With a very late autumn in full swing, I decided to throw a roll of old ‘consumer‘ FujiColor C200 into my trusty Nikon N80 and go for a forest ramble … the dev & scan photos that came back from my good friends at http://www.printpoint.ie had me almost fall off my chair, wow ! 😮🤩
20+ years ago I regularly used FujiColor C200 and Fuji Superia 400 when I had my old Canon EOS 3000, in fact I remember clearly how easy it was to pick up a 3-pack of Superia in the local shops & grocery stores … yikes 😇 However, with my rediscovery of analogue photography, I did some deeper research into this consumer film, and ended up buying 15 rolls of C200 a year ago (a few still remaining in my fridge).
So for the last 1-2 years, I’ve been using C200 as my ‘walk-about’ film, with Kodak Portra 160 / 400 being my ‘serious’ film. However, as I’ve become more familiar with the various film types, FujiColor C200 takes images of a quality & standard that are often stunning 😲🤩
About FujiColor C200
A little history about this unassuming 35mm colour film:
- Fuji Photo Film Co Ltd. was established in 1934, with the company being a significant rival to Kodak Eastman, enjoying almost a monopoly of film sales in Asia, particularly Japan
- Fujicolor negative colour film comes in a number of different flavours: FujiColour Pro (160S, 160C, 400H and 800Z), Reala, Superia, and Press.
- FujiColor C200 has been around since the 1990’s with it being updated in 2017 to avail of Fuji’s “super fine-grain technology”
Specs:
- ISO : as per it’s title, it’s ISO 200 sensitivity
- Colour: it’s daylight balanced (if used indoors under tungsten light, you’ll need a 80A filter)
- Grain: it’s fine grained and sharp
- Reciprocity failure: C200 is pretty good in that it’s perfectly fine up to 4 seconds of exposure, with 16 seconds only requiring an extra 2/3 of a stop, and 1 minute an extra 1 stop
What’s it like to use ?
As I say, I found C200 to be quite an extraordinary film to use – it’s a ‘consumer’ grade film, that packs a punch: it’s very sharp, great colour reproduction, and captures a shocking amount of detail.
Let’s take a closer look at some of the details, from this 3000px wide scan. What you’ll quickly appreciate is that this film captures waaaaaaay more detail than you’d expect from a ‘consumer’ grade film, it’s quite phenomenal really 🤩:
Meanwhile, let’s have a closer look at the grain … the sky is always the best place to see how film grain truly behaves, and to be fair to this film, the “super fine grain technology” shines through:
Verdict
It’s very clear that FujiColor C200 is a film that punches well above it’s weight ! If you require accurate, detailed and realistic photos, without paying over-the-top prices that you’d expect from Kodak Portra or rare FujiFilm 400H, then C200 is the film for you.
The only issue I would raise is the difficulty of getting your hands on it 😉
Until my next post (which with a bit of luck with be a review of Lomography 800), keep shooting film !
Paul
Irish Analog Adventures 