enormous increase of speed with current Neopan 400

[Wolfgang Moersch]

Fuji Neopan 400 was calibrated at 320asa in Finol. With the latest batch (emu no573001 - 2011-2) speed is increased to 800-1000asa!
Double-check with other developers yielded comparably results.
Any thoughts or explanations?

 

[PeteZ8]

Mispackaged :confused:

What do the numbers on the developed film say?

 

[Wolfgang Moersch]

Don´t think so.
573 NP400PR AABBCA

 

[rwboyer]

Meter broken? Maybe your 100 ISO film is now 400? Maybe somehow you slipped into an alternate universe where physics works differently?

RB

 

[rwboyer]

If you somehow have a ISO increasing speed field around you you could market and sell that - people would pay you to hang around while they shot.

In all seriousness assuming you are actually seeing a real speed increase in the shadow densities I would say your meter is broken. If your metering, exposure, and measuring process is not really that tight I would just chalk it up to different subject matter or a mistake you made while shooting that batch.

RB

 

[Wolfgang Moersch]

Seems to be unlikely, I have compared the measurement with three different meters.

 

[rwboyer]

Seems to be unlikely, I have compared the measurement with three different meters.

Okay,

In all seriousness there is a 99% chance that the error is on your part or your equipments part. For instance about 15 years ago I had the same thing happen to me when I thought I was shooting at f5.6 turns out the lens had a sticky aperture and was not closing down to f5.6 when I was shooting. Not saying that is the issue in your case but most likely something like that otherwise we would have people chiming in from all over the planet that somehow Neopan got a lot and I mean a lot faster (can't remember that ever happening with any film ever)

RB

 

[Aron]

They put Neopan 1600 in the plain 400 canisters these days?

 

[Keith Tapscott.]

Fuji Neopan 400 was calibrated at 320asa in Finol. With the latest batch (emu no573001 - 2011-2) speed is increased to 800-1000asa!
Double-check with other developers yielded comparably results.
Any thoughts or explanations?

Was that with 35mm or 120 film?
Also, have you noticed anything else different such as graininess and sharpness? If not, then that is a very pleasant surprise.

 

[Martin Aislabie]

Most likely made a foo-bar in production

A reel of Neopan 1600 has been mistakenly loaded in the film packaging plant as 400.

With this sort of mistake it cannot be certain that the Emulsion Batch Number corresponds to the contents on the reel.

It might be worth checking with Fuji though – they may already be aware of the problem.

Martin

 

[Wolfgang Moersch]

I agree with you RB and don´t want to ignore your objections, but I got these results with three lenses and shutters.
As everybody else would do I have searched the source of mistake at my own side, but I can´t find it.
I´m not a newbie but of course I can make mistakes. Ok, to exclude errors I have developed an old and a brandnew film together in one real, exposed with the same lens at tungsten to prevent fluctuations of light. One has 320, the other has 800asa
Keith, it is a 120 roll and as far as I can see it on the homogeneous aerea of a grey card, there is no difference in grain.
Martin, I will ask Fuji.
btw - I am not the only one, some (few) other people here in Germany have noticed the same thing. Probably a mysterious reaction of political change (everything will getting better! lol ! - why not films?)

 

[rwboyer]

If all this turns out to be no errors on your part and the grain and other characteristics are the exact same with the same CI I would package your remaining 800 speed film with super fine grain, smoooooth tonality, etc, etc. All the usual better stronger faster marketing you can think up and sell it as Wolfgang-o-Pan-XX for a healthy profit - just make sure it has a nice wooden box or something for boutique buyers looking for that ever elusive "better" film. ;-)

RB

 

[Photo Engineer]

Edge markings are put on with a dedicated machine that adjusts the exposure to give the proper markings without flare or lack of density (over or under exposed marking) when properly developed.

It would be very odd to have 400 markings at the correct density with no flare if put on a 1600 film. It would look very overexposed. Therefore, a whole series of errors would have to have taken place at the factory to cause high speed film in low speed packing with proper low speed edge markings.

These are just some side comments to indicate that I think nothing odd went on at the plant and it was user/equipment error OR that they knew exactly what they were doing at the plant and gave the "right" exposure for that emulsion and therefore there is a lot more out there.

PE

 

[BetterSense]

They put Neopan 1600 in the plain 400 canisters these days?

I'm not sure than neopan 1600 is even that much faster than 400.

 

[Wolfgang Moersch]

I agree PE, this scenario seems to be impossible. Slightly differences in speed (1°DIN more or less) would not bother me too much. But over all the years I have used Fuji-films I never noticed any differences. That´s the reason why I asked here - hoping for a possibility of news of revision.
In 40 years as photographer I only saw one packing error - 400asa films in a 100asa box! It was not a Fuji-film. One time a friend of mine was happy with a tremendous grainy film from another wellknown manufacturer - no chance to buy more, this batch has been withdrawn. To err is human.

