Black Salt
Black and white, with bite.
Colour
- White BalanceAuto
- Color Chrome EffectOff
- Color Chrome FX BlueOff
Tone
- Dynamic RangeDR200
- Highlight+1
- Shadow+2
Texture
- Grain EffectStrong, Large
- Clarity+2
- Sharpness+1
- High ISO NR−4
Exposure
- ISOAuto, max 6400
- Exposure Comp.0 to +1
Why this recipe
Acros is Fuji's black and white film simulation, based on Neopan Acros 100. Fine grain, shadows that hold detail a long way down and highlights that roll off instead of breaking.
The +R version puts a red filter in front of it. Blue sky goes dark, skin and brick go light, and strong shapes separate before you touch a single slider.
Black Salt builds the contrast back up and leaves the surface rough. Deep blacks, bright highlights with bite, coarse grain and a crisp edge.
In one line: the only black and white in my cookbook, and the only recipe with an edge.
It loves the light other recipes hate. Hard midday sun, clouds with structure, architecture, rock and snow.
Every photo here is a JPEG straight out of my Fujifilm X-H2S. No editing, no Lightroom, no cropping. Shot in London, Scotland, Norway, Lofoten and the Alps.
Save it to one of the custom slots (C1 to C7). It takes about a minute to type in, and from then on the camera hands you a finished JPEG.
Shoot it in
Hard midday sun, clouds with structure, architecture, texture and strong shapes. The harder the light, the better it gets.
Skip it in
Flat overcast, where a red filter has nothing to separate. On grey days, a colour recipe does more.
Straight out of camera
No edits. Just the JPEG.
What each setting does
Built from the bottom up.
A recipe is easier to trust when you know why every value is there.
Film Simulation
Acros comes from Fuji's Neopan Acros 100: finer grain than anything else at its speed, shadows that hold detail a long way down and a highlight roll off that refuses to break.
Snow is the test. It keeps its texture instead of turning into paper white.
Acros + R
The +R version puts a red filter in front of Acros. That's a tonal decision, not a colour one.
Blue sky goes dark, skin and brick go light, and clouds stand out against the sky. That separation is fixed before any slider is touched.
Monochromatic Color
WC +2, MG 0. The faintest warm tone over the black and white, the way a print carries one.
You barely see it on its own. Next to a neutral file, this one looks like paper instead of a screen.
Dynamic Range, Highlight, Shadow
This recipe builds the contrast back up. DR200 buys a stop at the top and Highlight +1 puts the bite back into it.
Shadow +2 takes the dark end to black instead of grey. DR200 needs twice the base ISO, which means ISO 320 or higher on the X-H2S.
Grain, Sharpness, Clarity, Noise
The opposite of everything else in my cookbook: coarse grain, Sharpness +1 and Clarity +2 instead of the usual softening. High ISO NR −4 keeps the grain from getting smeared.
The trade off: Clarity above 0 adds a short processing pause after each frame. For architecture and landscapes you won't mind.
Quick start
- Put it on a custom slot (C1 to C7) and set ISO to Auto with a max of 6400, so DR200 always has room.
- Set Monochromatic Color to WC +2, MG 0 for the warm print tone.
- Start at 0 exposure comp, go up to +1 for bright, airy frames. Switch to colour when the sky goes flat.
Works on
- All X-Trans V bodies
- X-Pro3
- X-T4
- X100V
- X-S10
- X-E4
- X-T30 II
X-T3 and X-T30 miss Clarity and grain size, so treat it as a direction there.
Black Salt
Thanks for reading.
@danieljschwarzSave it · Tag me · Share it with a Fuji friend
If you try Black Salt, I'd love to see what it does with your hard light. Tag me on Instagram at @danieljschwarz, that's also where I post new recipes first.
Black Salt is one of the two recipes in My small Fuji Cookbook, a free PDF. The full book with twelve recipes is in my shop.
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