Fujifilm Superia Premium 400

I’ve been experimenting with recipes and photography techniques recently in order to prepare for our trip to Japan in April. One issue that I’ve found with a lot of recipes is that they don’t render our family’s skin tones particularly well. The best I’ve found so far is the Astia simulation, but I’m not a big fan of how Astia looks outside of skin tones. I recently discovered this Fujifilm Superia Premium 400 recipe that is based on the Superia Premium 400 film stock, which is built specifically for Japanese people. Here are some sample photos:

I took this one at the exit of the Home Depot garden center. I like the colors here, and I tried to use the dark walls/shadows to form a frame. I got pretty lucky with the exposure here, though I have since remapped the AEL/AFL button on my X100VI to quickly switch to a center-weighted exposure especially for shots like these.

You get some similar colors and vibe here. Amos’ yellow jacket really makes him pop and saves an otherwise dull composition.

We attended the Chinese New Year festival in San Gabriel. I haven’t seen lion dances in several years, so I was excited to see them again. The lighting on this day was particularly difficult. It looks like there is some sort of mist filter going on, but there is none. The haziness comes from a combination of the smoke (from the food stalls) + overcast day + poor air quality. But I like how the lighting and color makes the central subject stand out from the surroundings. I’m not sure there was a better way to capture this, because the streets were crowded. I snapped about five photos on burst, and this was the best of the bunch. Sometimes it’s a numbers game.

Here’s a decorated tree from the same festival; it reminds me of the Party Tree from the Lord of the Rings. I like the colors here, with the bright red lanterns standing out against the rest of the tree. I feel like this tree was perfect for photography, and there’s no way you could get a bad picture out of it. Perhaps I should’ve moved a little to my right to get more negative space around the tree.

We also took Amos to see the snow for the first time over the weekend. I think this photo showcases the skin tone aspect of this Superia recipe. This photo really does give nostalgic vibes, with the yellow-tints in the snow and the grain. After this trip, I toned down the grain to small/weak because this was a little too much.

I also found out that snowy days are very difficult to shoot, and that I should’ve used a polarized filter. Here, you can’t see any details in the snow. Exposing the photo was difficult, and the snow played havoc with the white balance.

The Superia recipe has an interesting look indoors. I’m not sure I like the yellow/gray cast on everything. The recipe calls for a fixed white balance. However, I might change it to auto just to get more versatility out of it.