Re: LUG[Leica] Extreme Low Light Color --> Mr Puts

[Jeff Moore <jbm@oven.com>]

1999-12-19-11:44:56 Eric Welch:
> That's it! Superia. It has an extra green layer, that helps control
> florescent light, and it does it very well, except when daylight
> sneaks into the same picture.

Well, yeah, Superia 800 was one of the versions I was subsuming under
the category "CZ" in my earlier post plugging NHG II.  First there
was, I seem to recall, "Super G 800", the original CZ; then "Super G
Plus 800", the next-generation CZ; then I guess "Superia 800", which
also had the designation CZ.  Now... is the current one "Superia
X-tra" or some such, or do we consider the "Press 800" to be the
current heir?  "Press 800" has "CZ 135" written on its little
magazines...  So are the the Superia branch and the Press branch just
different labellings of fundamentally the same stuff, or...  I dunno.
It's gotten kind of baffling.  Ain't none of it bad film, though --
the Fuji 800 color-neg material pretty much all rocks.

And... at least in its first incarnation, "Superia 800" didn't have
that special Reala-esque cyan-sensitive layer to which you refer (I
found a datasheet, Ref No. AF3-967E lying about).  Maybe a current
incarnation does.  BTW, for a bit of a marketing hoot, check out
Fuji's special animated fable, "Freddy Fourth and the Color Brothers,
the tale of Fujifilm's fourth color layer technology" (no, I couldn't
possibly be making this up!) at:

    http://home.fujifilm.com/products/fujicolor/fourth/index.htm

Oy.

NHG II, though, is a slightly different line aimed mostly at folk who
are stuffing highish-speed film in their medium-format cameras for
those available-light wedding snaps.  It replaces a 400-speed NHG.
Thing is, it's available in 35mm too, it pushes like a dream, it isn't 
at all undersaturated, despite the expectations one might have of
"portrait" film, and the last time I bothered to compare, it was a
touch finer-grained than whatever the then-current CZ was (Probably
the Superia 800).  I invite low-light color shooters to try a roll
each of CZ-whichever and NHG II, both at 1600 with a 1-stop push, and
see if they observe the same thing.  Whatever.  I like the way it
looks.

 -Jeff M.