As for taking photographs, first trip out the other week to test the X-T5 “in anger” and even the weather behaved. \u00a0the Yorkshire Air Museum at Elvington looks much better with blue skies and sunshine than it did last time I visited, when it was grey, wet and miserable. \u00a0Had a great chat with a couple of the people that manage the museum after depositing the 1930’s aero engineering books I’d been given with them. \u00a0It was even better to learn that they’d seen a copy of the books at another museum and there’s a section in them that will help restore another exhibit they’re bringing up to Yorkshire: Result!<\/p>\n
It’s safe to say I’m delighted with the output from the X-T5 and very much back in a happy place using it, much like the late lamented Olympus. \u00a0It’s not quite as small and light as the E-M5, but drastically better than either Nikon full-frame I’ve had in between and from what I’ve seen, I’ve lost very little in the way \u00a0of image quality. \u00a0What I’ve also gained is easy access to “film recipes”. This is essentially a method of customising the output from the camera sensor to give your images a specific look, be that simply B&W with a coloured filter to tweak the impact reds or blues have, \u00a0or give them contrasty and pure blacks, so it looks like you’ve used ISO 50 Ilford Pan-F.<\/p>\n
There’s a whole cottage industry dedicated to creating Fuji recipes or their counterparts for other systems which support similar techniques. \u00a0All of them include a few particular favourites from the heyday of 35mm film, especially emulation of Kodak’s slide emulsions, Kodachrome and Ektachrome, assortments of Kodak and Ilford’s monochrome negative films, like T-400 and the aforementioned Pan-F, as well as more non-specific themes to create moods associated with \u00a0or for places. \u00a0This includes adding grain for moody street photography, hazy effects for sunnier climes and a host of slightly more off-beat effects.<\/p>\n
Naturally enough, Fuji have a head start over most camera manufacturers as their range of 35mm films were easily on a par with Kodak’s finest. \u00a0Velvia 50 slide film was my particular favourite, producing lush vivid greens for landscape shots, while Neopan Arcos 100 was superb fine grain B&W . \u00a0 My
\nX-E5 which is already packed in my cabin luggage, has a dedicated wheel to select the built in film recipes, along with 3 empty custom setting you can program to suit. \u00a0As the X-E5 and X-T5 share the same sensor and processor, the recipes I’ve acquired are good for both cameras, and after my day at Elvington, I can see much of San Francisco being shot using Kodachrome 64. \u00a0 As I always shoot with the camera set to save images as both JPG and RAW, \u00a0I automatically get an “as is” image (RAW) and a JPG image that’s been subject to whatever recipe is set. \u00a0 Thing is, so good is the JPG output from the Fuji, if I get the exposure right in camera, there’s very little to do later in post on Lightroom or whatever if I don’t fancy editing the RAW files.<\/p>\n
For the uninitiated, the aircraft below is a Blackburn Buccaneer S2, the second mark of Buccaneer built for the Royal Navy (once they’d finally put decent engines in it!) and eventually thrust onto the RAF, in S2B and S2D versions once they’d axed all the Navy’s proper carriers and after they’d cancelled TSR.2 ….Volume 2 is out in July for the whole sorry tale \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n![\"Blackburn](\"https:\/\/vaughtons.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/S2B-RAW-scaled.jpg\")
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