FUJI NPL, now what?

[pideja]

I've been shooting stage sets (theater) for fifteen years now, almost exclusively on Fuji NPL 4x5 film. This involves long exposure, variable lighting and very long dynamic range. The Fuji product is great at this and I have found no other film quite like it. But alas, I can't find it anymore. I have tried, horror of horrors, to shoot a few plays with a digital camera and although the results at times seemed promising, it is not the same. By far.
So, what am I to do?
Without film in the 4x5 format, I can always shoot in medium format but for how long?
And buying a medium format or 4x5 digital back is not really an option.
Is there no negative tungsten color film anymore?

 

[PHOTOTONE]

I think Kodak still makes an ISO 64 tungsten film in 4x5.

 

[Pinholemaster]

I see that NPL is out of stock on the B&H web site. The last time that happened to my favorite Fuji color negative film, Fuji came out with a new variety. So your situation isn't totally hopeless.

Meanwhile Kodak is still listed in stock: Porta-100T 4x5.

You lose a little ISO, but you can use it. Kodak isn't that bad. I use Portra-400 8x10 with great results.

 

[Dorian Gray]

Yes, Portra 100T is still available in sheet format from various sources. This film's dynamic range is in no way inferior to NPL and perhaps marginally better. It's reciprocity characteristics are also quite outstanding for negative film. However it doesn't have NPL's cyan-sensitive layer, so you'd have to try it to see how it handles your situation. Obviously the colour palette is a bit different in balanced lighting too.

Have you considered using daylight film with appropriate filtration? There are plenty of options if you go down that route, some giving an EI of over 160.

Is there no negative tungsten color film anymore?

Looks like a dying breed. But with today's excellent high-speed daylight negative material, this is less catastrophic than it might have been.

 

[Poco]

Didn't they discontinue NPL with the introduction of Pro S? I think the line was that Pro S can do it all. Can't find a link to the official release, but this one makes reference to it:

http://www.notifbutwhen.com/2/2006/09/going-going-gone.html

 

[Helen B]

I'm still using Portra 100T in 4x5, and I'll be sorry to see it go. I find that it has a more predictable response to deliberately mixed lighting, such as stage lighting, than the Fuji 4-layer films, but that's just a matter of taste.

I'll switch to filtered neg film when there's no more 100T, and get used to the loss of effective speed. There's still tungsten neg film in 35 mm motion picture, of course.

Best,
Helen

 

[DrPablo]

Is there no negative tungsten color film anymore?

Slide film isn't an option? Kodak and Fuji both have 64T E-6 film in 4x5.

 

[Helen B]

Slide film isn't an option? Kodak and Fuji both have 64T E-6 film in 4x5.

If you can keep the subject brightness range within the capability of reversal film, then it is a good option.

Best,
Helen

 

[Petzi]

If you can keep the subject brightness range within the capability of reversal film, then it is a good option.

If you can keep the subject brightness range within the capability of reversal film, and if you don't want to print, then it is a good option.

 

[PHOTOTONE]

If you can keep the subject brightness range within the capability of reversal film, and if you don't want to print, then it is a good option.

Oh now, particularly with 4x5 (or larger film size) scanning and printing color can be quite nice, although I wouldn't suggest printing digitally if the image were b/w.

 

[FilmIs4Ever]

Oh now, particularly with 4x5 (or larger film size) scanning and printing color can be quite nice, although I wouldn't suggest printing digitally if the image were b/w.

And how is printing digitally any more acceptable for color than it is with B&W? If anything B&W is *easier* to print digitally than color because there are no color dyes that need to be used, and, if they are, they can be used to "tone" the print.

Have you ever printed RA-4 optically, in a darkroom? Surely you'd see advantages to optical printing in terms of color, resolution, low-cost over inkjet media or lab prices, and the extreme flexibility of print sizes that can be had with an enlarger at one's disposal and large-enough darkroom.

