Every film stock has a chemical signature, the curve of its dye layers, how its grain responds to overexposure, the way its highlights roll off. Some of those signatures map cleanly onto Fujifilm’s in-camera simulations. Others do not. This matcher is honest about the difference. We rank recipes by how close they actually get, and we’re upfront about the films Fuji cannot match no matter how creative the recipe.
Portra 400 → Reggie’s Portra (Classic Chrome) · Tri-X 400 → Kodak Tri-X 400 (Lindborg, Acros+Ye) · Velvia 50 → in-camera Velvia · CineStill 800T → community Classic Negative recipe (halation is optical, recipe gets you the colour cast, not the glow) · Ektar 100 → no good match (Velvia is the closest base, but the red rendering misses).
Pick a film to begin
Choose a stock above. We'll rank the recipes by how closely they emulate that film, and (optionally) filter by what your camera can render.
How the Fujifilm Film Stock Matcher works.
Deterministic, same film + same camera always returns the same recipes in the same order.
- 01
Identify the film's base simulation. Portra 400 maps to Classic Chrome; Tri-X 400 to Acros; CineStill 800T to Classic Negative or Eterna; Velvia 50 to Velvia. This anchors the search.
- 02
Score every recipe in the library against the base. Recipes that use the right simulation get 50 points; recipes that explicitly name the film in their title or description add 20 per keyword (capped at 40).
- 03
Apply colour-mode penalty. A colour-negative film against a B&W recipe loses 60 points immediately, and vice versa. This keeps Acros recipes out of Portra 400 results.
- 04
Optional camera filter. When you select a body, the matcher overlays compatibility on top, green for 'works as-written', orange for 'renders differently', red for 'missing parameters'.
- 05
Surface the top 6. Anything scoring above 30 is shown with its reasoning; everything below is hidden because it's likely a poor match the matcher is being generous about.
Best Fujifilm recipe by film look.
If you know the mood but not the film stock, this table picks both.
| If you want | Real film | Closest Fuji recipe |
|---|---|---|
| Wedding / portrait warmth | Kodak Portra 400 | Reggie's Portra (Classic Chrome) |
| Editorial neutral skin | Kodak Portra 160 | Roesch's Portra 160 (PRO Neg. Std) |
| Golden hour sunlit | Kodak Gold 200 | Kodak Gold (Classic Chrome) |
| Reportage B&W | Kodak Tri-X 400 | Kodak Tri-X 400 (Lindborg, Acros+Ye) |
| UK documentary B&W | Ilford HP5 Plus 400 | HP5 Plus (Acros, no filter) |
| Hyper-saturated landscape | Velvia 50 | Velvia Landscape (Velvia base) |
| Tungsten neon street | CineStill 800T | CineStill 800T community recipe (Classic Negative) |
| Drugstore-look colour | Fujifilm Superia 400 | Reggie's Superia (Classic Negative) |
Films Fujifilm can’t replicate.
Not every film has a clean Fujifilm equivalent. If you're looking for one of these, here's the honest answer.
- Kodak · ISO 100
Kodak Ektar 100
Fuji has no true Ektar simulation. Velvia approaches the saturation but with Fuji greens, not Kodak reds. Treat as a gap.
- Kodak · ISO 100
Kodak Ektachrome E100
Provia is the closest baseline but biases warmer. Honest answer: no Fuji recipe is a 1:1 Ektachrome match.
- Fujifilm · ISO 400
Fujifilm Pro 400H
Fuji discontinued the film and never released a 400H simulation. Astia is the closest base; expect a recognisable miss in the greens.
How to get closer to the real film look.
- 01
Match the exposure latitude. Portra and most Kodak negatives reward +⅓ to +1 stop of overexposure; slide films (Velvia, Ektachrome) want -⅓ exposure.
- 02
Match the light. A Portra 400 recipe shot indoor under tungsten will not look like Portra 400, the recipe was calibrated for daylight or open shade.
- 03
Add a diffusion filter. The Tiffen Black Pro-Mist 1/8 or Moment CineBloom 5% is what Reggie Ballesteros uses to soften Fuji's digital edge into something more film-like.
- 04
Shoot RAW + JPEG. You keep the recipe baked into the JPEG and the option to re-process the RAW with a different recipe later if you change your mind.
- 05
Live with one recipe for a week before deciding it doesn't work. Most film looks reveal themselves across hundreds of frames, not five.
Common questions.
Within 70–90% of the look for most colour negative and B&W stocks, Portra 400, Tri-X 400, Ektar 100. The colour palette and tone curve get close. The grain texture and the way the film responds across overexposure latitude do not, those are physical chemistry, not JPEG settings. The honesty rating on each film tells you which group it falls into.
Stocks with strong chemical signatures: CineStill 800T's halation around bright lights (it's an optical effect, not a colour shift), Kodak Ektar 100's saturation in the reds, Kodak Ektachrome E100's clean cool slide-film blues, and Fujicolor PRO 400H's pastel greens. We mark those as 'no good match' rather than pretending a recipe gets close.
Three reasons: sensor generation (X-Trans V renders the same Classic Negative recipe with deeper blue than X-Trans IV), lighting (every recipe is tuned for one lighting situation), and lens character. Match the scenario as closely as possible and expect a 5–10% drift from sample images.
No effect on the JPEG, the recipe bakes in either way. RAW + JPEG gives you a safety net: re-process the RAF later through Fujifilm X RAW Studio with a different recipe if you change your mind.
Yes for the simpler stocks, Provia, Velvia and Astia map straight to their namesake films, and Acros wasn't introduced until X-Trans III but Monochrome covers basic B&W. You'll miss the Classic Chrome and Classic Negative bases that most Kodak emulations require, substitute Provia and lean on white-balance shifts (see Piotr Skrzypek's X-Trans I Portra recipe for an example).
Only for buying real stock. For digital matching, the emulation is independent of the film's commercial status, Fujifilm PRO 400H was discontinued in 2021 but its colour palette is still emulated, and Kodachrome ceased production in 2009 but generates active community recipes.
The score combines three signals: whether the recipe uses one of the film's base simulations (50 points), whether the recipe name or description explicitly references the film (20 per keyword, capped at 40), and a heavy penalty for colour-vs-monochrome mismatch. Top results are typically scored 70+, anything below 30 is likely a stretch match.