A couple of days ago, I read somewhere that the latest Classic Negative film simulation from Fuji is actually meant to replicate Superia, a popular film stock released in the late 90’s by Fuji.
Checking my old film photos I realized I have quite a lot taken with Superia. In fact, back in the days when I was living in Portugal I used to develop my negatives in a Fujifilm lab. As a business practice, photo labs used to bundle a couple of free film rolls as part of the service. Hence, I was often given Fujicolor Superia ISO 100, which was the most popular film stock back then.
A lot of these photos were actually taken in my hometown Macau when I was here on holidays. So then came the idea of making a comparison, to see the differences between Superia film negative and Classic Negative film simulation from my X-Pro3 — just for the fun of it.
Obviously, this is not meant to be scientific. For a like-for-like comparison, the photos would have to be taken at the same moment to ensure the same lighting conditions, and with the same camera-lens combination and exposure settings.
None of this was possible now, because the Superia photos you see below were shot more than 20 years ago… But the real fun for me was to go back to these places and try to replicate with my X-Pro3 the same framing and angle from the original photo.
This was what I enjoyed the most, and to see the differences in the surroundings, how things had changed — or not — over the years.
I’m deliberately not putting any caption below the photos because, I mean, it’s quite straightforward which ones are film and which ones are digital, right?
Due to the different lighting conditions though, this exercise is inconclusive to determine if Classic Negative does replicate Superia or not…
However, it does show what I already knew: that Classic Negative brings down dynamic range and pulls out higher contrast, resulting in a punchier image. And yes, it does look like film and it’s very pleasant to my eyes.
[…] the most mundane photo into something interesting. You can check these two posts here , here and here, where I share my observations on Classic […]
I Love this and love this blog!!
I grew up in Macau from 1996-2012 and really enjoy seeing old photos of Macau! I was just wondering if you have another space or an online gallery of any of your photos besides the blog. Would love to see more specific old Macau images!! I run my own Macau photography account on instagram (@expiringcity) where I post images that I took (mostly just from 2010-2012 and 2019, my most recent trip back) but I also post videos of looking through old Macau photobooks as well. I’ve been working at a camera store for 5 years and shoot with Fuji and love all of your camera tech blog posts as well. Can’t believe you got a RD1x! So nice! Anyways, I just thought I would reach out!
Hi Michael, thank you for this nice comment. I actually left Macau in 1995 for uni and returned in 2003. We probably crossed paths somewhere in the city. You can actually search for old Macau photos in Facebook, namely at “macau old photos 澳門憶舊照片 antigas fotos de macau”. I have my own Instagram (andre_ritchie) where occasionally I post my own stuff. You can also check http://www.halftone.photo , a newly created local photo association for which I’m a founding member. Enjoy!