This recipe started as JoeDAgostino’s “Nostalgic Negative” recipe, which I fell in love with few years back. I saved it to both my X100V and XPro3 and pretty much began to use it exclusively. Over time, I started to make tweaks to the settings based on my particular shooting style and preferences. After a few iterations, I eventually landed on the following recipe. I don’t really have a name for it, in my camera it’s simply named “ROMV”:
ROMV Recipe:
Dynamic Range: DR400
Film Simulation: Classic Chrome
Grain: Weak/Small
CC-Effect/FX-Blue: Strong/Strong
WB: Auto, R+4,B-4
Highlights/Shadows: H-1,S+0
Color: +4
Noise Reduction: -1
Clarity: 0
There’s only a few small differences between this and the original Nostalgic Negative recipe. I turned off clarity as priority number one. I tweaked the white balance shift to make the pictures warmer. Lastly, I bumped noise reduction from -4 to -1, thus allowing me to use high ISO’s without getting too much grain. Oh and I set the dynamic range setting to DR400 — I like having RAW files ready to go in case I want to custom edit. Here’s a few results with this recipe under different lighting conditions:
As you can see, the recipe can be used indoors with flash, blue hour, during the mid-day sun, or even indoors with all manner of multi-colored LED lights around. It’s a really vibrant and happy recipe, and I’m sure you want be disappointed. If you try it out, toy around with the exposure compensation. I find I often switch between +1/3 and +2/3 — especially if I’m shooting people, as it makes skin tones appear more natural and flattering. After about a year of shooting with this custom recipe, my tastes shifted to a slightly subtler look. But rather than keep revising the existing “ROMV” recipe, I decided to make what I call the “soft” version of this recipe . It’s slightly more toned down, and even more of a general all purpose recipe. I simply have this in my camera as “ROMV Soft”:
ROMV Soft Recipe:
Dynamic Range: DR400
Film Simulation: Classic Chrome
Grain: Weak/Small
CC-Effect/FX-Blue: Strong/Strong
WB: Auto, R+3,B-3
Highlights/Shadows: H-1,S-1
Color: +3
Noise Reduction: -3
Clarity: 0
Here’s a few pictures of what the “soft” recipe looks like.
It’s probably hard to spot the differences since I’m not exactly showing the same image overlapped, but let me just summarize the reason I eventually landed on the soft version. I made the soft recipe because the original recipe can be a little unforgiving with the shadows if you’re not careful and forget to set that EV to +1/3 or +2/3. There were a few rare occasions where I was sad to not have saved a RAW file, because what was a “nice” shot probably could have been a “great” one. With that said, just keep this in mind and you’ll be fine. I also swapped over to the “soft” version because my tastes shifted for a slightly more muted look. I didn’t always want vibrant colors to bring attention to themselves in every image. Nowadays I have both recipes on my cameras. Most of the time I’m using the soft version, but swap to the original in instances where I think the extra pop of color could be nice.
If you try either recipe, please let me know. I’d be interested to hear what you think!
I’ll aim to update this post down shortly with direct comparisons of both recipes, and I’ll add Joe DAgostino’s original Nostalgic Negative recipe as well, since that’s what started all this.