Alice Crowe Trichromie No. 2

While I've been really enjoying learning wet plate collodion, I haven't stopped shooting 35mm and digital. I don't plan on stopping any time soon. For 35mm, I still adore using my ancient Minolta SRT-101 body and Minolta Rokkor 58mm f/1.4 lens. I've owned the slightly faster 58mm f/1.2 before, and I don't think that its extra weight, price, and speed justify its significantly higher price. I also find it hard enough to focus at f/1.4 -- shooting at f/1.2 was frustrating as hell.

For nudes and portraiture, my longstanding preference was film over digital. It still is, but I've been shooting more digital lately. This would have been Big News in 2012, but I can confirm that Fuji's film simulations are pretty solid. I can't make myself shoot JPEG exclusively, but I have found that my X-T5's in-camera rendering in the Astia and Neopan Acros modes is at least as good as my manual RAW processing. Specifically, I've actually been blown away by my camera's "Neopan Acros + Green Filter" film emulation mode. It's fucking incredible. It's so good that I don't see myself shooting black and white 35mm again. I'm less impressed by the camera's Astia mode, but it's still at least as good as my "vanilla" color RAW processing. I just don't like shooting "vanilla" color as much as I do shooting either black and white or the psychedelically wonderful Revolog Kolor film. I've programmed in a "JPEG recipe" for Kodak Portra 400 that I'm looking forward to trying in good light.

Here are my favorite shots, and some notes, from my recent second photoshoot with Alice Crowe. 

Alice Crowe Revolog Kolor 1
File this under serendipity. I missed focus on her eyes, but the soft effect gives the image a dreamlike quality I like.

Alice Crowe Kolor No. 2
Sometimes the Kolor film is wild, and is exactly what I'm looking for.

DSCF0181 This isn't film, but it's at least as good as real 35mm monochrome film. And my Fuji X-T5's eye detection autofocus makes this a hell of a lot easier to shoot with a 50mm f/1.0 lens!