 

[sanderx1]

Have you ever printed RA-4 optically, in a darkroom? Surely you'd see advantages to optical printing in terms of color, resolution, low-cost over inkjet media or lab prices, and the extreme flexibility of print sizes that can be had with an enlarger at one's disposal and large-enough darkroom.

Printing digitaly very often - and especially in this forum - means using RA-4, except with a digital step(s) in the process. A LOT of colour gets printed that way, and a lot of B&W get printed on colour RA-4 too.

But I guess we should move the constructive hybrid part to hybridphoto.com and leave the tail end of the thread to flame warriors...

 

[colrehogan]

I've been shooting stage sets (theater) for fifteen years now, almost exclusively on Fuji NPL 4x5 film. This involves long exposure, variable lighting and very long dynamic range. The Fuji product is great at this and I have found no other film quite like it. But alas, I can't find it anymore. I have tried, horror of horrors, to shoot a few plays with a digital camera and although the results at times seemed promising, it is not the same. By far.
So, what am I to do?
Without film in the 4x5 format, I can always shoot in medium format but for how long?
And buying a medium format or 4x5 digital back is not really an option.
Is there no negative tungsten color film anymore?

I have a Fujifilm brochure that I got last year at the View Camera conference. Here is a quote from the section on the Pro 160S film: "A wide exposure latitude also makes Pro 160S exceedingly easy to use and capable of producing expected results under a variety of light sources, whether natural, tungsten, fluorescent or flash lighting."

 

[FilmIs4Ever]

But I guess we should move the constructive hybrid part to hybridphoto.com and leave the tail end of the thread to flame warriors...

I'm not afraid to discuss it here. Maybe you are. I am not trying to start a film vs. digital battle. God knows we've had enough. I just find it funny that all of the "master B&W printers" here, the craftsmen, the artists, think that digital printing is good for color. That strikes my as hypocritical.

 

[sanderx1]

I'm not afraid to discuss it here. Maybe you are. I am not trying to start a film vs. digital battle. God knows we've had enough. I just find it funny that all of the "master B&W printers" here, the craftsmen, the artists, think that digital printing is good for color. That strikes my as hypocritical.

Its not a question of being afraid. The motto of APUG is "we only do full analog" and people who would not - where for example scanning would be involved - were banished to hybridphoto.com with the closure of the digital part of grey area. Or at the very least banished there for the parts of their workflows that deviate from analog.

Digital output for colour is often good enough simply because the loss of quality in scanning the negative / positive is much less that that experienced in scanning a traditional B&W film. Increasingly for many people digital output for B&W is also good enough, especially with the introduction of specialist B&W papers, including fiber based.

We will eventually reach the point where the workflow will be purely a question of preference.

 

[PHOTOTONE]

I'm not afraid to discuss it here. Maybe you are. I am not trying to start a film vs. digital battle. God knows we've had enough. I just find it funny that all of the "master B&W printers" here, the craftsmen, the artists, think that digital printing is good for color. That strikes my as hypocritical.

Well I am not a "master printer" but I have had a darkroom for 40 years, and a commercial photo studio for 31 years, and I have printed b/w and color in the darkroom, since I started. I stand by my statement that color can look as good or better printed on professional inkjet equipment from high-resolution scans of color negatives or slides. I have the capability to make up to 20x24 color prints using the RA-4 process in my darkroom, but have stopped doing this because I (me personally) get better results printing them (after scanning) on my wide-format printer. I think the reason for this is that the pigment prints (from inkjet) have as much, or more depth to the image as a RA-4 print does, and they are more archival in nature.

While b/w pigment prints are not any more archival than b/w silver prints, and b/w prints on silver based paper have a depth and clarity that a pigment print cannot match (at least for me). Therefore if image and tone are the criteria, then (so far) nothing beats a good silver print...unless it might be Platinum or Palladium, but I have not tried these.

