As a Fujifilm shooter and heavy user of Fujifilms straight out of camera(SOOC) jpegs I was a bit “worried” when I decided to buy a Nikon ZF camera, because would it be able to deliver as good results SOOC as the Fujifilm cameras? Initially not quite. But with Nikon Flexible Color Picture Control that arrived with the Nikon Z6 III and is available from NX Studio for the Nikon ZF I will say that the potential is there for the future.
At a later point I will go into more detail about the Nikon ZF as I have an ongoing document I have been adding thoughts to over that past 6 months. So at some point I may be able to come with some conclusions seen from my perspective with Fujifilm cameras as my preferred system of choice.
But for now lets focus on the potential of Nikon ZF Nikon Flexible Picture Control.
The Nikon ZF shipped with some options for “film simulations” as know from Fujifilm. But those were based on a number of built in simulations which could be tweaked a bit to your personal taste. This can give very nice results straight out of camera like the images here. They are both based of the “Pure” profile.


But this level of control is limited to the built in profiles which can be adjusted for strength, sharpness, contrast and overall curve. It cannot change the colors away from what is already built into the standard profiles.
This changes with the introduction of Flexible Color Picture Control which enables color shifts and added level of control.
The settings are available only on Nikon Z6 III at the time of this writing (06-12-2024), but rumor and hope has it that Nikon may roll it out for the Nikon ZF as well.
It is however possible to use the Flexible Color Picture Control directly from Nikon own editing software NX Studio. This enables you to see what SOOC images could or will look like. And to my eyes there is really something special about the look you can achieve with this technology.
The images below are from a walk at a local cemetery processed with a look called VISTA-100 from a user on reddit (lifterzerothreefive) that I applied in NX Studio afterwards. But in essence these images are possible to get SOOC on the Nikon Z6 III and hopefully also the Nikon ZF in the future.






To my eyes the colors are absolutely brilliant. There is some “fuji”-like greens and nice overall saturation to the colors. I hope and pray for Nikon to release this on the Nikon ZF! I would really love to be able to get these types of images SOOC on my ZF.
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