Film Emulation Bracketing (on Fuji X-E4)

Bracketing on the X-E4. I kinda knew what it was - it takes three pictures of the same scene with one parameter varying - but wasn't sure what I would do with it. Until I saw it did film emulation bracketing. Suddenly I could take lots of shots with three different film emulations and compare them.

The Standard / Velvia / Astia emulations can produce a lot of shadow, which it often takes shoving the Shadow Adjustment clear over to 1.0 to reduce. Those algorithms produce way more shadow that the human eye sees, or maybe the eye does some computational photography as well, just not as egregious as Apple's. A first pass through convinced me that Monochrome was way more to my taste than ACROS, and that the Eterna was, well, wintery

 

Summer (Astia)

Winter (Eterna)

Now take a look at these, taken on the Regent's Canal

Astia - feels like now

Eterna Bypass - feels like 1975 

Monochrome - feels like a quiet day in 1930

Which conveys the majesty of St Pauls better?

Personally, I prefer the Monochrome version of these

If you have film emulation bracketing on your camera and have never tried it, give it a whirl. In the end, I think I arrived almost where I started from: Astia is fine, I've added some HDR tweaks from You Tube, and I must pay more attention to the range of brightness in the frame. Like I did when shooting film back in the day.