No more Fuji 160 ns in 4x5?

Bob Carnie · Feb 10, 2014

Hi Ron

I had a very disturbing discussion today with an informed person re C41 and maybe Ron you could put in your 2cents.

I was told that the C41 process is not possible to reproduce by scratch by home workers or small potatoes like me, due to proprietary patents on the complex C41 developer. The Bleach and fix were not as complicated and could possibly be made but not the C41 Developer, and I assume the RA4 Developer.

So if the two Major Manufacturers ** Kodak and Fuji** stopped producing the chemical, which my sources did indicate was very possible in 5 years, we would be screwed since 1. the chemicals only have a limited shelf life so stocking would be useless. and 2. There would not be anyone other than the two big boys able to make the Dev.

Please Ohh masterful Guru say its not so.

regards

Bob

Photo Engineer said:
Just a thought on C41 production by Fuji.

Just as with Kodak, the C41 production at Fuji is a "byproduct" of their motion picture film production in terms of volume. With Fuji exiting the MP market, it seems to me to be inevitable that they exit the C41 market as the production of chemicals and market declines. They did have the lions share of E6, but Kodak dominated the MP and negative market.

So, expect product losses in Fuji's C41 lines.

Just my opinion and some thoughts.

PE

StoneNYC · Feb 10, 2014

Poisson Du Jour said:
I cannot stand print film. Sorry, I just cannot. Occasional B&W is fine, but colour print is a resounding NO.

E6 is not that easy to scan, definitely not. It requires care and an awareness of ensuring the scanner does not cook already well-enunciated primaries, which some machines are prone to do. One of the most difficult E6 emulsions to scan was the hideously ugly Velvia 100F with its sinister mustard overtures interfering with yellow and green. I was never happy with any scans from this and ditched it a long time ago.

E-6 is only difficult to scan if you've exposed improperly.

Poisson Du Jour · Feb 10, 2014

I wasn't talking about exposure.

Photo Engineer · Feb 10, 2014

Bob, you can scratch mix the C41 and RA4 developers yourself. The problem is having the "right" formula! This goes for RA4 as well. In addition, RA4 uses some rather unusual Lithium salts not used in ordinary photo chemistry.

Also, if the developing agent part of a developer kit goes bad, you cannot reproduce it easily as it is a mix of CD4 in Sulfur Dioxide gas. Same thing for RA4.

But, the only reason to stop making C41 is if the films are defunct, and I don't see that as long as there is ECN.

PE

RattyMouse · Feb 12, 2014

Bob Carnie said:
I do not believe this film has been discontinued... could someone show an official notice of this from Fuji.

Where is the redesigned box? Where is the stock of film? I was all over Tokyo stopping in stores looking for this film and found none.

If you cant find the film, doesnt that tell you that it is no longer made?

Richard Man · Feb 12, 2014

The "color channel noise" or whatever it is, is the reason I gave up on C41 and just staying with E-6. On the smaller format like 135 or 120, it does not matter too much, but I just couldn't get the same quality from scanning 4x5 color neg than scanning 4x5 Provia. May be it's the scanner (on smaller format, I use the LS-9000, on 4x5/617, I use the V700), but I am glad other people have similar experience and it's not just me.

However, I just bought 3 rolls of Cinestill T800 and I pushed the first roll to 3200, so now I need to develop...

Photo Engineer · Feb 12, 2014

Up until recently, Kodak 4x5 and other LF films were made with a matte material on the base side to facilitate retouching. When retouching via PhotoShop and equivalents became overwhelmingly popular, Kodak removed the matting and so recent negative films no longer have any impediment to scanning, if this was a problem for you.

I never had any problems with my LF C41 or C22 products.

PE

Bob Carnie · Feb 12, 2014

Maybe you are looking in all the wrong places?
I found the film in Jan 2014 .

RattyMouse said:
Where is the redesigned box? Where is the stock of film? I was all over Tokyo stopping in stores looking for this film and found none.

If you cant find the film, doesnt that tell you that it is no longer made?

Bob Carnie · Feb 12, 2014

What is ECN?

Photo Engineer said:
Bob, you can scratch mix the C41 and RA4 developers yourself. The problem is having the "right" formula! This goes for RA4 as well. In addition, RA4 uses some rather unusual Lithium salts not used in ordinary photo chemistry.

Also, if the developing agent part of a developer kit goes bad, you cannot reproduce it easily as it is a mix of CD4 in Sulfur Dioxide gas. Same thing for RA4.

But, the only reason to stop making C41 is if the films are defunct, and I don't see that as long as there is ECN.

PE

wildbill · Feb 12, 2014

EASTMAN COLOR NEGATIVE. ecn-2 is motion picture processing. Movie film, baby!

Roger Cole · Feb 12, 2014

PKM-25 said:
I think you should stick with it as long as possible, I do know what you mean, it's like some color channels are more noisy than others, so it takes a bit of dialing in to arrive at a pre-set you can deploy without too much experimentation. E6 does scan incredibly easy, very smooth and natural.

