July 1, 2023 - Waldo Point Harbor

 
I have never been to the famous houseboat community in Sausalito. It is a bright, creative community, where one might imaging that all of the residents are artists and other creatives. Today I visited Waldo Point Harbor, just north from the slips for those luxury yachts and cabin cruisers. 

Like the other houseboat harbors I visited, Waldo Point was alive with color and artistic efforts. Every slip I visited was decorated with potted flowers, succulents, and in many cases sculptures, probably the products of the "artists in residence".  Today was especially vibrant, as the poppies were in full bloom, and the clear skies rendered colors at their most saturated. Incidentally, I broke my promise to refrain from post production manipulation, as I much preferred the results from my manipulations to those where I relied exclusively on the limits set  by the Kodachrome presets.

This craftsman (or woman) crafted an eye from around porthole of a window. The color scheme reminded me of  the color schemes seen on totem poles created by the indigenous populations of the Pacific Northwest. I suspect many other artists were similarly inspired, as I saw one houseboat painted in a color scheme that reminded me of the work of Piet Mondrian (1872-1944), based on the bold patches of color bordered by black lines that form rectangles of various sizes. I appreciated the homage to the artist, but not enough to include an image in this post.

This studious owl was a welcomed bit of whimsey. I used a  50mm F 2.0 TTartisans pancake telephoto lens for this one.

The sunflower collar on this whimsical face has to make everybody smile.

I used the Kodachrome preset for the original image, but found it looked exactly the same when I removed the color in post production. The years of harsh sunlight bleached all the color from the shells and the wood.

I will be leaving the strict Kodachrome simulation settings in my Fuji and return to the saturated, high contrast look of my own "home brew". While it doesn't simulate any film I ever used, let alone mastered, it renders my world in colors as I prefer to see them. And really, that's all it was ever about.

Monochrome To Kodachrome?

 

Friends Shawn and Sheba, Half Moon Bay

While shooting on a recent photo walk with Shawn and Sheba, I was swapping back and forth between monochrome and color renderings settings. While exploring Fuji X-E1's exposure controls, I had found some adjustments allowed me to alter the intensity of my highlights and shadows, two things that I clearly understood. Through trial and error, I succeeded in simulating the high-contrast black and white images from my film years, and by accident, these same settings were retained when I shifted back to color.  More on the specific values later.

We eventually found ourselves at the Portuguese Cemetery in Half Moon Bay. While there I photographed a recently visited gravesite, anticipating a very clean rendition of the flag, as it was front lit on a cloudless day. I was pleased by how the image literally sparkled, but wasn't surprised, considering how well my monochrome exposure adjustments worked in color. For a brief moment, i thought the image reminded me of Kodachrome II, or at least the Kodachrome of my imagination, since I seldom used it when it was available.

Film Simulations: Fuji cameras started to get traction when photographers started experimenting the build in film simulations. These were not limited to the basics (Color, B&W, Sepia) but included three of Fuji's most popular transparency films (Provia, Velvia, Astia), but also filtered black and white simulations (black and white film with yellow, red, and green filters). All of these were presets, all easily accessed through the Film Simulation Menu. This was useful to know, but since I never used Fuji films in my 35mm cameras, I was content to state with the standard Provia setting. For proprietary reasons, Kodachrome was never an option for Fuji.

Kodachrome Quest: Ritchie Roesch's blog site Fuji X Weekly gave me the settings that could potentially give me a more true-to-purpose simulation of Kodachrome II on both my X-Pro 1 and X-E1, as they share the same sensor and image processor. The site suggests the following settings:

PRO Neg. Std

Dynamic Range: DR400

Highlight: +1 (Medium-High)

Shadow: +2 (High)

Color: -2 (Low)

Sharpness: +2 (Hard)

Noise Reduction: -2 (Low)

White Balance: Auto, +1 Red & -2 Blue

ISO: Auto, up to ISO 3200

Exposure Compensation: +1/3 to +2/3 (typically)

It turn out that three of the settings are identical. or nearly so, to those I selected for my enhanced monochrome preferences. The exposure compensation settings are the exact opposite, as Mr. Ritchie leans towards slight over-exposure, while I, true to traditional doctrine, favor underexposure. For the only time in my life I wish I had an X-E1 in chrome so I could easily identify it as the body with the Kodachrome presets. In he mean time, I shall enlist one of my black bodies to serve as my dedicated Kodachrome box, and I will see what happens if the sun ever comes out again.