📸 Fuji Recipe EP2: A few frames with Reggie's Portra recipe

All images in this post were shot with Reggie’s Portra recipe.

This image is available on my print shop here

Portra, oh Portra.

What is to say about Portra that hasn’t been said before.

It seems like half of the people that got into Fujifilm recipes are because they want to shoot Portra.

While Portra is not my favorite film stock (I’ve never even shot it before), I do like the look of it, sometimes anyways.

(I’m more of a dark and moody, edgy, low key, underexposed vibe person, and Portra is more like airy pastel good stuff)

Despite that. I want a recipe that are good for portraits to, well, shoot portraits sometimes. So here we are.

Photos are from my Vinh Hy trip that I talked about on the last episode. Gotta milk this shit one last time 😸.

I mostly shot with the Classic Cuban Negative there, but occasional switched to this recipe for portraits and for occasions where it feels like it.

Why Reggie’s Portra though?

There are dozens of Portra recipes online from different people. I’ll probably shoot and test them more down the line, but I wanted to use Reggie’s Portra since it feels the most solid. Let me explain:

• It uses auto dynamic range, which means I can shoot wide open a lot more often with my lovely XF35mm F1.4 lens (recipes from, say Fujixweekly usually have DR at 400, which bumps the base ISO to 640. And while I don’t have a problem with the “noise”, the 2 extra stops of light is actually quite annoying sometimes).

• Auto white balance also means the color will never be too weird in different lighting conditions. Obviously that means a less stylized look, but again, for a portrait first recipe, that’s what I want.

• Settings are subtle, solid and well restrained.

• Oh and the grain is “weak, small”, for when people who gets the photos don’t share my “artistic visions” of huge, visible grain.

With all that said, this recipe puts out beautiful pictures with nice, pastel colors. Skin tones, at least on my results, are beautiful (Reggie mentioned he wanted to have something that looks good on his family’s skin tones, and I can see that).

I don’t have access to classic cars on minimalist backgrounds around here, but I imagine that would look real nice with this recipe too!

This recipe likes a lot of light, so I usually overexpose it by 1/3 stop (just like the real thing huh). Everything turns out great!

(Again, I’m more of a -1 stop underexposed kind of guy, but this is nice!)

The Verdict: Good stuff. This recipe probably will stay on one of my 7 slots for a long time.

And that’s it. Subscribe to the newsletter to see more mediocre photos I took with different recipes. Next episode: Ektachrome!