist (5200K, Classic Negative)
Tungsten-balanced recipes (1)
For night streets, neon and indoor lamps:
- CineStill 800T (2700K)
2. Dynamic range: protecting highlights
Fujifilm's DR100, DR200 and DR400 settings protect highlights by underexposing the sensor and then lifting the midtones and shadows in the JPEG. DR400 keeps about two more stops of highlight detail than DR100. That's what you want for harsh midday sun, bright skies, snow and beaches, which is why 15 of the 28recipes here use it.
The catch is a minimum ISO, because the camera needs room to underexpose:
| Camera | Base ISO | DR200 needs | DR400 needs |
|---|---|---|---|
| 40MP X-Trans V (X-T5, X-H2, X100VI, X-T50) | 125 | ISO 250+ | ISO 500+ |
| 26MP X-Trans V and X-Trans IV (X-S20, X-H2S, X100V, X-T4…) | 160 | ISO 320+ | ISO 640+ |
| X-Trans III (X-T2, X100F, X-Pro2…) | 200 | ISO 400+ | ISO 800+ |
In bright light this is no problem. Auto ISO raises the ISO and shortens the shutter speed. In very bright sun with a wide aperture you can hit the camera's maximum mechanical shutter speed, and then you'll need the electronic shutter or a smaller aperture. In dim light, DR400 adds nothing useful, because the scene has no bright highlights to protect.
DR-Auto chooses for you based on scene contrast. It's a good default if you don't want to think about it.
3. Highlight and shadow: contrast for the light you have
Flat light (overcast skies, open shade, foggy mornings) has very little contrast. Recipes withpositive Shadow (+1 to +2) deepen the dark tones and stop flat-light photos from looking grey and washed out. Hard light (midday sun, spotlit interiors) already has plenty of contrast, so recipes withnegative Highlight (−1 to −2) give a gentler, more filmic roll-off in bright areas.
A recipe with positive Highlight and Shadow will look punchy on a grey day but harsh at midday. A recipe with negative values will look smooth in hard sun but flat under clouds.
Quick picks by situation
| Light | Look for | Avoid |
|---|---|---|
| Harsh midday sun | DR400, negative Highlight, Daylight or Auto WB | Positive Highlight and Shadow |
| Golden hour | Daylight or fixed Kelvin WB (lets the warmth through) | Auto WB, which partly neutralises the warmth |
| Overcast / open shade | Auto WB, positive Shadow, Color +1 to +3 | Daylight WB, unless you want blue |
| Indoors, household lights | Auto WB or a tungsten recipe | Daylight WB (very orange) |
| Night streets, neon | Tungsten-balanced recipes, strong grain hides noise | DR400 (no benefit) |
| Very mixed light | Black and white | Fixed WB colour recipes |
When in doubt, shoot black and white
Black and white recipes ignore white balance completely, so they work in any light, including the ugly mixed fluorescent and LED lighting that breaks colour recipes. Black and white recipes on this site:
- HP5 Plus (Acros)
- Reggie's HP5 B&W (Acros + R Filter)
- Tri-X 400 (Acros + R Filter)
A practical setup: put an Auto WB recipe in C1, a Daylight recipe in C2 for sunny days, a tungsten recipe in C3 for night and a black and white recipe in C4. See how to save recipes to custom slots.