Today’s Post by Joe Farace
Fujifilm’s Fujicolor NPH 400 Professional was a C-41 based color negative film that had a ISO sensitivity of 400. Launched in 2002, the film was aimed at professional shooters, including portrait and wedding photographers. At the time it was advertised as being optimized for skin tones, good exposure latitude and having the fine grain of an ISO 100 film. NPH 400 film was available for 35mm and in medium format cameras in 120 and 220 formats.
Fujicolor NPH 400 is not available today. In 2005 the film was renamed as Fujifilm PRO 400H. And on January 14, 2021, Fuji announced “the production and sale of PRO 400H 135 will cease immediately…this announced discontinuation applies only to PRO 400H color film. Fujifilm will continue to produce and sell its consumer color negative, color reversal and black-and-white film stocks to photographers.” You can take that last statement with a grain of salt because on Oct 16, 2021 Fujifilm announced it was discontinuing Fujicolor 160NS Professional 120 film and Velvia 50 in 4×5 and 8×10 sheet sizes. On September 5, 2021 Environmental Protection Agency rules would not allow Fuji to continue selling Velvia 100 slide film. If Fujifilm‘s newly-released Fujicolor 200 film seems different from the previous version it’s because it appears to be a rebrand of Kodak Gold 200. Makes you wonder if the company is rethinking the whole “film” part of their name.
I expected the results from shooting Fujicolor NPH 400 to look a lot like Fuji’s version of Kodak’s expensive Portra 400 that all the cool kids on the Internet like to shoot. It didn’t. My general impression of the processed film was that it was contrasty, somewhat grainy and intense in rendering reds, something I had not expected from a Fuji color negative film.
Although long expired, the film is just as expensive as Portra. The Amazon film zombies, for example, sell a 35mm roll of Portra 400 for $31. B&H might, maybe, possibly sell you a five-pack of Portra 400 for $64.67 as I write this but suggest (with a button) that you “request assistance” because “we are no longer accepting online orders for this item.” Which may be why people on eBay are selling expired rolls of NPH 400, like mine, for $35.98 a roll plus $5.40 shipping, I guess, because that film box is so heavy.
The roll of NPH 400 I shot at July’s Espresso & Exhaust event—and I have several more rolls—has an expiration date of July 2004 and was given to me back in the day when Fuji still liked me and it was still “in date.” I shot the film in a Contax 167MT that automatically set the ISO to 400 via the cassette’s DX coding but because the 167MT has an Exposure Compensation dial, I added plus one-stop exposure based on my previous experience shooting expired color negative film. It turned out to not be enough.
In my post The Mystique of Shooting Expired Film I mentioned that one rule of film, was to add one stop of overexposure per decade since the film expired. I added that “But that is not a universal opinion,” Yet that proved to be exactly true with my roll of Fujicolor NPH 400. When viewed with a Schneider loupe on a light box, the processed negatives varied from one-half to one full stop underexposed when shot at ISO 200. I should have tried two stops of Exposure Compensation.
Mikes Camera processed and scanned the film at 2000×3000. Mikes says these scans produce a “2-4MB file that good enough for prints up to 11×14.” They also told me it would take three-four days to process the film, scan the images and make a CD but it took eight days. Since I paid extra ($7) for the high-res scans, how did they look? They’re just OK; you’re looking at some of the images here. But truth be told if they were better exposed I think the scans would look better too—garbage in, garbage out. Maybe next time…
PS: Just a reminder: My video Why Film, Why Now is live now on my YouTube channel, Joe Farace’s Videos, featuring a look at a my reasons and philosophy about why I’m currently a (somewhat frustrated) film photographer. Also Podcast #5 is now available as well.
If you would like to send me some 35mm film to review or any other film photography gear that could be used for these posts and in my YouTube videos you can mail it to: Joe Farace, PO BOX 2081, PARKER, CO 80134