The film simulation recipe community is a wonderful place full of people doing good work, and I mean that. But I tried a bunch of the famous recipes side by side, and I have a confession: they kind of all look the same.
Slightly warm. Slightly faded. Blacks a little crushed, greens a little moody. It’s a vibe, and it’s a nice vibe, but it’s one vibe wearing forty different hats.
I don’t say this to dunk on recipes. If fiddling with settings gets you out shooting, fiddle away. But the recipe is not the photo. The light is the photo. The moment is the photo. You could shoot the whole day on the default standard simulation and nobody would know, because nobody ever looked at a great photo and asked about the white balance shift.
My whole film simulation collection fits in one sentence: color when the color is the point, black and white when it isn’t. Everything else is seasoning, and I like my food plain.
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