Experimenting with “recipes” that build on Fujifilm’s “Film Simulations” to change the look of your JPEGs – subtly or not so much – has long been a tradition among a certain set of the company’s users. However, actually getting the recipes to your camera has historically been a bit of a pain, requiring you to manually adjust several parameters and save them to a custom profile that you can later recall. Recent cameras from Fujifilm have somewhat improved the experience with a dedicated recipe system, but it’s still a lot of manual data entry.

This month, though, two apps have promised to solve that problem. One from a major player in the Fujifilm recipes field, the other from a scrappy upstart. For both, recipe syncing is only available for iOS devices (there currently isn’t even an Android version of the latter), but are signs of exciting things to come.

Fuji X Weekly

Mitchell Clark

The first is the Fuji X Weekly app, which is an extension of the popular website that hosts many community created recipes. The app has been around for a while, letting you browse and save recipes that you’d then have to manually enter in on your camera. Now, though, it’s able to download recipes, and then sync them to your camera via a standard called Picture Transfer Protocol. You can do this using the hundreds of recipes in the site’s repository, or with custom ones you’ve entered yourself. 

The process is relatively simple, as it is for the rest of the apps we’ll cover today. You put your camera in USB Raw Conv. / Backup Restore mode, then connect it to your phone with a USB cable. From there, the app should be able to send your selected recipe to whichever custom slot you choose, though the first time you go through this process, you may need to give the app system-level permission to talk to an attached camera. Then, you can select the custom setting mode from your camera (which, in my testing, helpfully already had the name of the recipe in the name field) and start shooting.

Mitchell Clark

While the app is free to use, there is a $20/year subscription that unlocks a few extra features. That list now includes the ability to sync sets of recipes to your camera, rather than having to do them one at a time. Say, for example, you have five recipes you use around town every day, and six that you like to have access to while traveling. Paid members could switch between the two with a press of a button.

FujiShare

Mitchell Clark

A newcomer to the scene is an app called FujiShare, which Reddit user Rude_Shoulder_2895 posted about on the FujifilmX subreddit. They said they built the app to make it easier to load sets of recipes to their X100V. It also aims to give you more information about the example photos used for a recipe, to make it easier to distinguish how much of the aesthetic is down to the camera settings, the recipe and the scene. The app also has tools built in to let you load a JPEG from a Fujifilm camera and save the recipe that was used to make it, and to apply frame effects to your photo, making it look like it’s matted or on a film reel.

FujiShare is a sleek app with a modern UI, and it’s undeniably nice to scroll through the recipes on offer, though there seem to be far fewer than on Fuji X Weekly. Otherwise, the actual process of syncing your recipes is much the same as it is using the other app, though users can post packs of recipes as well, letting you just save an entire set of recipes at once, before sending it off to your camera. On that note, FujiShare’s ability to send over multiple recipes at once currently isn’t pay-gated.

Mitchell

The FujiShare app is currently in public beta, and being distributed through Apple’s TestFlight system, which will take a bit of setup if you haven’t used it before. The beta is free, but it’s unclear what, if any, monetization scheme the app will use when it launches.

Is this new?

Mitchell Clark

One thing worth noting about these apps is that they don’t appear to be the first to come up with the idea. About a year ago, the team behind the FujiStyle app announced a very similar feature, letting you sync recipes to your camera’s custom settings slots via USB. It works very similarly to the other apps and, perhaps most excitingly, I’ve confirmed it works with Android. (I did, however, have to dive into the phone’s developer settings to get it working; your mileage will vary depending on what version of the OS you have.) Unlike the other apps, it doesn’t appear to support syncing sets of recipes at a time, but I bet I could sync seven recipes using the app faster than I could input one on the camera manually.

The caveats

Since these apps all seem to use a similar system to sync recipes, they share a lot of the same warnings and asterisks. The biggest one is made explicit by Fuji X Weekly. In the blog post announcing the feature, Ritchie Roesch says: “While there’s not a lot that can go wrong with PTP, there is a minor chance of adverse affects, especially if not handled carefully by the developers.” While Roesch says they tested many ways that things could go wrong, and built several safeguards into the app, there is still a risk. 

