X-Trans V
Night Market
Neon, sodium light and shadows you leave alone.
Short answer
This recipe sets Classic Negative up for artificial light: high contrast, deliberate underexposure of two-thirds of a stop, heavy large grain and noise reduction turned right down. It keeps neon colour instead of correcting it away.
Camera settings
| Film simulation | Classic Negative |
|---|---|
| Dynamic Range | DR100 |
| Highlight | +1 |
| Shadow | +2 |
| Colour | 0 |
| Colour Chrome Effect | Strong |
| Colour Chrome FX Blue | Weak |
| White Balance | Auto (White Priority) |
| WB Shift | R +1 / B 0 |
| Sharpness | 0 |
| High ISO NR | -4 |
| Clarity | -1 |
| Grain Effect | Strong, Large |
| ISO | Auto up to 12800 |
| Exposure Compensation | -2/3 |
Most night recipes fail because they try to make a night scene look correctly exposed. A street at night is not evenly lit, and pretending otherwise gives you grey mush. This one lets the dark stay dark and puts everything into the lit parts.
Why you underexpose
−2/3 exposure compensation is the core of it. Cameras meter a night scene toward mid-grey, which brightens the darkness and blows out every sign and lamp. Pulling back two-thirds of a stop protects the light sources, which are the subject.
Shadow +2 then pushes the unlit parts further down instead of lifting them. Combined, you get a picture made of light rather than a picture of a badly lit street.
Keeping the colour cast
White Priority auto white balance corrects less aggressively than standard auto, so a sodium lamp still looks orange and a shop window still looks green. Those casts are what makes a night photograph feel like night.
High ISO NR at −4 and Grain Strong, Large work together. Noise reduction at high ISO smears detail into wax; turning it down and letting grain sit on top reads as film rather than as a phone photo.
Works on
Common questions
Is ISO 12800 really usable?
On X-Trans V, in a night scene with this much grain already, yes. The noise blends into the grain rather than fighting it.
Why Clarity at −1?
Clarity hardens midtone edges, which at night exaggerates noise around light sources. Backing it off keeps the halo around a lamp soft.
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Last updated August 9, 2026