I feel for color film shooters these days, a lot of adaptation going on and it is not over yet....

Not to mention that projected color negatives don't look very nice.

I'm still shooting slide film for projection. My annual "year in review slide shows" have become an attraction for our winter party among a certain group of friends. I've laid in enough Portra 400X for the coming year, may pick up another 5-10 rolls though the price is going up as supplies dry up further. After that...I'll either have to push 100 film two stops or get some of that German 200 film and push one to get 400. I've also got a fair amount of frozen E100G. After that it's Portra 100 which is a nice film but I prefer the softer contrast of E100G (and Portra 400X for that matter.)

Roger Cole · Feb 12, 2014

Bob Carnie said:
Maybe you are looking in all the wrong places?
I found the film in Jan 2014 .

Where?

I haven't seen Fuji LF C41 for sale in the US in a long time, at least a year IIRC.

StoneNYC · Feb 12, 2014

Photo Engineer said:
Up until recently, Kodak 4x5 and other LF films were made with a matte material on the base side to facilitate retouching. When retouching via PhotoShop and equivalents became overwhelmingly popular, Kodak removed the matting and so recent negative films no longer have any impediment to scanning, if this was a problem for you.

I never had any problems with my LF C41 or C22 products.

PE

I don't think the matte finish is the issue, the box that I used was brand-new from BNH photo, and had an expiration of 2015, and I got the same signal-to-noise spots on mind when scanning, it's just something that always shows up on C-41 negative, that is not an issue I've ever had on E-6 films.

I can't explain it other than that, it looks like a long exposure image that is shot on a digital camera where do you get a lot of these weird pixels that are of not the same color as the rest of the surrounding area.

It's most likely some kind of effect from scanning versus printing and I'm sure that if you printed with RA4 paper that you probably wouldn't have this issue, however that's not my workflow, and I'm not sure that I'll ever be printing color images the old-fashioned way, I think black and white would be wonderful, but I think color just isn't something I will be doing for a very very long time, and even then who knows I may end up owning my own light-jet and processing that way, since I mostly shoot E-6 and have to scan unless someone comes out with a new-better-cheaper cibichrome (about as likely as Kodachrome coming back).

But anyway yeah, there's just this weird noise signal effect and it's very unpleasant.

PKM-25 · Feb 12, 2014

StoneNYC said:
But anyway yeah, there's just this weird noise signal effect and it's very unpleasant.

What has helped me is to back off on everything in order to really flatten the image out, provide as much non-manipulated info as possible before taking it into post. There are a host of things to do afterward in order to arrive at a good final image but that is not to be discussed here...I respect and applaud that too.

The thing I have found to really help it is to filter the shot on camera to get it closer to where I want the final image to be. For example, Ektar really likes to build up unnatural blues in outdoor shots, so a slight warming filter on *every* kind of shot really helps to transfer how the grain affects it's neighboring grain. Ektar really does behave more like a transparency film in how you need to get it right where as the Portras have more color correction latitude and smoother transfer of tones in-between grains.

There are some pretty spectacular images from C41 and 4x5 on flickr if you take the time to look, it ain't the car folks, it's the driver...

StoneNYC · Feb 12, 2014

PKM-25 said:
What has helped me is to back off on everything in order to really flatten the image out, provide as much non-manipulated info as possible before taking it into post. There are a host of things to do afterward in order to arrive at a good final image but that is not to be discussed here...I respect and applaud that too.

The thing I have found to really help it is to filter the shot on camera to get it closer to where I want the final image to be. For example, Ektar really likes to build up unnatural blues in outdoor shots, so a slight warming filter on *every* kind of shot really helps to transfer how the grain affects it's neighboring grain. Ektar really does behave more like a transparency film in how you need to get it right where as the Portras have more color correction latitude and smoother transfer of tones in-between grains.

There are some pretty spectacular images from C41 and 4x5 on flickr if you take the time to look, it ain't the car folks, it's the driver...

It's wasn't my exposure, it is always C-41 all of them, every one, my slide film is often perfectly exposed, so with C-41's range, even if it was a bit off on SOME, it shouldn't appear on all.

But I know you have a non-scan system.

Photo Engineer · Feb 12, 2014

I have many many scanned color negatives from C22 to C41 and from 35mm to 4x5 and have had absolutely no problems. Many software developers do not understand color theory much less color masking or color neg > pos translation.

PE

RattyMouse · Feb 13, 2014

Bob Carnie said:
Maybe you are looking in all the wrong places?
I found the film in Jan 2014 .

Well done. You found some old stock. This film is gone as many vendors have told me. I was in Tokyo's largest film store and if they can't get any. Again, 160NS has NOT had the new packaging design. That's clear as day that the film is gone.

There was no 160NS in this store.

Nuff · Feb 13, 2014

RattyMouse said:
Well done. You found some old stock. This film is gone as many vendors have told me. I was in Tokyo's largest film store and if they can't get any. Again, 160NS has NOT had the new packaging design. That's clear as day that the film is gone.