“Very importantly, connecting your camera to any unofficial, unlicensed, unsupported program may void your camera’s manufacturer warranty,” Roesch says. “Fujifilm confirmed this with me. I tried very hard to obtain a license from Fujifilm so that it wouldn’t risk voiding your warranty, but ultimately that didn’t work out.”

The app also makes this clear when you first go to use the feature, making it clear that you’re doing so at your own risk. While the other apps don’t make the warning as explicit, they come with similar warnings, so it’s probably a good idea to approach all of them with a sense of caution.

It’s also worth noting that these apps aren’t universally compatible. They should work with cameras newer than the X-T3 and X-T30, but those cameras and anything older don’t support the system that these apps use to transfer recipes. Likewise, if you have an older iPhone with a Lightning port, it may not be as simple as using a Lightning-to-USB-C cable; Fuji X Weekly reports those won’t work, but that adapters may. 

Finally, there’s the fact that the recipe-transfer feature is only available on iOS for Fuji X Weekly, and the FujiShare app currently only exists for iOS. Both developers have said they’re working on version for Android, but the timetables are to be determined. That’s unfortunate for Android users in the short term, as it means they have fewer options. Hopefully that situation will improve soon, but in the meantime, the FujiStyle app is there to serve Android users in the meantime.

Summary

Among the DPReview staff, there were two reactions to the news of these apps. The first was “this is great, why hasn’t Fujifilm built this into its own app yet?” The second was “Please don’t ask them to complicate things, I just want the app to transfer pictures reliably, nothing more.” While that reaction is understandable, I also suspect there’s been some pressure on Fujifilm to integrate this kind of feature into XApp. Recipes are a relatively well-known part of its brand identity, and other companies, like Panasonic and Nikon, have beaten it to the punch, building systems that allow users to download community-created color profiles to their cameras using an app (and Ricoh has made mention of doing something similar, too). 

Perhaps the existence of these third party options could take some of that pressure off, letting Fujifilm focus on reliability and compatibility. Or perhaps it’ll build it into XApp at some point in the future and, to borrow a phrase from the Apple developer community, Sherlock these apps. Either way, at the moment Fujifilm users have options they didn’t before.

If you’ve ever held a small card of 24 colored squares up to your subject, you’ve used a piece of imaging history that just hit a milestone birthday. The ColorChecker (also called the Macbeth chart if you’ve been around a while) is turning 50, and Calibrite has marked the occasion with a virtual museum for the little chart that helps photographers keep colors accurate. 

The anniversary hub for the occasion includes a timeline from the founding of the Macbeth Artificial Daylight Company to today, along with fun facts about the card and some of its famous uses. It also breaks down the purpose behind each of the 24 patches and features a quiz to test your knowledge of each color. 

The small chart debuted in a 1976 paper, “A Color-Rendition Chart,” by C.S. McCamy, H. Marcus and J.G. Davidson, written while Macbeth was a division of Kollmorgen. The idea was simple but clever: each patch was locked to a spectral reflectance value instead of a printed ink mix, so the card could be measured, reproduced and trusted across different materials and lighting conditions. 

Calibrite

When photography went digital, the ColorChecker came along for the ride. Shoot a Raw file with one in the frame, then feed it into Adobe Lightroom or DxO PhotoLab, and you get a custom camera profile that pulls your colors closer to how the scene actually looked. The ColorChecker Digital SG, though, saw an expansion of color, jumping to 140 squares that include the original 24 colors, a 17-step grayscale for fine tonal control, and 14 dedicated skin-tone patches.

The card has changed hands a few times: Gretag, GretagMacbeth and X-Rite all owned it before Calibrite took over. It’s also changed in size. The original measured roughly 13 by 9 inches, with proportions that closely match a 35mm film frame, and it now comes in a range of sizes, including one barely bigger than a postage stamp for macro subjects. But the patch layout and spectral targets have stayed consistent enough that profiles built around the standard remain interchangeable. Fifty years on, and photographers still reach for this tool for the same reason they always did.

