And at HKD$165 a roll, it better be. My favourite film shop in Hong Kong had some stock of Fuji Provia 400X, so I went ahead and bought about 20 x 5 packs. I’ve got about 5 packs remaining and they’re waiting anxiously in the freezer only to be pulled out on special occasions.
I love shooting film, black and white 35mm film is my wife, colour negative film is my mistress, but slide film is my secret lover. I have no idea what that analogy means but suffice to say, I love slide film the most. Perhaps I may have got them mixed up! I bought a Leica Pradovit P600 slide projector, thousands of slide mounts, even hundreds of used Kodak and Fuji slide boxes, and instead of knocking one out in the afternoon, I nowadays much prefer the pleasure of cutting up the negatives and putting them in the slide mounts, followed by a slide show. How sad life has become!
Anyway, my some films, I struggle to tell the difference sometimes. Black and white is easier, Tri-X is almost unmistakable, but some of the colour films are hard to tell. Not Fuji Provia 400X though. Whether it’s in a print, in a scan, I reckon I can tell if it’s shot with Fuji Provia 400X 9 times out of 10. Of course, if you asked me to do it, I’d probably crack under the pressure and get 0/10. Regardless, this produces some really pleasing colours, is great for portraits, landscapes, you name it. It’s got what I call a modern old school film look, which doesn’t really make sense. What I mean by this is you can tell it’s film, but it’s not all washed out, has very little grain and is sharp.
Here’s what Fujifilm has to say about it:
Professional, high-image quality, daylight-type color reversal film with world-class levels of fine granularity (RMS 11) and sharpness.
Highly versatile film, perfect for landscape, nature, snapshot and portrait photography.
Delivers the same vivid color reproduction and regulated gray balance as ISO 100 film. Excellent results in push-/pull processing for a wide range of exposures, from -1/2 (E.I.280) to +2 (E.I.1600) stops, and even up to +3 depending on the scene.
And here’s the datasheet for Fuji Provia 400X, in case you too fall in love and feel like knocking one out. And below some samples.
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