Film recipes for sunrise, sunset and the magic hour
The hours around sunrise and sunset offer some of the best light for taking photographs. Apart from the opportunity to shoot images of the sun close to the horizon, the longer warm golden hour gives a wonderful quality of light in all directions.
In a number of film recipes, I have embraced this soft warm light with settings and film simulation choices that compliment the golden hour. Using these will help you capture the warm glow of the magic hour of sunrise or sunset.
The golden hour — that magical window just after sunrise and before sunset — is when photography comes alive. The warm, directional light transforms ordinary subjects and the colour temperature shifts into the amber range that photographers spend all day waiting for.
These film recipes have been chosen and created with an eye for that warm, glowing light. Many feature warm white balance shifts, boosted reds and reduced blues to amplify the golden tones already present at that time of day.
This is a ranked shortlist of 40 golden hour recipes drawn from both the site and the Film Recipes App. The app contains a large number of golden hour recipes that aren’t on the site — these are shown here with an app-only label. The full app library covers over 800 recipes across all styles and conditions.
Magic Hour Film Simulation Recipes
These are the highest-rated recipes from the site and app combined. There are a further 234 recipes in this category exclusively in the Film Recipes App — browse them alongside the full library of 800+ recipes on iOS and Android.