Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2003/02/07
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]I have been following the discussion regarding high-speed color negative films with interest. I've used the Fuji high-speed films for quite a while and think they're a fabulous improvement over the previous generation (NHGII). The Press 800 film is a good general purpose film, but it has greater contrast than NPZ, which Fuji has positioned as its "premium" 800 speed negative film. NPZ has only slightly greater grain than NPH, which itself has been praised as an incredibly fine-grained 400 speed film. All things being equal, NPZ will retain greater shadow detail than Press 800, and more detail is obviously better. I print my own C prints from color negative, and my observation is that when you are trying to filter out gross color imbalances (such as shooting any of these daylight films under tungsten light) you need to expose at a lower EI because if the blue layer is substantially underexposed you will be unable to obtain a good clean black. Or, to put it another way, if you expose normally under tungsten light, it will be impossible to get a print in which the blacks do not have a blue cast. An overexposure of 1/2 stop seems to cure this situation almost completely. If you are scanning, rather than printing directly from the negative, a fat negative also seems to help, although Photoshop can work wonders even with a thin negative (but it will take a lot of work). The usualy disclaimers apply, and YMMV :-). - -- Rolfe Tessem | Lucky Duck Productions, Inc. rolfe@ldp.com | 96 Morton Street (212) 463-0029 | New York, Ny 10014 - -- To unsubscribe, see http://mejac.palo-alto.ca.us/leica-users/unsub.html