Ok RB, your idea is not bad at all, but I´m not a member of the Duck family and not all German manufactures are lovers of wooden boxes, wherever they come from.

Thank you all for response.

wm

 

[MVNelson]

I had something like this happen to me with a 50 sheet box of asa 400 film packaged in 100 asa box (DELTA). It drove me crazy when I tried to do a BTZS calibration ...

 

[Keith Tapscott.]

I´m not a newbie but of course I can make mistakes. Ok, to exclude errors I have developed an old and a brandnew film together in one real, exposed with the same lens at tungsten to prevent fluctuations of light. One has 320, the other has 800asa

Keith, it is a 120 roll and as far as I can see it on the homogeneous aerea of a grey card, there is no difference in grain.

Martin, I will ask Fuji.
btw - I am not the only one, some (few) other people here in Germany have noticed the same thing. Probably a mysterious reaction of political change (everything will getting better! lol ! - why not films?)

If it is 120 roll, then that rules out Neopan 1600. Also, you are obtaining E.I.800 instead of your usual E.I.320 without any noticeable increase in graininess.
Wolfgang, I think you are very lucky to have discovered Neopan 800 and you are making some of us very envious.

 

[GeorgK]

A lot of "experts" :rolleyes: here that obviously do not even know who Wolfgang is...

 

[Andrew Moxom]

It is unusual Wolfgang. I suspect it could be a film mismatch.... Unless you are saying that all new Neopan-400 film has this characteristic? I use a lot of Neopan-400 and have been doing so for a few years now. I've not seen any changes to it so far in the batches I have. Could it be that it's more reactive to the developers you use??? Have you tried it with another developer say tanol instead of finol?? To see if the problem still persists?

 

[Wolfgang Moersch]

Indeed, it is unusual Andrew and I´m helpless. I am rather conservative in matching and now this.
Georg, it doesn´t matter who I am. If I would read such a nonsens, I would not answer at all. Spott prallt an mir ab und wenn er berechtigt ist, muß ich damit leben. Die Jungs hier müssen doch denken, daß ich einen an der Waffel habe und das kann ich ihnen nicht verdenken, aber ich danke für den Beistand!
Ok guys, forget it. It must be my own mistake. If I ever will find the reason, I will report in full.
According to Fuji Germany there is no change! Of course not, I have to admit that. Why should they sell a better than NP1600 at 400ASA?!

 

[Ray Rogers]

Haribo macht Kinder froh...

Fuji Neopan 400 was calibrated at 320asa in Finol. With the latest batch (emu no573001 - 2011-2) speed is increased to 800-1000asa!
Double-check with other developers yielded comparably results.
Any thoughts or explanations?

I cannot offer much to the topic...
Nevertheless, I would like to confirm a few points.

Did you actually have the film sensitometrically tested?
(or did you just do a quick "photographers test"?)

Did you try different films (with the same emulsion number),
perhaps from different sources?

Is the film good?
Do you like it?

Fuji could be experimenting... or something wonderbar might have happened, but whatever, it seems you should be happy about this development!

Can you test other em numbers to see if perhaps more recent material is the same, too?

Yes, do keep us up to date!

Ray

 

[Tom Stanworth]

even if it were NP 1600, if you are making 320 on the Neopan 400 I very much think you would make 500-640 on the NP 1600 as I find the true speed about 2/3 stop faster and no more - certainly not 1 + 2/3 stops. something very odd is going on!

The only test I can think of is a side by side with film from the old batch. That will reveal if they both come up with the same speed or one is faster by far.

 

[Bosaiya]

I shoot quite a lot of Neopan 400 these days, so far nothing out of the ordinary. You should probably send me a bunch so I can test it for you on this side of the ocean. You never know!

 

[pentaxuser]

It seems unlikely that Fuji's quality control would not have picked this up and equally unlikely that Fuji has released such an improvement without attempting to announce it. If a 400 film has increased in speed but retained all its "400" qualities it is a major "coup" for Fuji that it would surely want to announce.

On the other hand the likelihood of Wolfgang making a mistake or in fact a series of mistakes seems equally unlikely. If you find something different and repeat the process to check that no part of the process has changed and get the same result then if this was testing a hypothesis you'd begin to suspect that something has genuinely changed

Given Wolfgang's experience and knowledge, I think that Fuji will be very interested in his findings. As a user of Neopan 400 myself I await the outcome with some excitement but also some fear that there is some simple explanation which means that nothing about Fuji 400 has really changed and if I want more speed then I'll just have to "push".

pentaxuser

 

[Bosaiya]

Seems like a good candidate for the scientific method and deductive reasoning.

Send me a few rolls and I'll send some of mine in return. I shoot many hundreds of frames of Neopan 400 a month and would love to get the secret of this fast version!