There was no 160NS in this store.

I was there 3 days ago and they still had some in 220 I think. And if Yodobashi Shinjuku can't get it, no one in Japan can get it.
They also didn't have Portra 400 in 120 while I was there for 3 weeks. I think Kodak has really bad supply of film to Japan at the moment.

Also some film boxes have white sticker with red writing on them, they are discontinuation notices. as far as I can tell. Buy now or never again.

Bob Carnie · Feb 13, 2014

Well done, you found a camera store in Tokyo.

I buy my film from the Fuji warehouse in Mississauga, I have an account with them , I will take up the issue you present that I am buying old stock.

RattyMouse said:
Well done. You found some old stock. This film is gone as many vendors have told me. I was in Tokyo's largest film store and if they can't get any. Again, 160NS has NOT had the new packaging design. That's clear as day that the film is gone.

There was no 160NS in this store.

Nuff · Feb 13, 2014

Bob Carnie said:
Well done, you found a camera store in Tokyo.

I buy my film from the Fuji warehouse in Mississauga, I have an account with them , I will take up the issue you present that I am buying old stock.

Not sure if you are sarcastic, but can you buy Velvia 10x8 in Miss....? Since that store in Tokyo has a stack of it as seen in the photo.

160ns was discontinued in all formats.

Bob Carnie · Feb 13, 2014

I am pointing out that I have been buying 4x5 160ns from the Fuji Factory in Mississauga Ontario as of Jan 2014.
I have never seen any notices from them that the product I continually order is discontinued.
It is possible that this product is discontinued , but my purchases are odd since Fuji would would tell me if the product was old stock. Or at least I would think so.
I would like to see somewhere the official press release notice from Fuji regarding the cancellation of this product.

Photo stores that buy product are all over the place in what they have on stock. People at the front counter may not know the AR/AP policy's of their company
and just assume a product is not available. This happens all the time where a store is late in paying their bill and the manufacturer or Distributer of products put them on hold for a period of time. This causes all kinds of wrong signals being sent out to the retail client.

I have asked the Marketing Manager of Fuji to fill me in on this film, when I first posted as its discontinuation would be unfortunate for me as I have been using it for over 2 years now and still need more to continue on my photo project.

I never buy Velvia so not sure about that product line, I could ask. I am ordering film later this month, Fuji 160ns 4x5 I will see what happens on both issues.

Nuff said:
Not sure if you are sarcastic, but can you buy Velvia 10x8 in Miss....? Since that store in Tokyo has a stack of it as seen in the photo.

160ns was discontinued in all formats.

StoneNYC · Feb 13, 2014

RattyMouse said:
Well done. You found some old stock. This film is gone as many vendors have told me. I was in Tokyo's largest film store and if they can't get any. Again, 160NS has NOT had the new packaging design. That's clear as day that the film is gone.

There was no 160NS in this store.

They aren't storing their FP100C properly... Hah

StoneNYC · Feb 13, 2014

Bob Carnie said:
I am pointing out that I have been buying 4x5 160ns from the Fuji Factory in Mississauga Ontario as of Jan 2014.
I have never seen any notices from them that the product I continually order is discontinued.
It is possible that this product is discontinued , but my purchases are odd since Fuji would would tell me if the product was old stock. Or at least I would think so.
I would like to see somewhere the official press release notice from Fuji regarding the cancellation of this product.

Photo stores that buy product are all over the place in what they have on stock. People at the front counter may not know the AR/AP policy's of their company
and just assume a product is not available. This happens all the time where a store is late in paying their bill and the manufacturer or Distributer of products put them on hold for a period of time. This causes all kinds of wrong signals being sent out to the retail client.

I have asked the Marketing Manager of Fuji to fill me in on this film, when I first posted as its discontinuation would be unfortunate for me as I have been using it for over 2 years now and still need more to continue on my photo project.

I never buy Velvia so not sure about that product line, I could ask. I am ordering film later this month, Fuji 160ns 4x5 I will see what happens on both issues.

Does this mean you could theoretically buy Velvia50 from them directly and then I could drive up to you to visit and pick it up? Or will they only send you Velvia100?? (Both are still being produced but only V100 is being imported to the US market, but if you have a special account and are in canada I figured it was possible you could make it happen).

Had to ask.

Xmas · Feb 13, 2014

StoneNYC said:
They aren't storing their FP100C properly... Hah

But it looks like a 'supermarket' fridge to me, they pull down a roller blind overnight?

Bob Carnie · Feb 13, 2014

Sorry we do not let US citizens into our shop, I would have to find business in Niagara Falls work with you.
QUOTE=StoneNYC;1609846]Does this mean you could theoretically buy Velvia50 from them directly and then I could drive up to you to visit and pick it up? Or will they only send you Velvia100?? (Both are still being produced but only V100 is being imported to the US market, but if you have a special account and are in canada I figured it was possible you could make it happen).

Had to ask.[/QUOTE]

No more Fuji 160 ns in 4x5?

Privacy & Transparency

Privacy & Transparency