The Czech Republic and Czech Colour Film Processing

I was looking at the AA guide to the Prague which was reprinted in 2005, so the up to date edition, and the section on photography caught my eye. It says "Avoid Czech colour film as you may not be able to get it processed outside the country"

I can only assume that there is something different about Czech colour film that prevents non Czech based processors from being prepared to process it.

I always thought that all colour film was processed in the same chemicals and whether it was Czech, German, U.S. Japanese or any other countries' film made no difference.

Would anyone care to advance any reasons they can think of why this statement in the guidebook is made?

If there is no substance to this statement then it is damaging Czech tourist revenue when otherwise such tourists might buy Czech film when there.

Thanks

Pentaxuser









Thanks

Pentaxuser

Ewwww, the information should be outdated in this book - did the guys have in their mind Fomachrome and Fomacolor films, processed by older AGFA process? I don't think they're still made anymore, the last ones I've seen were available here in early 90s - as well as the chemistry kits for them. The films were quite good - as well as ORWO chromes and color negatives from the same era

Zhenya

Only czech color film I'm aware of is Equicolor made by Foma and that should be standard C41 film.

I'd have to say the Sov Color I saw from that era was very disappointing. The paper the pictures I've seen were printed on, in combination with the film it was shot with, did not seem to have good blues at all. Also, I've heard from ex. Soviet press photogs that they were given special access to Eastman Kodak film and chemistry since the corresponding Soviet products were so poor.

Regards.

Karl Borowski

Current Foma color film is repackaged Fuji Superia C41 stock, put in neat green boxes and labeled "Supria".

Roman

Thanks all for replies so far, especially the post directly from the subscriber from Prague. The guidebook to which I refer was originally printed in 1998 which was well after the soviet era but my version was a 2005 re-print. The section on photography should have been up-dated but maybe wasn't. Possibly in 1998 soviet colour film was still the kind a tourist would be sold and what the guidebook should have said is that the quality was so poor that western processors were refusing to process it because they were liable to be blamed for the results.

Sounds as if Czech film is fine especially the one which is re-packaged Fuji Superia

Pentaxuser

Yes, the Soviet color materials were AWFUL - really, even not simply bad. But their Czech, Hungarian and East German counterparts were quite good. Again, they used the older AGFA process, not E6 or C41, because they were intended to development by user, and the chemistry kits were sold for this film. That's why they were not recommended to Westerners - it should have been a pain in back to find this chemistry and someone willing to hand-process this film in USA, say. Soviet photogs were given Kodak for their color work (each sheet and frame was counted, no right to error!) - and there was only one machine in Moscow able to process Western films.

Cheers from Moscow, Zhenya