📸 Fujifilm Recipe EP10: Creamy desaturated retro tones with Hipsta Ray Mark II

Photos in this post were shot using film.recipes Hipsta Ray Mark II recipe

Hello friends,

Do you like your photos with barely any colors? Plus a “small pinch” of sepia tones? Do you think the present is too boring and you’d prefer living in the past? I’ve got a recipe for you then.

Let’s get started.

What is “Hipsta Ray Mark II” anyways

Well, its origin story is written here by Justin Gould, but the gist is, this recipe is mimicking an Instagram filter of a popular iOS app 😸. We’ve gone full circle.

I’m always interested at recipes that provide stronger looks. Mostly because real life is quite boring to me most of the time 🙂 . I prefer if my eyes would see colors in Classic Negative by default 👀.

And while Fujifilm jpeg recipes are probably not the best ways to do that, given the relatively limited options, there are still many cool recipes like this that push the boundaries, like this one. Limitations are good for creativity, it turns out 🤷.

The colors of “Hipsta Ray II” are…

… quite dramatic, as you can see from the photos. It’s quite a retro look, not unlike a sepia B&W shot, but with just enough colors so you get a hint of reality.

Anyways, these days I’m actually quite interested in shooting “old” things. Doors, gates, walls, architecture, decorations. Remnants from the yesteryears. And I think this recipe fits the subjects pretty well.

I think the recipe works best with rusty things and a blue sky, like this photo above, although I can’t remember the last time I see a deep blue sky in Hanoi (probably due to all the air pollution). The “Old Barn” photo from Justin’s post is actually what makes me want to try this recipe, probably for this exact reason 😂.

It’s definitely not an every recipe though (unless you are braver than me, I guess). Skin tones… definitely exist. And colors barely go through, which sometimes is not very preferable.

Regardless, it’s a pretty fun recipe to try out, and it can look nice on the right situations.

The cheat code is probably to shoot red/brown things with either blue stuff as a complimentary color, or green stuff as a triadic color (do I sound smart and sophisticated? I just learned the word and color theory today 😬). And then this recipe kinda kicks ass.

Conclusion

Sadly, I think I’m gonna stop shooting this recipe after this post. It’s a fun experiment, and I do like the recipe a lot under the right situations.

Still I do think it’s a bit too limiting, and this brown desaturated palette is starting to get under my skin if I look in the viewfinder for too long 😂. I think I’ll have to cure it by shooting some high key pastel-y recipe next, so stay tune for that 🫠.

… And that’s it ;)

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Next episode: TBD 🤷