Silent Atlas

The stills companion to the video recipe, a cinematic documentary teal-and-warm travel-film grade inspired by Merlin Krumme's "The Silent Atlas" (Atlas Mountains, Morocco): warm amber/terracotta midtones and skin, cool teal shadows, deep rich blacks, soft misty highlights, muted filmic saturation. Full grade analysis in the notes.

The video version was designed first (the reference is a film). This stills build expresses the same grade using the controls movie mode lacks. Grain and the Color Chrome effects.

How this differs from the video version (and why)

The Glimmerglass question (Clarity 0)

The reference's gentle highlight bloom comes from a physical Tiffen Glimmerglass diffusion filter. Per the bank's quality standard, Clarity stays 0 and the physical filter (Glimmerglass, CineBloom 5-10%, or similar mist filter) is the recommended route. It looks better and costs no save-time. No-filter variant: Clarity −2 is the closest in-camera approximation of the diffusion glow, at the cost of slower shot-to-shot saving.

Shooting notes

• Best in: overcast/misty mountains, golden hour, dusty warm-toned villages and earth-toned landscapes, the Atlas conditions. Also suits similar terrain (Ladakh, rural Spain, adobe/desert architecture).
• Direct harsh sun: DR400 + Highlight −2 to protect clipping (ISO floor rises to 500).
• Warm interior light: ease WB to +2R/−2B to stop excessive orange.
• Sibling looks: Kodak 2383 Print (theatrical teal-orange, less warm), Mumbai (General) (warm street, more vivid/gritty), Mumbai Monsoon (the cool/wet cousin).

Provenance: Original creative design targeting the reference film's aesthetic, not a recreation of its Sony/LUT pipeline. Grade derived from frame-by-frame study of the reference (see the notes). Stills build derived 2026-07-16 from the video-first original. Frame-verified 2026-07-16 (second independent pass): 4 actual frames re-fetched and analysed (mist landscape ~25%, portrait ~50%, clear-sky ~75%, hero shot). Confirmed: warm golden skin/earth, deep held shadows, soft bloomed highlights, muted saturation, fine grain visible in mist. One correction from the evidence: WB Blue −3 → −2, the reference's skies/mist are consistently teal-cyan. −3B would yellow the atmosphere toward khaki, while −2B retains enough blue for Classic Negative's native cyan lean to render it teal. If your frames read more saturated than the reference (it's notably muted), drop Color to +1.

Pro tip: What Color Chrome Effect actually does (2026-07-20, official). CCE is modelled on Fortia, Fujifilm's ultra-saturated reversal film, and its mechanism is gradation detection, not saturation: "by analysing the light and information received on the sensor surface, one can detect slight gradation… to create tonality while maintaining high contrast." So CCE Strong doesn't make this recipe more colourful. It stops already-saturated areas from flattening into solid patches. Practical consequence: it does most of its work on rich subjects (wood, brass, terracotta, deep foliage, saturated fabric, warm skin) and almost nothing on a grey overcast frame, so on flat, muted days you lose little by leaving it off if you want the speed.

A cinematic documentary video recipe inspired by Merlin Krumme's "The Silent Atlas", a short film shot in the Atlas Mountains, Morocco. The grade: warm amber earth tones, teal-cool shadows, deep blacks, soft rolled-off highlights, a muted, filmic, teal-and-warm travel documentary look. Designed for the X-T5 movie mode (standard film-simulation recording, not F-Log/HLG).

Note: This is a video-only recipe. Movie mode drops Grain, Color Chrome Effect, Color Chrome FX Blue, and Clarity (see Video / Movie Mode, settings, differences, and photo→video translation video-mode-settings). The recipe is designed around that constraint from the ground up.

Set in the movie shooting display → IMAGE QUALITY SETTING tab.

What this gets you

• Earthy terracotta/amber walls and warm golden skin in the midtones and highlights
• Cool teal shadows: dark alleys, building shadows, and overcast skies lean cyan/teal
• Deep, moody blacks without crushing. Rich shadow detail
• Soft, protected highlights: misty cloud-covered mountains and overcast skies hold detail
• Muted but warm filmic saturation: not vivid, not flat. Documentary-cinema sweetspot

Shooting notes

• Best in: overcast/misty conditions, golden hour, warm-sun-on-earth environments, exactly the Atlas Mountain conditions. Also works for similar dusty, warm-toned villages and landscapes.
• Physical filter: the reference used a Tiffen Glimmerglass diffusion filter for halation/bloom on highlights. Consider one if you want the full look. It softens highlight edges and adds a gentle glow that can't be replicated in-camera.
• Expose: 0 to +1/3 for skin. The highlights are protected by DR200.
• Overcast / heavy mist: WB can stay as-is. Classic Neg's teal shadows become the dominant mood. If too cool, warm up to +4R/−3B.
• Direct sun / harsh light: Drop to DR400 (ISO ≥ 500) and Highlight −2 to protect clipped highlights further.
• Night / interior warm light: Reduce WB to +2R/−2B to stop excessive orange under tungsten/warm LED.

How it relates to existing recipes

• Closest ancestor: Kodak 2383 Print video. Same Classic Negative base, same teal-warm concept. Silent Atlas pushes the WB warmer (+3R vs +2R), deepens the highlight roll-off (−1 vs 0), and bumps Color to +3 for richer earth tones.
• Mumbai Monsoon shares the Classic Neg + DR400 + teal shadow mood, but is cooler and wetter. Silent Atlas is warmer and more amber-dominant.

