Neopan 400 and Provia 400X RIP

[Sandokan]

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Will anyone here miss Fujichrome Provia 400X or Neopan400? I often hear people extol the virtues of TriX or FP4 but not the Fuji films?

[Steve Ash]

Sure I will muss 400X. I always preferred slide film and now there is no 400 Iso left.

 

Regards

Steve

[StS]

I would miss 400X, should there be no Portra 400 around any more.

 

Edit - sorry just saw, 400X is slide film, mixed this up with Superia. It is certainly two years ago, since I used it the last time.

With slide film, I like the "tanglible" nature, to be able to put it on a light table and see the original. Nothing beats a projected image.

However people never bothered to get their projectors out to just show their ten best and innocent viewers were treated too frequently to 800 frames showing the last holidays....

 

Stefan

[andybarton]

Every six months another two films get the chop. Fuji will be out of the game in maybe 5 years tops.

 

I can see a very expensive decision being forced upon me much more quickly than I wanted or had counted upon...

[gyoung]

for years I have carried two bodies, one with 100 and one with 400 Provia, what now!!!

 

 

Gerry

[sblitz]

And that decision would be? I strongly believe film will be here. Expensive perhaps hit be here

[Guido]

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So what? According to your guess, that's still 5 years left for enjoying and making the most out of Fuji, and use whatever is available in the years thereafter. That sounds like plenty of time, at least to me... we're not exactly immortal ourselves, you know.

[CalArts 99]

It seems that Neopan 400 and Provia 400X were never really big sellers. I still come across people who have never heard of Neopan 400. That's unfortunate since it is a nice emulsion. imho, it has the characteristics of a conventional grain film but with the tight grain of a T-grain or Delta type of film. And for some reason not many people like to use reversal film (costs?) so I'm not too surprised about Provia 400X despite it being an excellent film. It did end up getting pretty pricey (I remember when it was only just a little bit more expensive than 100 ISO E-6 films.)

 

I have 28 rolls of Provia 400X 135-36 and 35 rolls of Neopan 400 135-36 left. I'll be sad to see it go, but at least in B+W there are other equally good choices. It's E-6 that concerns me. There's really nothing like reversal film for a hybrid/scanning workflow.

[}{B]

At the moment I'm feeling that film is moving away from me rather than me moving away from film.

 

I put some money away when the M9 was launched just in case and it still remains untouched. In the meantime I picked up a used M7 and have enjoyed every minute with it. However the pull of digital is becoming stronger and seeing the black and white shots that my Fuji X100 produces only makes it harder to stay with film,

 

For my next trip to Scotland in a couple of months I'm thinking of using Agfa slide film and treating it for scanning as though it were print film by not getting it mounted which will reduce the cost. I've been looking at some of my scanned Sensia slides and the quality easily matches what I would be happy with from digital.

[sblitz]

I find it odd that they drop 400 and keep 100 film. Would think the opposite since 400 is so much more versatile

[CalArts 99]

Yeah, who knows why they make certain choices. I assume it has to do with a combination of sales numbers and manufacturing logistics. Acros 100 is a newer film than Neopan 400 (which is called Presto in Japan.)

 

Just curious, but when was Provia 400X first released? I vaguely remember getting some free samples from a Fuji rep at the old A&I branch lab in Santa Monica. I think that was in 2007. If I recall, it was just being introduced (?)

 

Provia 400X is exceptionally sharp and with a RMS of 11 which is pretty amazing given its speed. I do remember the Fuji rep talking about some kind of brand new grain technology for 400X that was developed by Fuji. It makes me think of all those engineers responsible for film design and where they might be now and what they are thinking, etc..

[Guest malland]

...It's E-6 that concerns me. There's really nothing like reversal film for a hybrid/scanning workflow.

Just because it's easier to scan or because of having a color reference?

 

—Mitch/Pak Nam Pran

Bangkok Obvious [WIP]

Eggleston said that he was "at war with the obvious"...

[andybarton]

Both

[KM-25]

Yeah, the days we all knew would come are nipping at our heels, I had a blast shooting 400X while traveling for a year around the world, great color and sharpness.

 

But it is writing on the wall that made me invest solely in black and white once Kodachrome was gone. I firmly believe black and white shooters are safe even if it is not a Fuji stock, they seem to be exiting pretty quickly along with the biggest price hikes in the industry...

[sblitz]

is reversal color film that much expensive to produce or is it no one wants to bore the neighbors with a slide show anymore? people still like have a small photo with them to show off whatever. personally, i haven't shot slide film in forever but was about to give it a go to scan. looks like i better get on it ...

[Keith (M)]

Back in the day, colour-wise I only ever shot E6 (35mm & 6x6cm) . Family pressure regarding having something to stick in an album rather than dragging out the projector etc meant a move to C41, followed by going fully digital eight years ago. The lure of film eventually resurfaced but initially only b&w, which I develop myself and scan. The reference to an E6 hybrid workflow has me thinking though...

 

So being out of touch with current E6 film, of what remains on the market, what would E6 aficionados recommend for general use (travel & landscape mainly). Hmmm, might even try a roll in my Rolleicord Vb - 6x6 slides can be jaw-droppingly stunning.

 

 

Sent from my iPad Mini using Tapatalk

[sblitz]

pretty much my story as well, although i love porta 160. was recently thinking about having slides scanned. not everyone in nyc does it, but i found a few, now i need to try the film. calarts99, who wrote above, has opined on this subject and has pretty much convinced me by his examples to swerve in that direction.

[farnz]

Are you a conjoined Siamese twin?

 

Pete.

[sblitz]

i don't have any 6x6 cameras .......

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[adan]

is reversal color film that much expensive to produce or is it no one wants to bore the neighbors with a slide show anymore?...

 

Reversal film does require more "perfection" in manufacturing since the film itself is the final picture. No chance to tweak the colors and tones in a second generation as one does with printing from negative film. Kodak claimed this as one reason for dropping slide films altogether - they just could not maintain the additional consistency and quality needed, at any price, with the reduced production volumes.

 

If color neg film is "out" by 10 points of yellow or magenta, or has a slightly lower Dmax than the previous batch, that can easily be fixed in printing. And no one is going to look at your negs. No such luck if an art director is viewing your original chromes on the light box.

 

As to family slide shows - I think they began to decline long ago (1980 +/- 5 years), superceded by print albums and home video. One might almost say they have enjoyed a recent revival, conceptually - but on facebook and flickr, or shown on one's 50" HDTV or iPad. But "reversal film" as such is no longer required, since the images have to be digitized in any case.

 

I suspect there has been a convergence of those two points. If one could find the data, one could probably see that at some point in the past (likely 1970-ish? perhaps earlier?), reversal film and color print film rolls were sold on a 1:1 ratio, and by 1980-something, that had slipped to 1:50, and today it is 1:500 or worse. So the manufacturers have had to spread the cost of "perfection" over a volume declining even more rapidly than film volumes as a whole.