New ISO 400 "Fugufilm" slide film

cmacd123 · Mar 25, 2022

the colours on the JCH website don't look like the brightness that I would expect. I am always interested in the availability of an actual 400 or faster slide film. One of the resons I have been pulling fro film ferania is that they probably have the plans for the fastest E6 slide films that were on the market. (3M) {and no, I don't think Anscochrome 500 will ever come back}

not enough information here to even guess at the source of the coating. Only known Film coating lines in the EU are in Germany and Czech republic, and the Czech folks have not made colour stock in decades. I would be disappointed if this turns out to gave the accuracy and consistency that the Lomography folks are known for.

flavio81 · Mar 25, 2022

Nodda Duma said:
Likely factory is Orwo.
They said they need to balance the colors, but announced they are working on it now due to timing related to the other two big new releases recently. .

Hmm this is interesting... Orwo isn't part of the same company which is partner with Adox?

Paul Howell · Mar 25, 2022

, I don't think Anscochrome 500 will ever come back

I shot it as GAF, all of the slide which were processed by GAF are all fading, not to mention the grain.

cmacd123 · Mar 25, 2022

flavio81 said:
Orwo isn't part of the same company which is partner with Adox?

No and also no.

Filmotech ORWO has used other firms to coat their stock, the coating machines at Wolfen were destroyed when the factory closed. It is generally assumed that they are only finishing film coated elsewhere.

They are in with a venture capital firm who also controls inversicoat (or however you spell it) which is generaly assumed to be the folks who make the off colour Lomography film.

adox has their own two locations to coat film. a small plant in germany, and a former research coating line in switzerland.

Alex Benjamin · Mar 26, 2022

cmacd123 said:
although they had a lot of encouragement

And exceptional musical background.

AgX · Mar 26, 2022

cmacd123 said:
Only known Film coating lines in the EU are in Germany and Czech republic,...

And in Belgium.

Arcadia4 · Mar 26, 2022

There are only 3 firms with current ability to coat colour film; kodak, fujifilm and inoviscoat/orwo. The latter coat the lomo non standard colour film (metropolis, purple etc) and seem to be the source of the adox film. It seems they've been quite busy. Orwo are due to also release an ecn2 process colour film shortly. It seems colour films are a bit like the saying about buses (theres none and then 3 come at once)

Paul Howell · Mar 26, 2022

What about Polaroid, don't they coat their own film?

OrientPoint · Mar 26, 2022

Paul Howell said:
What about Polaroid, don't they coat their own film?

Polaroid materials are coated by Innoviscoat.

Lachlan Young · Mar 26, 2022

If a company is working on ECN-2 materials, no reason it can't make E-6 materials. It's pretty obvious who the making/ coating partner is likely to be - and there are some real hints that it'll probably be limited by how well Agfa-derived E-6 knowledge works at ISO 400. Does anyone know why Agfa didn't offer a professional transparency material above 200 in the later generation(s?) of their RSX films?

AgX · Mar 26, 2022

As far as I know Agfa never said. But before they, and Ferrania, by far were leading with even an ISO 1000 film.

Concerning Inoviscoat, I did not say that film cannot have been sourced from them. But in their current situation they need immediate cash return with own products or with prepaid tollproduction. R&D for a film to come would hardly be granted.

Alan Edward Klein · Mar 26, 2022

Why do they show the film with weird colors? They should wait until they get the bugs out of it before showing it off. Who's in charge of marketing there?

grat · Mar 26, 2022

Alan Edward Klein said:
Why do they show the film with weird colors? They should wait until they get the bugs out of it before showing it off. Who's in charge of marketing there?

