CineStill 400D
A soft, warm-neutral Eterna recipe emulating CineStill 400D for golden daylight streets and portraits — DR400 highlights, lifted shadows, fine grain.
Settings
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Look
- Film Simulation
- Eterna / Cinema
- Dynamic Range
- DR400
Tone
- Highlight
- −1
- Shadow
- −1
Color
- Color
- +1
- White Balance
- Daylight (5500K)
- WB Shift
- Red +2 · Blue −2
- Color Chrome FX
- Weak
- Color Chrome FX Blue
- Off
Detail
- Sharpness
- −1
- Noise Reduction
- −2
- Clarity
- −2
Texture
- Grain Effect
- Weak, Small
Exposure
- ISO
- Auto, up to ISO 6400
- Exposure Comp.
- +1/3 to +2/3 EV
CineStill 400D on Fujifilm is a soft, warm-neutral daylight-cinema look built on the Eterna film simulation, with DR400 taming golden-hour highlights, Highlight and Shadow both at −1 for a flat cinematic tone curve, and a +2 Red / −2 Blue white balance shift that keeps skin warm without turning orange. It is the daytime counterpart to a tungsten night recipe — tuned for sun, not neon.
Why this base
Eterna is the correct base because its naturally low contrast mirrors the gentle rolloff of the Vision3 250D emulsion CineStill 400D is derived from. Pushing Color to +1 restores just enough saturation for warm skin and foliage, while Color Chrome Effect on Weak deepens denser colors — a red door, a green awning — without the vivid punch that would break the muted cinema feel.
How to shoot it
Shoot it in open daylight and golden hour, metering +1/3 to +2/3 EV so faces sit bright and creamy. DR400 is doing the heavy lifting here: it protects blown skies and sunlit skin highlights, letting the −1 Highlight setting round them off softly instead of clipping. The −2 Clarity and −1 Sharpness pull a slight haze off contrast edges, giving the diffused, projected quality of daylight cinema stock. Color Chrome FX Blue is deliberately OFF so summer skies stay a natural pale blue rather than the saturated cobalt a night recipe wants. Grain is set to Weak / Small to echo 400D’s genuinely fine grain — this is a low-ISO daylight film, so keep noise restrained and let Auto ISO stay near its floor whenever the light allows.
What to avoid
Do not expect the literal red halation ring around highlights — that is a physical film characteristic, and no in-camera parameter reproduces it. The soft −2 Clarity and lifted shadows only imply the glow. Avoid overexposing past +1 EV in harsh midday sun; the flat Eterna curve plus DR400 already lift shadows, and stacking more exposure washes the image into mud. Likewise, resist raising Color past +1 — 400D reads warm-neutral and understated, not vivid, and extra saturation instantly tips it toward a punchy consumer-negative look rather than cinema stock. If skin drifts too cool under overcast light, nudge the Red shift toward +3 rather than warming the whole frame with Kelvin.
Questions
4 answers
Any X-Trans IV or V body with Eterna and Clarity — X100VI, X-T5, X-T50, X-E5, X-M5, X-H2/H2S, X-S20, X-S10, X-E4, X-Pro3, X-T4, X100V and X-T30 II. The X-T3 is excluded because it has no Clarity control, which the −2 setting relies on.
800T is tungsten-balanced for night and neon, leaning cool-blue with heavy halation. 400D is daylight-balanced: the +2 Red / −2 Blue shift keeps skin warm-neutral in sun, and DR400 protects bright golden-hour highlights rather than city lights.
Not literally — the red halo around highlights is a film-layer effect no camera setting recreates. The −2 Clarity and lifted −1 shadows soften highlight edges to suggest that glow, but a subtle post halation pass gets you closer.
Eterna's flat, low-contrast tone curve matches Vision3 250D's gentle cinematic rolloff far better. Classic Negative adds punchy contrast and cyan shadows that fight the soft daylight look 400D is known for.