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Film for surf photography?


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As a student I'm using FP4+ which I can get for free, which is great as it

offers a lot of exposure latitude. I set the lens to the widest it can go, but

at sunrise the shutter speed fluctuates wildly.

I would be interested using some colour print film, and I've head good things

about Fuji Superia 200. But after reading basically every single thing I could

find on this site, people say that Superia 400 is just as good if not better

than the 200, and there are much better general-purpose films than Superia

anyway. As a student I can't afford the expensive stuff, so I was looking for a

few suggestions. I'm not into the high-saturation look, and accurate rendition

of colours isn't really that important. I know Superia is a consumer film, but

if it works, hey, it works.

 

But I've really got no idea when it comes to film. Kodak seems to get mentioned

a fair bit here, mainly the UC 400. What about Porta?

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Slide film is out of the question. With the lens wide open, my shutter speed varies between 125 and 750 in the morning. My technique is to spot-meter off the face of the wave ahead of the surfer, and compensate the exposure by 1/3 stop to account for the foam/reflections that are bound to be lurking around. But even then there are to many variables, and so I have to rely on the films exposure latitude, unless I have a pretty good idea what I should be shooting at.

And I didn't know Reala came in anything other than 100. Isn't it just a refrigerated version of Superia?

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A full extra stop is a helluva lot. Plus I can't play with shutter speeds too much. At least 500 is recommended, and here's me bumming around at 125. If I have to overexpose to get good results then perhaps Superia isn't for me. I'll experiment a bit when I get some, see what I can get away with.
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"...<I>at sunrise the shutter speed fluctuates wildly.</I>"<P>

 

Are you using camera auto exposure? Don't. The meter will be constantly "fooled" by scenes that have white water and scenes that don't and scenes that have bright sky. Use an incident light meter, not a reflective meter, or take a gray card reading or take a spot meter reading off your hand and open up one stop. Manually set your exposure to that. <P>

 

Go ahead and try the Superia 400. It will give you almost two stops more than the 125, allowing faster shutter speeds.<P>

 

On another note, be carful where you have the film processsed. I once shot some surfers with Fuji Pro 400H. I used an incident light meter to set the exposures. All the negative frames were of the same density as they should have been. But, in shots where there was a lot of white water, the prints were dark. The processor analyzer saw all that white and automatically "corrected" the prints by darkening them down.

James G. Dainis
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I use superia 400 as my general purpose film and I have excellent results. If you don't mind slower speed try reala if you can find short dated film, though it sounds like you might in this situation, call around some photo stores and see if they have any short dated film. I managed to get 20 rolls of reala from Ritz about 6 months back for .99 cents a roll. I was just sad I didn't get more. I went back 2 days later to buy a few more rolls and they sold the rest of it (it was about 50 rolls total). So right now I have 19 rolls sitting in my freezer.

 

The only times I have problems with superia 400 is if I underexpose it by quite a bit. If the exposure is proper or even slightly under (a half stop or maybe up to a stop) the print will turn out fine, its just when it is more then that that the machine overcompensates and the print looks terrible (such as when I am intentionally going for a dark scene).

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So underexposing with Superia is a no-no. Just poking around, I found that while it can only handle -1 stop, it can work with up to +5. Pretty impressive, and very good for surf photography, considering the reflections and whitewash.

But I'm confused. What is Fuji Superia X-tra 400? Is that just the exact same as Fuji Superia 400? I wouldn't think so, as the packaging is different.

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Let ne reiterate. The light falling from the sky is what determines the correct exposure. The correct exposure setting would be the same whether there was whitewash or reflections in the scene or not. If the incident light reading shows f/8 @ 1/500, that would be the setting to use whether there is a dark blue wave or total white water in the scene. The camera meter would indicate otherwise, as would the spot meter, but they would be wrong.

 

The camera meter does not give the correct exposure setting; that is why it bounces all over the place depending on what is in the scene.

James G. Dainis
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I know what the difference between a reflective and an incident light meter is. It's just that using an incident meter is a bit of a task where I shoot. I'm thinking it would just be easier to use a grey card and stick my 50mm on when I want to take a reading.

Also, I'm already a member of that forum, Darryn. But thanks!

So, what's the difference between Superia 400 and Superia X-tra 400?

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"So, what's the difference between Superia 400 and Superia X-tra 400? ..."

 

None. Just a different box I think.

 

I used to shoot Superia 400 quite a bit in my old meter-less Olympus rangefinder. 1/250sec at f8 (or equivalent EV) worked everytime, from direct sun to open shade. I still have a few cartridges left in the freezer in fact. It's a fine film and certainly much better than its Kodak consumer counterpart.

 

I don't know anything about surf photography, so please bear with me. Why not a DSLR?

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"... I don't have the $$$. "

 

There is that...

 

In my opinion, Superia 400 is the best value in 400ISO, 135 format color negative film. Things may have changed the past couple of years, but Kodak MAX was truly awful, and a bit more expensive to boot.

 

Superia is high contrast when used at its indicated 400ISO. Give it up to another two stops of more light when you want to compress the scene brightness range, or just the shadows to fill in. The scanner (use the school's Nikon, or better) will have no issue with the increased overall density.

 

The cheapest place to get Superia is probably through B&H or Adorama. Look for the gray market import. Costco can be even less expensive, though availability was always hit or miss.

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