Actual film enthusiasts. I'd rather deal with them then people trained in orwellian levels of doublemarketgoodpseak.

cmacd123 · Mar 26, 2022

AgX said:
And in Belgium.

although that one has said in the past that they were only interested in producing "industrial" or similar products. and only on a polyester base. (but yes, they may have broadened their horizons)

cmacd123 · Mar 26, 2022

Eugen Mezei said:
Compare this with a dozen of ex Ferrania employees. (And remember that even when it was a factory, Ferrania never was a first tier producer. Their market was supplying drugstores with cheap color film based on 3 generation older recipies, mostly from (already second tier) Agfa.) No wonder I can't stop laughing from the day I read their bragging.

while many of the older colour films were based on the older AGFA formulas, Ferrania, aiming at the private label market, were producing film compatible with the Kodak processes. In fact that is why they (3m) built that lab that the film ferania folks were planing to turn into a mini-factory. I believe that the Italian factory also made things like Microfilm, and graphic arts products for 3M, as well as recording tape for European markets. (I did not mention that as a "Known" source of colour film, simpley becase we have no idea of the status of that endeavor. I keep hoping to be pleasantly surprised form that source, but am no longer holding my Breath.

cmacd123 · Mar 27, 2022

Eugen Mezei said:
In the era they adopted C41, they were already behind Kodak and Fuji, maybe even Konica in terms of research and top products.

I remember buying relabeled Ferrania 800 ASA film from the drugstore. Way worse than Fuji, but at third of the price.

Although, I would have been surprised if AGFA would have been interested in sharing any technology with their Italian Competitor. (unless paid well) 3M would have likely followed their normal Philosophy of spending fairly good coin in R and D to keep the 3M Italy products up to date, at least until they spun off the 3M media business as IMATION. After that, I suspect that little R&D would have occurred.

AgX · Mar 27, 2022

cmacd123 said:
Although, I would have been surprised if AGFA would have been interested in sharing any technology with their Italian Competito.

Do not overlook that Agfa were the last in the West to step over to C-41. Unless they had C-type shadow films along all time in R&D, it were them who would have to get along with the new challenge.

faberryman · Mar 27, 2022

ricardo12458 said:
pretty excited about this, in spite of the current teething problems with getting colour/white balance right (from the samples posted in same)

I don't think we have any idea what the colors of the new film are. Bellamy said the photos had been "heavily edited by Horatio", which indicates to me that they could not even be fixed in PS. That being said, a lot of film enthusiasts like films that have offbeat color renderings, so maybe it doesn't matter. It is not like JCH is a go to place for high quality film anyway. Ektachome is currently $20/roll, and I don't think that includes the Kodak price increases that were supposed to go into effect earlier this month. I wonder how they are going to price Fugufilm.

mohmad khatab · Mar 28, 2022

Now everyone is daring about the issue of color film production, after it was almost forbidden to talk about it from the ground up. Yesterday (ADOX), today (ORWO) and (FUGU) are talking, but we did not see any realistic practical results for their announcements.
In general, the old Arabic saying says.
((If someone comes and claims that a camel can climb over the palm tree, it is prudent not to reject his words, but let him: This is the camel and this is the palm, show us how the camel will climb over the palm.?))

- Let's wait and see,,

film_man · Mar 28, 2022

Eugen Mezei said:
It is the same story again back when Cinestill came out. People bought a roll of that "experimental" stuff intead of buying for the same price 3 rolls of Fuji. Then they complained that Fuji stopped Superia 1600 and 800.
Sure, buying proven quality had the danger of exposing the photographer as being the weak link. So it totally was worth the 3x price for producing crappy images on crappy film. I still don't understand why the same people regretted Superia after instead of shutting up and enjoy the "qualities" of their Cinestill?

