Scott’s Leiter film recipe for Nikon Z cameras
Check out all of my film sims here
Drawing inspiration from one of my favorite photographers of the 20th century, Saul Leiter, I present my take on the muted and deep color palate for which he was so well known.
Saul would often shoot expired Kodachrome and use unique combinations of developing chemicals to draw rich primary colors out of his negatives, a process so foreign and separated from modern digital photography that an exact emulation is simply impossible.
Examples of Leiter’s work that became the bedrock for this recipe
What we have here, then, is simply my best attempt to give you a similar look both straight out of camera and in one click in Lightroom.
I have focused on blues (dark, rich, warm), reds (vibrant, saturated), greens (deep and earthy) and yellows (muted but yet still prominent). I have also refined skin tones a bit more than Saul’s own work with Kodachrome, which would often give either an overly-ruddy effect or simply wash skin out entirely depending on the type of light on the scene.
This is best shot while the sun is up and either behind or above you. Due to how I have to push chroma levels hard in the NP3 file, any direct light in frame that causes light gradations (including in the sky) will show as harsh tonal boundaries between colors instead of a smooth roll off from one to another. This does not seem to happen as much when the sun is out of frame, or if the day is more overcast.
At the time of writing, Scott’s Leiter is supported on the Nikon Zf, Z5ii, Z50ii, Z6iii, Z8, Z9, and ZR cameras.
If you downloaded on 2/12, please redownload as I’ve made a tweak to pinks!
Once downloaded, copy the .NP3 file to your camera’s SD card. Navigate to Camera > Manage Picture Control > Load/Save to get it assigned into a custom slot.
I pay attention to 4 settings when using this picture control:
Active D-Lighting - I will leave this to OFF unless it’s a VERY high contrast situation and my subject is in full shadow
Film Grain - turned ON and set to Medium 1
Exposure Compensation - Usually set between -0.3 to 0.0
White Balance - This is the MOST IMPORTANT setting for this recipe - if the sun is up in the sky, use Direct Sunlight 0.0, 0.0 - if the sun has gone down, I use Cloudy - play with these to find your favorite
Example gallery below, all shot with Scott’s Leiter on the Nikon Zf with no additional processing.
I hope you enjoy shooting with this film sim! If you found this helpful, please consider buying me a coffee so I can fuel up and continue to bring you more content like this by clicking the Ko-fi button below.
