RE: [APML] Introduction & Film Question

Hi Dave,

As Don says, for print film, the only real choice today is the Fuji Super HQ 200. I’ve been using it for about 10 months and I’m thrilled to have a decent print film again. My results have been better than ever, although some of that is simple technique improvement as well. I think Wal-Mart has stopped carrying it in some stores, but I obtain it regularly in my local supermarket!

I’ve tried the Konica Centuria Super 400 and 200 and it’s OK, but very hard to find. I picked up the 200, of all places, at a roadside BP fuel station. Even so, I’m much, much happier with the Fuji SHQ200. I have also used a lot of the slide films Don mentions, but my experience with the Provia 400f has been that I get some nasty haloes around bright stars if I’m not very careful in my exposure. The EC200 is quite red-sensitive, almost too much so at times for my taste. And neither have a strong blue response. The Fuji has decent blue response in my experience. Last October/November I shot M45 with Provia 400f and SHQ200, and the SHQ200 shot (both were 60 minutes) was far superior. The Provia shot had awful red haloes around the stars. And the SHQ200 better captured the nebulosity. All that said, I suspect the SHQ200 to have fairly high reciprocity failure but I haven’t had decent enough skies this summer to actually test that and prove/disprove my suspicion.

I find the convenience of print film to be what keeps me using it over slide film. Slide film processors are getting much harder to find, but print film can be taken to just about any grocery-store, drug-store, or department-store lab that processes using C-41, and as long as you resign yourself to scanning the negatives and processing them on a computer, you’ll do fine. I’ve seen some very weird prints made from my negatives by the minimum-wage help at some labs, but in all cases the negatives themselves are just fine when I scan them into my computer. That’s because the actual film processing is automated and unless the lab technicians aren’t keeping their equipment tuned up, you’ll get consistent results from the processors.

As for scanning a slide, keep in mind that you’d also scan a negative of the same size to process it in Photoshop. If the scanner is of decent resolution, you’ll have no trouble enlarging to 8x12. I do that all the time with a 2700dpi Nikon Coolscan IV scanner. The trick is to have a dedicated film scanner, not a normal flatbed document scanner. Sounds like you have a flatbed. I’ve even got a couple of 24x36 posters from my scans that look quite nice from a couple of feet away.

-- Pat Freeman