I am a photographer that prefers film, and fortunately I still have clients that allow me to shoot film for them, as well as digital. I have the ability to make all my prints (from film) in the darkroom if I wish, and by choice after evaluation of the differences I prefer to scan and print color using the inkjet pigment process. From an "art" standpoint, for my personal (non-commercial) work, i prefer to shoot b/w film and color transparencies, and make darkroom prints of the b/w, and scan and make pigment prints from the color.

 

[Petzi]

I have a Fujifilm brochure that I got last year at the View Camera conference. Here is a quote from the section on the Pro 160S film: "A wide exposure latitude also makes Pro 160S exceedingly easy to use and capable of producing expected results under a variety of light sources, whether natural, tungsten, fluorescent or flash lighting."

Now I wish Fuji would make 400 speed LF print film. Together with a CC filter, this would be acceptable replacement for NPL.

 

[Petzi]

I mean a KB filter of course, KB 12 (80B) or KB 15 (80A).

 

[benjiboy]

NPL colour balance.

Didn't they discontinue NPL with the introduction of Pro S? I think the line was that Pro S can do it all. Can't find a link to the official release, but this one makes reference to it:

http://www.notifbutwhen.com/2/2006/09/going-going-gone.html

I've used this film in the studio for years, its balance for photopearl lamps ( a colour temperature of 3200K ) the 160S is a daylight film that is tolerent to artificial light to some degree in my experience, but not for critical work that involves reproducing accurate skin tones

 

[Helen B]

Here, mostly for academic interest, is a graph showing the effect of an 80A filter on 3200 K incandescent light. The red line is the theoretical spectral distribution of 3200 K light and the black line is what happens to 3200 K light after it passes through an 80A filter. The dotted blue line represents a theoretical 5500 K source (not real daylight) positioned vertically on the graph to meet the black line at 550 nm.

The vertical distance between the red line and the black line shows the number of stops of light lost in each part of the spectrum. You can see that even at the blue end of the spectrum, the filter cuts out about half a stop of light. This is one reason why putting a dichroic filter over the lights loses less light than putting an absorptive 80A over the lens or an absorptive CTB over the lights - the absorptive blue filters happen to reduce the light right across the spectrum because of the dyes used. A loss of two stops, in effect.

The distance between the black line and the dashed blue line shows the relative difference between the filtered 3200 K light and 5500 K light - an 80A filter doesn't do its job perfectly. It works OK in practice of course, but you can see that, in comparison to daylight, deep violet colours will be rendered darker than greenish blues, and that the all-important reds will not have exactly the same balance.

Best,
Helen

 

[Dorian Gray]

Interesting graph, Helen. Do you happen to know the extent to which daylight and tungsten light sources match the distribution of the theoretical sources in your graph? I realise the spectral distribution of daylight may vary a little from location to location (different altitudes, etc.) and depending on the time of day, but is it largely flat from 400 to 700 nm? And are all 80A filters exactly the same?

I was also under the impression that colour films tend to have very little sensitivity above around 650 nm, meaning the upturn of the 3200 K & 80A in that region might be beneficial (if it isn't entirely immaterial). But my understanding of these issues is not what it should be.

 

[Helen B]

That's a very good point - the upturn beyond 650 nm is almost entirely immaterial for almost all colour films. That thought was in the back of my mind, and I knew that I should have looked before I leaped. It might matter a little for Portra 800 which must be one of the few films that has some sensitivity above 650 nm, I think.

I don't have the same amount of information for other '80A' filters as I do for Wratten ones. However, the B+W catalogue shows that their KB 15 is not in the same family as the lower KB filters - B+W say that the KB 15 filter is a Wratten 80A, not just the equivalent of it, and that appears to be true. I should do a better comparison - I have some B+W filters that I could measure.

I'll revise the graph by overlaying the extremities of some film sensitivity curves, and add the best version of real daylight that I can. A real 3200 K CCT source should be quite close to the theoretical one.

I should try to do the same for a dichroic lighting filter as a comparison.

Best,
Helen

 

[epatsellis]

And on a similar vein, how does the use of DecaMired filters affect the delta?

erie