Fujifilm is strengthening its ties with Google, taking a larger part in the company’s photo printing service. The company announced that it’s taking a “leading” role when it comes to operating and supporting the Google Photos Print Store in the US.

This takes the form of a co-branded store built directly into the Google Photos interface. Once you navigate to the Print Store and select a product to order, you’ll be prompted to connect your Google account to Fujifilm’s services*. From there, Fujifilm will take care of payment, printing, shipping and customer support. Fujifilm also says there are “plans to roll out new features, new products and a more robust user experience.” 

You’ve long been able to get printed products directly from the Google Photos app – I personally have a book I made with the service in 2017 – but the company says this expanded partnership will give users “more ways than ever before to print their memories, including an expanded range of print formats, frames, décor, and gift items, going well beyond the offerings of the previous platform.”

There’s a very good chance that, if you bought prints from Google Photos prior to this announcement, Fujifilm or its equipment were involved in some way. The company is a major player when it comes to photo printing for both consumers and industrial clients. Last year, the company identified “growth in the number of images taken and printing needs due to smartphone proliferation” as one of its key opportunities for mid-to-long-term growth.

While this announcement seems like it’s probably a bigger deal for Fujifilm and Google, rather than the people actually printing their photos, we always appreciate people having better and easier access to printing their photos. While it used to be a vital part of the process, it’s an easy one to forget nowadays, especially if you’re part of the younger generations who have grown up with purely digital photography. It’ll be exciting to see if this partnership makes printing smartphone photos that bit more attractive to the people who may use it to see their images rendered in ink on paper for the first time.

* While Fujifilm’s press release says the platform “began rolling out to Google Photos users in the U.S. at the end of August 2026,” it seems that’s still in progress. When I tried it on September 1st, I ended up in the old Google Photos payment flow. 

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DxO has announced PhotoLab 10, the latest version of its subscription-free Raw editor. The new iteration of the app offers more advanced masking tools, a new color grading wheel, automatic sensor dust removal and direct connectivity to Affinity, all under the company’s perpetual license. 

Most of the updates revolve around masking changes. That includes the addition of Depth Masks, which it previously released as part of Nik Collection 9 earlier this year. DxO says the feature uses AI to build a detailed depth map from any Raw file, based on distance from the camera, even without embedded depth data. It allows photographers to independently target the foreground, midground or background for more precise editing. 

DxO

DxO is also expanding some of PhotoLab’s existing AI-based masking tools. The company says that the AI Masks tool can now identify every person in a scene and allows photographers to create a single mask for all people, combine only selected people into one mask or create individual masks for every person. For even more control, the tool even allows photographers to select individual features of people, such as eyes, hair and lips. 

Users can now also select individual features such as eyebrows, eyes (as a whole or breaking out the iris, pupil and whites), teeth, facial hair, face skin and lips from the list of selectable AI Mask categories. It should offer even more fine-tuned control while retouching portraits. The masking updates also include an expanded U Point toolkit, DxO’s approach to creating local adjustments based on the color and luminosity of a sampled point. Users now have access to a brush-based Control Brush and elliptical Control Points alongside the existing circular ones. 

DxO

PhotoLab 10 adds more than masking changes. DxO has brought over the color grading wheel introduced with Nik Collection 9, which puts shadows, midtones, highlights and global color on a single wheel. It’s tone-based grading, distinct from the hue-targeted color wheel that remains in the app. It also added an AI-powered sensor dust removal tool that automatically removes sensor spots on Raw files. Lastly, there is now a new export option for Affinity, Canva’s now-free professional image editing software, so photographers can send images directly to that platform for additional editing. 

PhotoLab 10 is available starting today for macOS and Windows. A new license costs $250, while upgrades from PhotoLab 8 or 9 are $130. A 30-day free trial is available on DxO’s site.

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Xiaomi has announced the Poco F9 Ultra and the F9 Pro, the latest entries in its series of phones that aim to undercut the pricing of traditional flagship models while offering similar specifications. This time around, the company has included a battery with a massive 8050mAh capacity on the Ultra, and a main camera that can shoot images at up to 200MP on both phones.