How is Cinestill 3x the price of Fuji stuff? Right now Cinestill is the same price as Superia (and yes ok I remember it being £10 when it came out vs £8 for Kodak/Fuji). And How does a few people buying a 800 film had an impact on Fuji stopping their stuff? Fuji just doesn't want to do film, they keep putting prices up till people stop buying their stuff then say demand has dropped. Also, consider than when you buy cinestill you are effectively buying a Kodak product so there, everyone "wins". Is Cinestill crappy film? I don't know. Is the Lomo stuff crappy? Adox? All the other non-mainstream stuff? At the end of the day nobody is going to make a Portra lookalike for less than what Kodak makes it so why compete there? Ferrania said they would and look where they are now (they still have my $70...).

pbromaghin · Mar 28, 2022

There's another possible source - Ferrania. They found the recipe for P30 in an old notebook. How many other fully researched old formulations (that never quite made it to market) might they have that could be considered "new" once enough JCH money is spent to adjust for the outlawed ingredients? The first few tries would suck like what has been shown, and they would have plenty of reasons to not take credit for it. Could JCH be the secret backer that kept them from folding completely?

Huss · Mar 28, 2022

AgX said:
So "Horatio Tan at Street Silhouttes and Bellamy at Japan Camera Hunter" together on there own in three years work manufactured a completely new, ISO 400 reversal film.

When Tan expertly reviewed the Nikon ES-2 film copier, he wrote this:

Nikon ES-2

Natively, the Nikon D850 has a film digitizing mode on Live View. However, it can only capture the frame as a JPG. For the sake of optimization, I stopped down and shot at ISO 64.
Also worth noting, I opted to shoot in DX mode, since the negative is only marginally bigger than the DX crop size. In doing so, I don't have to waste disk space in saving the digitized white space around the negative.

I guess he didn't notice the one big screw on the front of it that allows you to adjust the distance of the film holder from the camera, that enables 1:1 magnification in FX/full frame mode. On the entire unit it is the only thing that allows adjustment.
Point being? Trust level is low.

Alex Benjamin · Mar 28, 2022

Alan Edward Klein said:
Why do they show the film with weird colors? They should wait until they get the bugs out of it before showing it off. Who's in charge of marketing there?

This thread provides the answer: to have people talk about it. Ensures that you'll have a critical mass of people buying it out of curiosity when (or whenever) it comes out, because you created a buzz, while pretending you're actually prototyping.

It's actually pretty good marketing, judging from all the speculation going around. It's directed primarily to those for whom "weird" or "crappy" becomes "experimental," so doesn't really matter if the colors are lousy, the highlights blown and the shadows blocked (the dynamic range on that thing looks to be like 2 stops). And even if you fail, people will go "Hey, at least you tried something new and different."

I'm with mohmad:

mohmad khatab said:
Let's wait and see

Donald Qualls · Mar 28, 2022

Paul Howell said:
How about Polaroid, could they coat 35mm?

I doubt the current Polaroid could. AFAIK, they're pretty much limited to making components for their integral films.

flavio81 · Mar 28, 2022

Eugen Mezei said:
Their statement was, that they will come up with a slide film better than what Fuji produced. Remember, back then Fuji was at it's peak, way before Kodak (comparing RMS). They employed thousands of chemists and engineers, invested decades into research, had gigantic research and production facilities. Compare this with a dozen of ex Ferrania employees. (And remember that even when it was a factory, Ferrania never was a first tier producer. Their market was supplying drugstores with cheap color film based on 3 generation older recipies, mostly from (already second tier) Agfa.) No wonder I can't stop laughing from the day I read their bragging.

Sorry, but I have followed very closely the Ferrania story as it unfolded. They never said they would make a product that was better than Fuji.

And their "recipes" (if we can call a complicated product such as color film in that way) have little direct relationship with Agfa. This was Ferrania's own technology, at least since 1964 when 3M bought Ferrania and invested lots of money on R&D. '80s groundbraking products like ScotchChrome 640T and 1000 have nothing to do with Agfa, as well as the Imation Chrome of the 2000s or the Ferrania 'solaris' films.

I agree they were behind Fuji, Kodak and Agfa, technologically. That we can agree.

New ISO 400 "Fugufilm" slide film

Privacy & Transparency

Privacy & Transparency