Fuji fights fluoro fiasco

Well, I don't have any NPH shots at the moment, but I just would like to agree with you about how nice it is to find a combo for you that is reliable, works for you and you enjoy shooting. I really like the way Tri-x and the 35/1.4 ASPH work for moderate to low light work on the street. It is a great film and a great lens. Here are a few with that combo: Sorry, all reposts.

I should add that I have printed them in the darkroom as 11x14's and they look superb -- very sharp still with pleasant, fine grain.

I used several rolls of "Made in China" Kodak Max 800-4 in a Yashica Electro for a little "walk around" last month. Was impressed with the lack of grain. Nobody else seems to be though. Oh well, best 800 film I've seen, are there other good ones?. Regards

David, do you know what color temp those fluorescents were? The Kodak 800-4 didn't do well with normal fluorescents. Looks like the Fuji handled it well. Astia 100F is great! The old RB likes it.

Stuart, great pix.

I don't believe film is dead.

I've had great success with this NPH 400, as well as Reala. But it's being replaced. According to the B&H website, Fujicolor NPH 400 will become Fujicolor Pro 400H. Furthermore, HPH is listed as "out of stock." According to the description 400H sounds similar to NPH: Pro 400H brings smooth, natural skin tones and neutral gray balance to the ISO 400- speed range. It is ideal for portrait work, as well as indoor or outdoor location photography, particularly in limited light. Faithful color reproduction of scenes under a wide variety of lighting; Superb skin tones; Excellent three-dimensional appearance; 4th Color Layer Technology with enhanced optimization of spectral characteristics. For some reason, NPH is the only film described as producing a 3-D effect, something dear to the hearts of Leica lens users.

This could be good sign that Fuji is continuing to improve its film. Supposedly, it's been enhanced to scan better with the Fuji Frontier system. So far, so good, since I need to scan it as well. I've tried the new version, Pro 400H, and it didn't seem as "special" as NPH. This could be a problem with the particular photos that I took or simply some kind of residual bias. Has anyone else trid the new version of this film?

Fuji NPH to 400H transition is just a rebadging. The Fuji Professional 160 speed films are new emulsions. The "fourth layer" technology purportedly helps it work well under fluorescent lights.

For 800 speed, I've been so happy with Fuji NPZ (now 800Z) that I haven't tried anything else. It's a high color saturation film, but it performs great. But reports are that Kodak is improving their 800 speed films.

For 400 speed, I like Kodak Portra 400NC, printed on Kodak Portra Endura paper. Very natural. No excess contrast or color saturation. Can come out rather dull with an uncoated lens (like my first Elmar 90/4, which was a dog), but scanning the negative and boosting contrast can fix that.

Portra 160NC is even lower contrast. With uncoated lenses, you just have to boost contrast. (Or print on Fuji Crystal Archive, maybe?)

John and others,

"The "fourth layer" technology purportedly helps it work well under fluorescent lights."

How does that work, a notch in the spectral response? Fluorescents are designed for different outputs, which ones did Fuji pick to optimize, I wonder. How is the grain in the Fuji 800 film?

I get the Kodak Max film at K-Mart/Wal-Mart "for cheap", like less than $7 for four rolls of 24 exp. I can't decipher the type of film inside the Fuji boxes, any helpful clues, I'd like to try some of the new stuff? Regards.

I've been playing around with shooting more color. Normally I shoot B&W but feel a need to experiment. A while back I bought a few rolls of Fuji NPH 400 and Kodak Portra 400NC, but just now in the last week or so cracked the secret on my system to getting color the way my mind saw it.

I ordered a few more rolls of Portra 400NC and the new Fujicolor Pro 400H (and a roll of the new Fuji 160S for fun) to pit them head-to-head. Here's an image I shot last year on Portra 400NC I recently dug out to rescan. Not a great image but I wanted to see how it looked. Shot with the new style 50 elmar.

Stuart, Tri-X shots are great - and 35ASPH a winner, too.

John, not sure about fluoro colour temp in deg K. Bright sunlight is 5000K, household lights about 2600K. To quote from Roger Hicks' Techniques of Color Photography, "Fluorescent tubes are in a class by themselves, as they do not emit a continuous spectrum and thus cannot be assigned a colour temperature; the best you can do is to try a CC20M filter and hope for the best."

That was a while ago, and modern film seems to handle the colour casts well. Of course, digital camera's white balance may help - but seems variable. Fim is still very versatile!

I also did some shots with flash but they ruined the atmosphere. I also have some recent ones with bright fluoro strips nin the frame and they have come out white, not sickly green.

400H is probably very similar. I wonder, how does that or NPH compare to the consumer Superia X version, or other brand 400 print films?