Ilford Pan F Plus Fujifilm Recipe
NOTE: The photos that accompany this article were made with my Fuji X100V and my Ilford Pan F Plus recipe. The images are JPEGS straight out of camera, using my Pan F recipe, with only cropping, dust removal, and a slight vignette added. No other post processing involved. I didn’t even use Topaz AI at the end like I usually do. No sharpening or noise reduction has been added in post.
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I have owned every iteration of the Fuji X100 camera from the original 12.3 MP version (released in 2011) up to the current model, the X100V.
While today’s X100V is much improved over the original version, one thing remains the same — whether it’s the X100, 2013’s X100S, 2014’s X100T, 2017’s X100F or the X100V — announced in February of 2020, all these cameras were easy to love because they make the best quality JPEG files straight out of camera of any digital camera I have ever tested, seen, used or owned.
One of the reason’s Digital Photography Review gave the X100V a score of 86% and a gold award, calling it “the most capable prime-lens compact camera, ever” is its ability to use different film simulations.
Fuji Film simulations digitally replicate the look of classic color and black-and-white film for incredible straight-out-of-camera images. For more than 85 years Fujifilm created film stocks beloved by photographers and cinematographers. This expertise and the color science behind it has been channeled into these Fuji Film simulations.
While non-Fuji users (who are typically either jealous or clueless) have called the Fuji film simulations marketing gimmicks, those of us who own the camera and who have really used and understand the film simulations, know how valuable they are.
They are so good, that I often use the JPEGs from the X100V instead of the RAW files. This is a sharp departure from my workflow over the entirety of my digital photography career. But the Fuji film simulations are so good, I have abandoned my need for shooting nothing but RAW and defaulted to RAW + JPEG when I want to use the Fuji film simulations.
The RAW file, kept as a backup only — is there in case I blow the exposure. That is its only purpose. And since I have 50 years of photography experience, I am pretty good at getting the exposure just right in camera. Nonetheless, simply because I am uber-careful, I still keep the RAWs just in case.
But about 50% of the time now, I intentionally shoot for the JPEG. Why? The film recipes are that good. I have enjoyed the built-in, factory-provided Film Simulation Modes on the X100V. These include the following:
Provia — The standard contrast and normal saturation color transparency film
Velvia — High contrast, high color saturation, and vivid color transparency film
Astia — Subdued contrast and color saturation with a look that is ideal for portraits
Classic Chrome — Delivers muted tones and deep color reproduction, similar to a dated slide film
Classic Neg — Muted contrast but vibrant colors with a vintage filmic feel
PRO Neg — Available with both Hi and Std. contrast options, this mimics the punchy-but-natural feeling of their professional-grade color negative film
Eterna — For a cinematic look, this provides a flat color, low saturation look well-suited to post-production color grading
Acros — Based on the popular B&W film, this monochrome mode has a distinct tonality and graininess and can be used along with yellow, red, and green contrast filter effects
B&W — Straightforward and classic black and white effect with yellow, red, and green contrast filter options
Sepia — Everyone’s favorite old-timey look mimicking the popular alternative process
Of these, my favorites are Velvia, Pro Neg. Hi, Eterna and Acros + Red Filter.)
But this is just the beginning of the fun. Fuji has enabled every one of the Fuji X100 models (and most of its other digital cameras) with the ability to use custom film recipes. You aren’t limited to those that ship with the camera.
To better understand the film simulations and for a deep dive into how they work, I spent time on a special site created by Fujifilm called “The World of Film Simulation” — available here: https://fujifilm-x.com/global/tag/the-world-of-film-simulation/?post_type=xstories
This gave me a much better understanding of how the film simulations work and I started exploring making my own recipes. You can tweak many parameters like sharpness, noise reduction, grain, white balance, etc. to make custom versions of the manufacturer’s recipes. As much as I enjoy the built-in recipes, I always felt like there were places where they came up just a tad short of my expectations or for that matter my memory of what they SHOULD look like. (There is an official term for this — it’s called ‘color memory.’)
Let me step back in time here and note that prior to 2001, I shot film. I (like most photographers) experimented with many different types and brands of film. Some of my favorites from my youth were Kodak Tri-X, Fuji Velvia, Kodak Portra and for Black & White (other than Tri-X) just about anything from Ilford.
Ilford Pan F Plus was the last film stock I ever purchased before switching to the Canon 1D and digital files. This beautiful film comes from Mobberley, England. Ilford’s films have been made for more than 140 years. Every one of the Ilford films starts as small crystals dispersed in gelatin called “photographic emulsion.” Their emulsions are the best in the business and the people who work with them typically have decades of experience and it shows in the results that you can get from these films.
When I shot film, I fell in love with the Ilford approach and made excuses to use it every chance I got. Of course when I was young, monochromatic films were much more popular than color. One reason was that they were less expensive than color films and another was that most of us learned how to develop and print our monochromatic films using enlargers in home-brew darkrooms.
I became quite proficient at this and spent 18 years working almost daily in a wet darkroom. Eventually I also learned how to work with color films and bought all the tools necessary to develop and print color film.
