The World of FUJIFILM Film Simulation – Episode 6: PROVIA

PROVIA. Fujifilm has published Episode 6 – “PROVIA” in their series of “episodes” on their unique Film Simulation modes. PROVIA is Fujifilm’s standard on all their digital cameras, so when you are shooting in JPEG, by default you are shooting PROVIA.

If you are new to Fujifilm’s Film Simulation mode, then just set your Fujifilm camera to Film Simulation Bracketing and select PROVIA, Velvia and ASTIA. Then, go out and shoot street, nature and people. Compare.

To recap, PROVIA is the default standard JPEG mode offering a natural all-rounder, Velvia gives vivid colors and ASTIA shows faithful smooth tone reproduction. The softer Pro Neg.Std (ideal studio lighting) and sharper Pro Neg.Hi (simple lighting) are perfect for portraiture. Classic Chrome aim to to reproduce the ambience found in documentary-style photographs and magazines.

And, as Fujifilm makes clear in this episode, you will always have the option of RAW, giving you the option to adjust tone, colors, white balance, dynamic range, etc. to your liking and for each specific image.

Here’s episode 6 (“PROVIA”) of the “The World of Film Simulation”:

The world of Film Simulation episode #6

This is the last episode of the series and we’d like to talk about PROVIA.

Throughout the series, we have been looking at the mapping chart with tonality on the vertical axis and saturation on the horizontal axis.

“PROVIA” stays at the center of the chart and is the FUJIFILM’s standard film simulation.

You might think of “standard” as being medium, but better suited description would be “almighty” in case of PROVIA. Why? Because PROVIA is all about robustness.

No matter what the subject, lighting or the shooting environment may be, you will find the photos non-collapsed when it is taken in PROVIA. You will also probably find yourself not needing to change the settings when you shoot in PROVIA.

With the X series cameras, you can customize tone, colors, white balance, dynamic range, etc. just by pushing the “Q” button. You can create your preferred setting to suit your taste and you can set the parameters to the extreme. With PROVIA, you will find that images stay tough against these customizations. It is like good meat remains tasty, no matter what the recipe may be.

You can use PROVIA for various applications. The expression is limitless. The dot on the chart should be replaced with a wide circle. PROVIA is like Ace of Spades. This is the strongest card of all, and you can be confident of the outcome even when you do not know what to expect.

And, before we end the series, let us talk about RAW images. We have received messages from many people questioning whether we would delete the RAW options in future. And our answer to the question is, “NO”!

We, at FUJIFILM, do not deny the idea of RAW files or processing.

We believe that the RAW files are part of the fun in photography. But at the same time, we also believe that RAW files are not complete as photo images when they remain just as they are.

FUJIFILM is a camera maker and a photography maker at the same time.

As a camera maker, we are responsible for making quality cameras. And as a photography maker, we need to assure the images that these cameras create. We need to show what we believe are good photography.

The Film Simulation is one of our answers. When you are processing RAW files on your computer, it might be fun to question “How would FUJIFILM edit these colors and images?”

Here are all six of “The World of Film Simulation” episodes: