Welcome to Z Recipes!
Welcome to the Z Recipes blog! My aim with this site is to create a community of photographers who are interested in SOOC jpgs, Nikon's colour science, and just being able to get the most out of their camera, whilst also building up a library of recipes for Nikon Z cameras from the community. This is the first post in a series of blog posts that will cover everything from the basics of flexible color profiles, to more advanced techniques and tips for creating your own recipes, as well as showcasing some of the best recipes from the community, and bringing you all the latest Nikon related news and updates.
So what are Nikon Z recipes? I'm sure if you've been around the photography community for a while, you will have heard of the Fujifilm recipes and film simulations, and the huge community that has built up around them. Nikon Z recipes are similar to this, but are a lot newer, and are still in their infancy. At a basic level, recipes are a colour profile that gets applied to your image in camera, applying a certain look, feel, and colour science to your images. The traditional approach for serious photographers has been to shoot in RAW, and then apply a colour profile in post processing. But recipes flip this approach on its head, instead allowing you to create a look prior to taking the shot, and then having the camera apply this look to your image and outputting it as a jpg file. This can have lots of benefits:
- You can see exactly how the image is going to come out in your viewfinder or camera screen.
- You save time in post processing (something in particular I'm not the biggest fan of).
- You can create a consistent look and feel across your images.
How is the Nikon approach different to Fujifilm? Fujifilm cameras come with a set of built in 'film simulations' that are created by Fuji and are designed to emulate the look of certain film stocks. Fuji then allows a little extra customisation over the top of these simulations, and then further customisation can be achieved by adjusting the white balance and exposure settings. Where Nikon differs is that they allow you to create your own colour profiles from scratch, using NX studio. This gives a lot greater control over the look of the images, as you can adjust settings such as hue, chroma, brightness, and tone curves. So whilst it doesn't have the same 'film simuklation' approach as Fujifilm, it does offer a lot more customisation. The one draw back is that it isn't as simple as the Fuji approach; the settings can't be adjusted in camera, so any profile that you want to use has to be created before and then loaded in. And this is where Z Recipes comes in - I want to have a library of ready to go profiles that can be shared with the community and lower the barrier of entry for those who want to achieve specific looks with their Nikon Z cameras.
Anyway, I think I've gone on for long enough for the first post. I hope this has piqued your interest and keep an eye out for what is coming next.