Velvet Amber Hour: a Fujifilm recipe for fashion

Today's Luma recipe is for people and the clothes they're wearing, shot outside in autumn. It's built on Astia, Fujifilm's softest colour simulation, which keeps skin smooth and holds back contrast in faces while still giving warm colours some weight. The white balance is fixed at 4900K with a red shift and a blue cut on top, so the frame leans amber even when the sky is grey, and it stays that way from shot to shot instead of drifting with auto white balance.

Most of the other settings take detail away on purpose. Sharpness, clarity and noise reduction are all at -2, and highlights and shadows are both at -1, which gives a flat, low-contrast file where knitwear and wool look soft rather than crisp. Exposure compensation is +0.7, so the camera deliberately overexposes a little. Check the first few frames on a bright day, because pale fabric against an open sky is where that extra two thirds of a stop starts to clip, and DR200 only recovers so much. Clarity at -2 also means a short processing pause after each shot on most X-Trans bodies, so this suits a slow, posed session more than a burst of walking shots.

Overcast afternoons and open shade under trees work better than direct sun here. The recipe already adds the warmth, and hard light would fight the soft tone curve it relies on.

Settings

• Film simulation: Astia
• Dynamic range: DR200
• D-range priority: Off
• Grain effect: Weak, Large
• Color chrome effect: Weak
• Color chrome FX blue: Off
• White balance: 4900K
• White balance shift: +3 Red, -2 Blue
• Highlights: -1
• Shadows: -1
• Color: +2
• Sharpness: -2
• Noise reduction: -2
• Clarity: -2
• ISO: 320 to 1600
• Exposure compensation: +0.7

It works on the X-T5, X-T4, X-T50, X-H2, X-H2S, X-S20, X-S10, X-Pro3, X-E4, X-E5, X-M5, X100VI, X100V, GFX100 II, GFX100S II, GFX100S, GFX100RF and GFX50S II.

The full recipe is on Luma's daily page, with a new one every day.