How good is Fuji's 1600 color film?

[htmlguru4242]

Hmm ... I posted this last night, but it's not here ...

So, has anyone used Fujicolor 1600? If so, how are the results? I'm going to be doing some indoor low-light stuff.

 

[Petzi]

Be aware that indoor low-light stuff most of the time means tungsten light, and the color temperature related to it. Unless you shoot with a blue filter (e.g. KB12) to correct for color temperature, you must be careful about your exposure, or you may underexpose the blue sensitive layer of the film. This is of course true with all color print film.

 

[Dave Parker]

I have found the 1600 to be pretty good, if used for what it is designed for, mainly low light available light work, it does show quite a bit of grain, but I have always felt the grain adds to the mood in these types of situations, it is a good film, I like it for certain things, as Petzi said, it will need to be filtered if inside under tungsten..

Have fun.

Dave

 

[dmr]

I've used this mostly for outdoor night scenes and had very good results, you know, Las Vegas night scenes, urban settings at night, etc.

I've even had fairly good results using it indoors under tungsten. The Fuji (400-800-1600) seem to tolerate this quite well, as opposed to the Agfa which definitely does not like the lack of blue.

 

[htmlguru4242]

Dmr, how good does it look under tungsten, is there a noticeable tint to it?

 

[pentaxuser]

I've had a lot of success with it at evening airshows. Never tried to print larger than 10 x 8 but at that size the grain was certainly acceptable for the subject matter.

pentaxuser

 

[DBP]

My post last night seems to be gone, so here are two examples from 2004.

 

[Helen B]

Are you asking about Superia 1600 or Natura 1600?

Best,
Helen

 

[htmlguru4242]

Superia

 

[dmr]

Dmr, how good does it look under tungsten, is there a noticeable tint to it?

I tried to find a good example of this that I know was 1600 under only tungsten, but I don't see any that I have handy. I hope these examples will answer for you.

Yes, if you don't do any correction on it, it will show a warm tint. However, when I scan it, some simple level adjustments make it look quite normal (although I prefer indoor incandescent shots to have a bit of a warm tone to them).

Anyway, the one on the left below was taken after sunset, and the outside light was only twilight and afterglow plus some street lights. I know it looks brighter than that, but that's the way it was. The inside of the shop is obviously incandescent.

The second one below is a crop of the window area with simple level adjustments. The inside of the shop now looks quite normal to me on my monitor. I know this is not very accurate, but ...

This was just boosting the blue a bit with the high end slider and tweaking the red center slider to balance it out.

I hope this helps, and sorry I don't have any better examples close at hand.

 

[willie_901]

Hmm ... I posted this last night, but it's not here ...

So, has anyone used Fujicolor 1600? If so, how are the results? I'm going to be doing some indoor low-light stuff.

Superia 1600 can be a life saver. I consider it to be a special purpose film.

You can see some examples here:

Dead Link Removed

and

Dead Link Removed

The color fidelity is pretty good. Some of the Lebowsky photos look really red and it turns out this venue has low-level red-cast lighting.

Indoors it is essential to meter for the shadows to avoid grain. Fearlessly and relentlessly use whatever method you prefer to minimized under exposed walls, shadows etc.

I found this film scans well.

willie

 

[pentaxuser]

dmr. Only you know what colour the brickwork outside the shop was and how it looked at that time of night. It looks as if the second pic is more accurate if you consider the brick to have an intrinsic natural colour but for a twilight tungsten lit scene the first looks more natural IMHO.

pentaxuser

 

[htmlguru4242]

Good to know. I now have a roll of it and I'm going to try it out this weekend. I'm assuminng that it's actually native ISO 1600? (If it was, that probably makes it the fastest film out there, right?)

And just as a question, how's the exposure latitude, could I got to ISO 3200 if need be. or would it require a processing change?