Color Issues with Fuji Pro 400H

Michael Erb · May 15, 2010

Hello All,

I have been shooting a lot of 400H lately and I am having some color problems. I will have two frames that are very similar in composition and lighting with settings within 1/2 stop. One will look pretty normal. The other will have a huge color shift. Sometimes it will be a cyan shift other times magenta.

I haven't ruled out scanning as the culprit yet but I wanted to see if all you hardcore film shooters had ever seen these kinds of color shifts as a result of exposure problems. I know what this film is capable of (Jose Villa, Jonathan Candless) but I just can't seem to get there.

P.S. I am rating this stuff at 200 ASA so it is already overexposed 1 stop. I also use an incident meter (Sekonic L-758) quite a bit.

pentaxuser · May 15, 2010

Are you saying that the two similar frames on a light box under a loupe look different? That's the key. Assuming the scene colours are sufficiently similar then if both look right under a loupe then it suggests the film is OK and I can only assume that the scanner is faulty. Have you tried printing each or getting a good minilab to make prints of both negs, then asking the operator to say if the colour balance on the "faulty" frame required a lot of manipulation.

pentaxuser

nickandre · May 15, 2010

I agree. Look at the negatives. It's most likely a scanning though because it's very difficult (besides dumping bleach in the developer) to get color negative film to have any significant color shift.

markbarendt · May 15, 2010

All the 400H I've shot has been very consistent.

L Gebhardt · May 15, 2010

Unless the lighting changed I can not see how one frame could have a different color shift than another frame on the same roll. Even if it did, it wouldn't be the film's fault. As others have said, check the negatives. Try scanning the two frames together (as one image) if you can. If they are similar in color you have narrowed it down to a scanning issue.

jpberger · May 15, 2010

I had similar issue shooting at 200. Could be a fluke. I agree that it's most likely a scanner thing (I haven't had a chance to print the offending frames optically.) Rating at 250-320 I've had no problems.

I find that despite the common idea that colour neg has lots of latitude and is thus idiot proof, it takes every bit as much if not more experimentation to get really good results with colour negative as with transparencies. Its a matter of figuring out not only the best way to expose the film, but how to interpret the results in the darkroom too.

mattk · May 15, 2010

Scan issue probably. Scan both negs as one image and see if the problem is still there.

benjiboy · May 16, 2010

I use a lot of 400H and never had this problem, but I don't scan my negs, try getting the negatives printed.

ninabm · May 18, 2010

Hello there,

I came across this trying to help my mom figure out what's happening with her exposures now and then. She's an amateur and has her film developed at a local lab, nothing fancy. Every now and then in the past few months an image will be color shifted in a major way - a pink flower will be aqua, a red one dark purple. It's like that on the negatives already, very very clearly, not a scanning issue. It's quite mind boggling, it is individual images, not the whole film. She almost always uses consumer 200 ISO Fuji film, typically the same consumer zoom lens and practically no filters, sometimes polarizer. She's been shooting with a Canon EOS 650 for about 25 years, never seen anything like it.
I have no explanation whatsoever (I'm a wedding photographer myself, albeit digital). Thought I'd mention this here... curious to see if there will be any more thoughts on this!

Nina

Michael Erb · May 21, 2010

Thanks for the ideas everyone. I am going to pursue several of your suggestions to rule out any problems with exposure/processing etc. I will say though that ninabm's post above is spookily similar to my experience. Could the minilab machine at my local pro lab be part of the problem? I know they have been having some issues. I just assumed that problems with the minilab would shift an entire roll.

markbarendt · May 21, 2010

I can't see how a mini-lab could mess up a single frame on a roll and I've never had it happen, any single frame problems I've ever had have, always and without any exception, been my fault.

Color Issues with Fuji Pro 400H

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