Guides · 3 min read
Film simulation or recipe: what is the difference?
One is built into the camera. The other is what you do with it.
Short answer
A film simulation is one of the twenty colour profiles built into your camera, like Classic Chrome. A recipe is a film simulation plus every other setting around it — white balance shift, grain, highlight, shadow, colour and dynamic range. The simulation is the ingredient; the recipe is the dish.
People use these two words as if they mean the same thing, and the confusion causes real problems. Someone tells you they shoot Classic Chrome, you switch to Classic Chrome, and your photos look nothing like theirs. This is why.
What a film simulation is
A film simulation is a colour profile Fujifilm built into the camera. There are twenty of them, each modelled on a film stock or a printing process, and you cannot edit them. Classic Chrome is Classic Chrome on every camera that has it.
What a simulation controls is hue and the basic shape of the tone curve. What it does not control is contrast, grain, sharpening, white balance, or how much detail survives in a bright sky.
What a recipe is
A recipe is a simulation with all of those other settings specified. A typical one looks like this:
- Film Simulation: Classic Chrome
- Dynamic Range: DR200
- Highlight: −1, Shadow: +1
- Colour: +2
- White Balance: Auto, shift R +1 / B −1
- Grain: Weak, Small
Change any one of those and you get a different picture from the same simulation. That is why two photographers both shooting Classic Chrome can produce results that look unrelated.
Why the distinction matters
Because it tells you what to copy. If you like someone’s photographs, asking which simulation they use gets you perhaps a quarter of the way. Asking for the recipe gets you all of it.
It also tells you what is portable. Simulations are tied to camera generations: a recipe built on Nostalgic Neg. simply will not load on an X-T3, because that camera does not have it. The other settings mostly transfer, but the ranges differ between sensor generations.
How to actually use a recipe
Save it to a custom setting slot rather than dialling it in each time. Fujifilm cameras hold seven, labelled C1 to C7, and switching between them takes one press of the Q button.
Then leave it alone for a few weeks. The most common mistake is collecting recipes and never shooting any of them long enough to know whether they work in your light, with your subjects.
Two or three recipes you know well beat twenty you have only tested indoors.
Common questions
Do recipes affect RAW files?
No. RAW records the sensor data and stores the simulation as metadata. You can change the simulation afterwards in Fujifilm’s software or in Lightroom. Recipes only bake into the JPEG.
Can I use a recipe from a different camera?
Only if the sensor generation matches. X-Trans V cameras have settings X-Trans IV cameras do not, and the reverse is also true. Recipes list the generation they were built for.
How many recipes should I keep?
Seven is what the camera holds, and most people need three or four. One everyday colour recipe, one for grey weather, one black and white and one for people covers almost everything.
Recipes
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Last updated September 2, 2026