But my heart was always with the black and white films and really, towards the end of my time with film I was shooting panoramic B&W negatives on my lovely Hasselblad X-Pan and then printing the images in my own darkroom. In many ways it was a marvelous time in my life, but it’s also easy to think of this in some sort of romantic fantasy when in fact, digital has made life so much easier for me that I could never go back.
BUT — I do miss some of those films (more accurately the results they produced) and THIS is what drew me to the Fuji X100 line of cameras. This alone was reason enough for me to plunk down my hard-earned money and to buy the X100 series cameras.
When I started learning how to do my own film recipes on the X100 the first film I wanted to recreate was Pan F and Pan F Plus.
My initial attempts at this failed. I didn’t quite understand why. I first (like many) started by thinking I could first re-create this all in Photoshop. Boy was I wrong. Color science is an incredibly complex beast to master and it wasn’t until a few years ago when I came upon an article on Imaging Resource that I began to grasp what I was doing wrong and more importantly, why I couldn’t do it in Photoshop and had to stick with the camera as my tool to create the look I want. If you are a geek like me and want to take a very, very deep dive into this, I highly recommend this article on IR.
Back to my attempts at making my own recipe. . .
I decided to throw myself into this during the pandemic. I did extensive testing and started to get closer to my goal. But I was still missing the mark by a tiny bit. I couldn’t put my finger on it until (face palm moment) I started PRINTING the test images. DUH! Once I started making prints, the picture became clear (see what I did there?) and I got my recipe.
I wanted to make my favorite film come back to life in a digital camera. Before I give you the recipe (yes I am going to give it to you for free at the end of this very long-winded article) I want to discuss Pan F.
Ilford’s Pan F Plus is a slow-speed panchromatic black and white negative film featuring a very fine grain structure, making it ideal for large-scale printing applications. Its slow speed also renders a broad tonal range, along with high edge contrast, resolution, and detail, making it well-suited for pictorial and fine art photography. Pan F Plus has a nominal sensitivity of ISO 50/18° when developed in standard chemistry, and can also be developed to higher contrast values for technical, copy, and scientific work.
Through my printing process, I was able to realize I hit the mark because prints made from Pan F always had a certain look about them. Pan F is a very clean film. The key to knowing I got it right was making BIG prints. The goal was 30x40" prints that still appear crisp and fine-detailed.
Now one step more to reveal to the “secret.” Just as I did when I used film in cameras, I picked my film based on the scene I was photographing and the result I wanted to achieve. Not every film is suited to every scene. Velvia for instance is a slide film that was widely used in landscape photography. But nobody I know would consider it for portrait work.
The same goes for the Fuji Film Simulations. They are not perfect for every situation. Even though you may want them to be. I find that Pan F works best in soft light. If you’re doing work that has abrupt light fall off (hard edges) you may NOT want to use this recipe. It’s great for portraits in soft light and I treat my toy photography the way I treated a human portrait subject back in the day when I made portraits for a living (this was 30 years ago.) I use soft light on the characters I photograph and when monochrome will do, I use this recipe.
It’s also a great film simulation when you want to tell a photographic story that has a lot of drama. This generally means working in controlled conditions but I do know people who use this film in street photography because of its high contrast.
So assuming you have a compatible Fuji camera, here is the recipe. (NOTE: This SHOULD also work on the Fujifilm X-Pro3, X-T4, X-S10, X-E4 and the X-T30 II Fuji cameras. My disclaimer here is that I use it and have tested it on the X100V and it works just as I hoped it would. I don’t have any of the other cameras listed here and have not tested it on any of them so you might need to do your own research in that regard.)
NOTE: If you don’t know how to add custom recipes to your Fuji camera, Fuji’s website has some information on that here: https://fujifilm-x.com/en-us/quick-start-guides/quick-start-guide-fujifilm-x100v/. You can also find YouTube videos that will walk you through the process.
Here is the recipe:
Monochrome
Dynamic Range: DR100 (This is effectively the same as OFF)
Highlight: 0
Shadow: +1 (Sometimes I set this to +2 — it’s the hardest part to get right)
Noise Reduction: -3
Sharpening: 0
Clarity: +2 (If you set the Shadow to +2 dial this down to +1)
Grain Effect: Weak, Large
Color Chrome Effect: Off
Color Chrome Effect Blue: Off
White Balance: Daylight, +1 Red & -6 Blue
ISO: 160 but this works fairly well up to 1600 — the lower the ISO the better
There is one more step. This final step is crucial. With all the Fuji X100 black and white recipes I use, I find that to fine tune them I need to first come up with what I think the perfect exposure will be. Then I use exposure compensation between -1/2 to + 1/2 stops. You can see what your results will look like in the viewfinder so consider this last bit add salt and pepper to taste.
CONCLUSION
That’s all there is to it. I don’t consider myself an expert at this stuff but I do know what I like and I like the results I get with this recipe. You might like it too. Feel free to give it a try.
Remember, toys are joy.
For a list of my toy photo gear and props go to:
bit.ly/toyphotogear