That main camera is one of three: the phones also include telephoto and ultrawide options. On the Ultra, the former features a “5x” 120mm equiv. F3 optically stabilized lens and a 50MP sensor. Its ultrawide is a slightly-narrower-than-typical 0.7x 17mm equiv. F2.4 lens, also with a 50MP sensor. Xiaomi doesn’t specify the sizes of these sensors, but they seem to be unchanged from the ones found in the Poco F8 Ultra, which used a Type 1/2.76 (20.4mm²) one for its telephoto and Type 1/2.88 (18.6mm²) for its ultrawide, according to GSMArena. The F9 Pro, meanwhile, has a 50MP 2.5x telephoto camera and an 8MP ultrawide option, again seemingly unchanged from its predecessor.

Xiaomi

The main event, though, is the 200MP wide-angle camera shared by the two models. It has a 24mm equiv. F1.7 stabilized lens. By default, it bins all that resolution down to 12.5MP or 50MP, depending on a setting, but you can access its full resolution via a dedicated mode in the camera app. The pictures take a few seconds to process, and won’t have the HDR effect that you get from the phone’s normal modes, but can show much more detail when shot in ideal conditions; the camera reminds you that the mode works best when there’s plenty of light, for reasons that are obvious if you understand how quad bayer sensors work.

Again, Xiaomi hasn’t said what size sensor its main camera uses, beyond claiming that it uses “2μm 16-in-1 Super Pixels.” That figure shouldn’t be taken literally, though, because to fit 200MP worth of 2μm pixels, you’d need the area of a full frame sensor, which it certainly isn’t. It’s more likely that it’s describing the binned quad bayer pixels, which would put the sensor somewhere around a Type 1/1.56 (50mm²). That would also explain why the company hasn’t advertised the size, when it did for the Poco F8 Ultra, which used a larger Type 1/1.31 (72mm²) sensor for its main camera. We’ve reached out to Xiaomi to ask for specifics, and will update this story if we hear back.

Of course, with flagship cameras the sensor specs aren’t everything, as phones make heavy use of computational photography, stacking multiple frames together. You can see our sample gallery shot using the Poco F9 Ultra below.

Beyond the cameras, the Poco F9 phones have relatively high-end specs. The Ultra uses the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chip, while the Pro uses the slightly cut-down “V” variant of that system on a chip. Both feature displays capable of going up to 185Hz, and producing 10,000 nits peak brightness, though the latter figure is only over a 1% region of the screen. More realistic is the 4500 nit peak brightness figure, attainable in a window covering 25% of the display. The Ultra’s display is 6.9″, while the Pro’s is 6.59″.

Both phones have relatively large batteries for their size, thanks to the company’s use of silicon-carbon battery chemistry. The Ultra is rated for 8050mAh, while the Pro is 6330mAh. Whichever one you go with, you can recharge it quickly with the correct equipment; they both have 100W wired and 50W wireless charging. What’s more, they can be used to charge other devices that don’t have the same stamina, with 27W of reverse wired charging and 22.5W of reverse wireless charging.

Finally, the phones feature “Sound by Bose” co-branding. On the Ultra, this means stereo speakers combined with a subwoofer that lives alongside the camera modules on the plateau (though the Pro misses out on that feature). Based on the few songs I listened to, it indeed produces pretty impressive bass for a phone. If you go above around 75% volume you’re liable to hear some peaking, but for personal listening that’ll be plenty loud. 

The F9 Ultra comes in “dark cherry” or black, while the Pro is available in black, white or “aurora green,” with the latter literally glowing in the dark after being exposed to light. The Ultra is available with 256GB of storage and 12GB of RAM for $799 / €1,099, or you can upgrade to 16GB of memory with 512GB  or 1TB of storage for $949 / €1199 and $1199 / €1399, respectively. The Pro, meanwhile, starts at €903 for a version of 12GB RAM and 256GB of storage. The launch is global, but, as is typical for Xiaomi phones, excludes the US.

Xiaomi

Xiaomi Poco F9 Ultra

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Sigma has announced three new entries to its “Aizu Prime” series of cinema lenses: a 21mm, 100mm and 125mm. Like the rest of the lenses in the series, they’re fast at T1.3, and designed for “large format” cameras, with a 46.3mm image circle that could cover the film in a VistaVision camera or the sensor of an Arri Alexa LF Open Gate. (In photography terms, they’re a touch larger than full frame, which has a 43.3mm diagonal.)

