Any film is hard to get these days, but the Fuji films are even harder to get than the Kodak ones here in Germay. Therefore I developed the habit of buying any type of color negative film I haven’t used before for this series – even when it means paying 20€ for just this one roll of Fuji Superia X-Tra 400.
Processing (ECN-2) and scanning was done at Silbersalz35 in Germany.
Being an ISO400 film this was a great opportunity to take some pictures at the Grand Bazaar. Even with the Leica logos covered and the tiny obscure MS-Optics 35mm 1.4 attached one of the antique shop owners approached me and offered me a generous 100€ for my camera and lens. I then offered the same amount for his Leica III f, surprisingly no one had a deal afterwards.
Also outside I was happy with the results I got with this film. If you ever happen to be in Istanbul and you are a decent person don’t fall for the “shoe-shine-boy-dropping-brush” trap, they just try to trick you into cleaning your shoes for a ridiculous price.
Out of the 4 films that I sent in for Silbersalz35’s ECN-2 processing I think this Fuji X-Tra 400 is my second favorite behind the Kodak Ektar 100. I guess I just like the contrastier films.
While I like the output from this Fuji X-Tra 400, I am not sure if it is a good thing or a bad thing considering how hard it is to get these days. There are also rumors that the Fuji X-Tra 400 is just a relabeled Kodak Ultramax 400, but I cannot tell you (yet) if those rumors are true.
Either way, in one of the next parts we will have a look at the Portra 400, at least that one is a bit easier to get my hands on.
Further Reading
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Love this series! Looking forward to the Portra 400 – I recently had a Portra 160 developed by Silbersalz and I like this a lot.
I especially like the one in the alley. The contrast between backlight and shadows is handled very well!
great film review as always.
Gotta say i dislike the reddish tone to this fuji film, especially on skintones…
I don’t mind the 81a filter red cast, quite nice. The colour nuances are much better than bog standard development, even better than the Frontier look in my opinion. Very nice work.
I can’t tell you how much better this looks than the scan/developing I get for Superia 400 in my country (where professional level film developing/scanning has vanished). Still the consumer Fuji films are not such a big loss. I really, really recommend Pro 400H and Superia 800 Premium (formerly available as Press 800) if you can them. The latter was my choice in the “old” film age and the one that shaped my taste for color up to this day. It’s not impossible or that expensive to get expired rolls, but they are sadly very expired.