The Fujifilm X-T4 is Fujfilm’s flagship APS-C mirrorless camera, “designed for next-level all-round versatility.” In this third installment tale, the ETERNA Bleach Bypass Film Simulation is explained.
When Fujifilm first introduced its first Film Simulation, the “F-Simulation” in the FinePix F700, no one took it quite seriously. After all, the use of fancy filters was the domain of amateurs wanting cool-looking Instagram filter effects for Internet posting.
But Fujifilm persevered, releasing one Film Simulation after another until serious photographers woke up to the fact that these were really useful, and more or less did a great job emulating the effects that they used to love using different types of film.
The “ETERNA” Film Simulation dials down saturation and contrast so low as to seem almost inadequate. The intended effect is “to heighten the picture’s perfection by keeping saturation and tone to the minimum needed to communicate movement born of the passage of time and the sounds associated with the subject and its surroundings.”
Since “ETERNA” does not have the range of expression to meet every need for a movie, Fujifilm introduced the “ETERNA Bleach Bypass” Film Simulation which “drops saturation even more while tightening the dynamic range, delivering hard, serious images that―apart from being in color―resemble black-and-white photographs.”
In the imaging world, this form of expression has in fact frequently been used with some subjects ever since the film era. Known in Japanese as “retaining the silver”, a “bleach bypass” bypasses the step of removing (“bleaching”) the silver halide during development, producing the effect this new film simulation option is designed to emulate.
> Read: Tales of the Fujifilm X-T4: Tale 3 – ETERNA Bleach Bypass
Related Links:
- Tales of the Fujifilm X-T4: Tale 1 – Versatile Performance
- Tales of the Fujifilm X-T4: Tale 2 – IBIS