Reference

• Merlin Krumme, "The Silent Atlas" (YouTube, Mar 2026). Shot on Sony FX30 with Sigma 18-35 f/1.8 + Sony 11mm f/1.8, Tiffen Glimmerglass filter. Graded in post with custom LUTs. Shot in the Atlas Mountains, Morocco.

Provenance: Original creative design, not a recreation of Merlin's exact Sony/LUT pipeline, but a Fujifilm-native SOOC video grade that targets the same teal-warm, muted-cinema, documentary aesthetic using the X-T5's available movie-mode controls.

Target aesthetic

A cinematic documentary teal-and-warm travel-film grade, derived from studying Merlin Krumme's The Silent Atlas (2026), a short film shot in the Atlas Mountains of Morocco. The look is characterised by:

• Warm amber/terracotta midtones and highlights (earth, walls, skin)
• Cool teal shadows (building shade, overcast sky, mist)
• Deep, rich blacks with retained shadow detail
• Soft, non-clipping highlights (misty/cloudy mountain scenes)
• Muted overall saturation: filmic, not digital-vivid
• Slightly soft/halated rendering (physical Glimmerglass filter in the reference)

This is the "teal-and-orange" cinematic split expressed through Moroccan earth tones rather than Hollywood neon.

Why Classic Negative (not Eterna or Classic Chrome)

White Balance strategy: +3R / −2B (corrected from −3B: see verification below)

The reference film has a clear warm lean on sunlit surfaces and skin, against cool teal backgrounds. Classic Negative already has a cool shadow tone. The warm WB shift (+3R from Daylight) pushes:

• Skin → golden/peach warmth
• Earth/terracotta walls → rich amber

While Classic Neg's shadow character stays teal, creating the colour split.

The blue shift is deliberately gentler than the red push (−2B, not −3B): the second frame-verification pass showed the reference's skies and mist land consistently teal-cyan, a −3B shift would strip too much blue and push the atmosphere toward khaki/yellow-grey, whereas −2B leaves enough blue for Classic Negative's native cyan lean to do the teal work.

Frame verification: second independent pass (2026-07-16)

The original derivation (2026-07-15, other machine) studied frames at ~60s/105s/150s/195s via browser capture. A second, independent pass re-fetched 4 actual video frames (YouTube's auto-generated stills: ~25% mist landscape, ~50% portrait, ~75% clear-sky, plus the full-res hero frame) and checked every design decision:

One caveat kept in mind during this pass: YouTube's auto-frames are heavily compressed, which mutes absolute saturation, so hue relationships (teal vs warm) were treated as reliable evidence, absolute saturation only loosely.

DR200 + Highlight −1 + Shadow +2

• DR200 (not 400): the reference has real contrast. Deep blacks, present shadows. DR400 would flatten this too much. DR200 gives 1 stop of highlight headroom for the misty/cloudy skies without sacrificing the punchy shadow character.
• Highlight −1: gentle roll-off, the reference preserves cloud/sky detail without flat-looking highlights.
• Shadow +2: deepens blacks, giving the moody cinematic depth. Classic Neg's teal cast intensifies in deep shadows, which is the desired effect.

Color +3 (compensating for absent CCE/CCFXB)

In stills, Color Chrome Effect and FX Blue add richness and depth to reds/blues. In video, these are unavailable. Color +3 (up from the usual +2 in cinema recipes) compensates, bringing the warm earth tones to life and making sure the amber/terracotta isn't too muted.

Sharpness −1 and the Glimmerglass question

The reference film uses a Tiffen Glimmerglass diffusion filter, a physical optical element that creates halation (highlight bloom/glow) and reduces micro-contrast. This can't be replicated in-camera. Sharpness −1 is the closest in-camera approximation: slightly soft, filmic edges without going blurry. The real Glimmerglass look requires the physical filter.

Video-first design, stills companion added

The recipe was designed from scratch for movie mode (the reference is a film), with settings chosen knowing that Grain, CCE, CCFXB, and Clarity are unavailable there. A stills companion was added 2026-07-16: same WB split, tone curve, and softness, but with Color pulled back to +2 (Color Chrome Effect Strong now carries the warm-tone depth), CCFXB Weak adding teal shadow depth, and Weak/Large grain for a subtle cine texture, i.e. The stills build uses the richer toolset to express the same grade, rather than the video build's saturation-compensation approach.

Relationship to the 2383 Print recipe

This is conceptually a sibling of the Kodak 2383 Print recipe. Same Classic Negative base, same teal-orange concept. The differences:

Source

• Merlin Krumme, The Silent Atlas, YouTube, Mar 2026.
• Shot on Sony FX30 with Sigma 18-35 f/1.8 + Sony 11mm f/1.8, Tiffen Glimmerglass filter.
• Post-graded with custom LUTs (available at tinted.sellfy.store).
• Location: Atlas Mountains, Morocco (Imlil, mountain villages).

Last updated: 2026-07-16. Originally derived 2026-07-15 in a session on the second machine (frame-by-frame study of the reference video at ~60s/105s/150s/195s). Ported into this collection copy 2026-07-16, when the stills companion was added.