Tales on Film

A color film I use a lot in low light situations is the Fuji press 800. It’s another film I’m burning through the last rolls I could get my hands on. This film was also sold as Fuji Superia 800 on 24 exp. It’s basically a high speed film designed for outdoor use in low light. On the internet I find mixed reports of pushing it to a higher iso, I have pushed it in development and found that it indeed depends on the scene.

You can use the film indoors but it gives a bit of a warm tone, as you can see in the picture at the beginning of this post. I don’t really like the warm tones here because most lights indoors are already warmer and when you add more warm light to it, it ends up very fast being orange.

What I however do like about this film is the colors when photographing outside in lower light conditions. It renders skintone quite beautifully and in comparison to Kodak film of higher speed, it doesn’t has any tendency to turn red when used outdoors.

For a high speed color film there is not that much noise, even as you can see in this photo pushed 1 stop in development. Off course it doesn’t have as fine a grain as does the Kodak portra 400, but I find it very acceptable.

Also when pushed 1 stop in development I find the overall colors and saturation work very well in tungsten light. I find that the film does look like, what you see at that moment. For example this picture was taken with only street lights at night around 11pm.

Overexposure is handled quite well by the press 800, you can still see a lot of detail in the areas surrounding the sun. As you also can see in the photo is that the film has a pretty wide latitude and is a good film for beginners to not be too perfect about their light metering.

The film is overall quite saturated, but blues get even an extra touch of saturation, which I do like because it provides a very vivid background when you shoot something with some sky in the background.

Overall the Fuji press/superia 800 is my go to film for high speed situations, because it’s a lot cheaper than the Kodak portra and it has less of a habit to turn yellow. I actually hope that Fuji gets back into making some decent c-41 film and don’t only focus on their slides line, because I personally prefer to shoot with fuji film instead of kodak. That’s off course with one exception for the Kodak Portra 400, but overall I find the colors of fuji a lot more appealing to me.

I noticed in the search results of this site, that there is a huge interest in the different film types you can find. I’m only reviewing the film I have used till now and keep in mind that these are my personal opinions

After almost only posting film guides about kodak film, I think it’s time we’re going to have a look at another brand of color film. Fujifilm has been known for years of producing color film, Fuji superia 100 is one of those. It’s a fairly inexpensive daylight balanced film, if you compare it to some other 100 speed films, but it produces very nice results. There are 4 emulsions used, instead of the usual 3, the extra cyan layer acts as an compensation for shooting inside under fluorescent light. It’s the same emulsion as the professional grade films of Fujifilm, with the only difference that the superia line is not refrigerated from the start, like Fujifilm does with their press line.

As you would expect, the film behaves wonderful in optimal conditions, meaning in sunny conditions. It has great skin tones, nice colors, great dynamic range, in short just very nice.

When it’s a bit overcast, the results are still pretty good, although they tend to be a bit more blueish. But still great detail, nice colors, …

Inside with natural light or on a very overcast day, the colors tend to shift a lot to blue, although skin tones still look very nice. This makes it a great portrait film for me. Low iso, good skin tones in a lot of conditions

Inside under tungsten light, it all turns a bit orange, but I still like this, because that’s more or less what you get when you’re inside.

So overall, I do like this film a lot for portraiture, also because of it’s very small to almost none existent grain. But the main reason I like it because you can use it in almost any situation without it changing too much. So when you want an all purpose low iso film, I would look at fujifilm superia 100. On the other hand, if I want to take portraits outside at sunset, I prefer using Kodak portra 160VC. Not a very special film, just a good workhorse in most circumstances, when there is enough light.

Update: Thx to fynflood, I indeed had to find out that this film is no longer made and has been replaced by the fuji realla 100. At least I can’t seem to find the film anymore in any of the big stores online.

I noticed in the search results of this site, that there is a huge interest in the different film types you can find. I’m only reviewing the film I have used till now and keep in mind that these are my personal opinions

When we were in London a couple of months ago, we kind of bumped into an exposition of rock photos taken during the 60′s and the 70′s. That would mean off course that they were taken during the film era. So we decided to check it out as it was a free exposition. Immediately I started to recognize some pictures of rockstars and celebrities.

Turned out we stumbled upon an exposition of Philip Townsend, you may recognize his work with the beatles and the rolling stones. Later on I learned that the exposition was for the 50th celebration of Carnaby street. When we went in, there was a older man sitting at a table selling some prints, after a while we started talking and it turned out to be Mr. Townsend himself. That was rather cool. I bought one of the limited edition and signed Lambda prints he was selling there for 20 pounds.

After that I boldly asked if I could take a picture of him between his photos. He agreed, when I took out my Rolleiflex standard 622 he was even very interested why I still shot film and which camera I was using. So that made the portrait even better. I have to say, although I’m a professional photographer I was pretty nervous taking a picture of a photography legend with an analog camera. But it all turned out pretty well and the result is on the top of this post.