Nightwalker, Street Film Recipe for Night Lights

Fujifilm film simulation recipe for night street photography and city lights with a cyber teal tone

With earlier dark nights in Winter, I’ve been experimenting with more street photography under the streetlights and lights from passing traffic. In the UK, it’s dark by around 5pm around now, meaning that there’s no need to go out late. And, with a few rainy evenings recently, I was able to try out some new film recipes ideas for street with the extra bonus of wet surfaces and reflections.

The addition of recent rain to night photos is transformational, adding lots of bounceback lighting and refections to all sorts of surfaces. In particular floors, streets and pavements become mirrors, doubling up the number of light points for the images. It’s also a fun time to try accessories such as mirrors and lensballs, adding again to the number of light points for more creative images.

For this film recipe, I wanted to pull out lots of the light volume and colour, so the base here is Velvia with some optional overexposure. This helps bring colour into more of the image in the darker conditions, but the choice of exposure is very much a personal one.

The other big element in this recipe is the colour balance shifting which leans hard into teal and blue. This adds something of a Cyber / Bladerunner vibe, adding atmosphere to artificial lights, and giving a striking turquoise look if using with any residual daylight.

So, here we go with the recipe details, and samples taken over two recent evenings.

Nightwalker Film Recipe

• Simulation: Velvia/Vivid
• Grain Effect: Strong, Large
• Colour Chrome Effect: Weak
• Colour Chrome Blue: Strong (IV) / Weak (V)
• White Balance: Auto
• WB Shift: -7 Red, -3 Blue
• Dynamic Range: DR200
• Highlights: -2.0
• Shadows: +2.0
• Color: +4
• Sharpness: -2
• ISO Noise Reduction: -4
• Clarity: 0
• EV compensation: up to +2/3

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