The new lenses take the matched series wider and longer than before. Last year, Sigma launched the Aizu Prime brand with eight lenses, ranging from 25mm to 75mm. It also promised that, eventually, there would be 12 lenses in the series. Today’s announcement brings the total up to 11, with only an 18mm option not yet released.

Sigma

Sigma says the lens’ optical formulas, like the rest of the Aizu Primes, are “developed exclusively for cinema applications,” with an eye towards being sharp, while still retaining character, and having minimal focus breathing and distortion. Sigma also designed them to match the other lenses in the series, sharing similar color, contrast and flare characteristics, sizes and weights (though the 100mm and 125mm are a touch heavier than the rest at 2.2Kg versus 1.6 or 1.7Kg). That’s an important consideration on a busy film set; you don’t want to have to rebalance your gimbal or reset your follow focus and iris control wheels each time you change a lens.

None of this comes cheap, though, as the three new lenses will cost $9799 each, which is a bit of a jump up from the $8300 the rest of the entries in the series cost. That may be a function of their slightly more exotic focal lengths. They’ll be available for PL or Sony E-mount starting in November.

Zack Snyder has directed movies about a lot of things: superheroes, space, ancient Greeks, owls, you name it. With his next film, it seems like we can add photography to that list.

According to the synopsis, the movie, called The Last Photograph, is about a former DEA agent teaming up with a “washed-up junkie war photographer” to try and find his niece and nephew after their parents were murdered. The trailer (and the title) imply that photography will play some role in the story. There are scenes showing a darkroom, photos being taken at a crime scene, a slow-motion shot of a camera exploding, and several moody frames of someone raising a rangefinder to their eye, presumably witnessing horrors off-screen.

Speaking of: we’ll put the trailer below, but heed the warning in the first few seconds. It’s graphic in pretty much every way it can be, including an exceptional amount of violence. Even if you’re fine with that, it’s probably not something to watch at work.

Of course, being a camera site, we were interested in what cameras the characters were using on-screen, especially since Zack Snyder is a known photography buff (he’s reportedly the cinematographer for the movie, too, as he was on 2021’s Army of the Dead, which he shot almost entirely at F0.95 using rehoused vintage optics*). From what we can tell, the photographer character uses Yashica rangefinder – probably an Electro 35CC from the early 70s, based on the markings – and what looks like a Leica M10 Monochrom, a camera Snyder is demonstrably familiar with.

The Yashica isn’t a stranger to the silver screen, either; Andrew Garfield used one in 2012’s The Amazing Spider-Man (back when Spider-Man movies featured the version of Peter Parker who works as a photographer). While the brand wasn’t really known as a go-to for photojournalists, it also wouldn’t be that surprising to hear of a war photographer using a film rangefinder with a fixed 35mm F1.8 lens.

We don’t see a ton of movies about photography, so it’s interesting to be getting a movie from a big-name director that seems to at least feature the art form as an important part of the story. The last film we got like that was Alex Garland’s Civil War, which focused mostly on the role of reporting and war photography (much to people’s surprise, given that it was released during a contentious US election and was set against the backdrop of a fictional second civil war in the country).

Zack Snyder, via TIFF

According to The Hollywood Reporter, it may be a while before we get to see The Last Photograph. It’s set to premiere on September 13 at TIFF (the Toronto International Film Festival), but no one has bought distribution rights to it yet. The film is apparently a passion project for Snyder, who has been kicking the idea around since the mid-2000s. While it certainly seems like it’ll be an intense watch, I’m excited for whenever I do get to see it. In part because of the photography aspect, but also because the cinematography in it looks gorgeous, and it’s always interesting to see a Hollywood director take a big artistic swing.

* The effect is… strange. At times it works and provides a unique aesthetic, at others it borders on distracting. I actually didn’t know about the creative choice when I started watching the movie, but pretty early into it I turned to a friend and said something along the lines of “what is going on with this cinematography?”