Kodak recently replaced one of my favourite films, Ektapress PJ400, with a new film called Supra 400. I wanted to try out Supra 400 while there was still PJ400 in the stores, so that if I didn't like Supra, I could stock up on PJ400 (at sale prices, too!) before it vanished for good.
This is the result of two rolls of Supra 400, so it's hardly a conclusive test. I've tried to test Supra under a variety of conditions but I can't test everything imaginable. So be forewarned - take this test with a grain of salt. If you want to determine whether this (or any film) is right for you, the only way is for you to test it yourself, under the same sorts of conditions in which you plan to use it.
I shot a few indoor pictures, illuminated by flash, of my gray tabby cat lying on a colourful comforter on my bed. I've used this setup with several other films.
I took four pictures of the view from my home just after sunset. Three of these were a +/-1 bracketed sequence of the same shot, to see how much of an effect changes in exposure would have.
I shot the rest of the first roll at the Toronto Zoo. It was partly cloudy for the first few shots, and overcast for the rest.
The film was developed, printed, and scanned by Qualex' lab in Hamilton.
The second roll was shot at an Easter parade on a bright, sunny day. Many of the parade participants were very colourful, and there was a variety of skin tones - whites, blacks, and Asians. This roll was developed and printed by a different lab; I didn't get them to scan it.
Qualex scanned the negatives, not the prints - which is fine by me; you're better off scanning the source rather than a copy. But their scanner got every single frame quite a bit lighter than the prints. The prints look good; the scans look washed out. The scans also have even less highlight detail than the prints - although the scans do show more shadow detail than the prints. And the usual warning about scans, particularly at relatively low resolution (768x512, or roughly 540 dpi) - they don't show fine detail, particularly after the lab converts them to JPEGs. I have not done any editing on the scans - I'm sure they would look better if I were to play around with a histogram tool, but I have not done so. Also, since different people, monitors, video cards, video drivers, and browsers are configured differently, the picture on my machine may look different on your machine. I have not made thumbnails out of them; when you click on a link, you'll get the whole picture (average size approximately 100 kB - roughly 30 seconds to download at 56k).
All of these pictures are copyright © 2000 Stephen M. Dunn. You may view these pictures for your own personal enjoyment, and you may print one copy of each for your own personal enjoyment. You may not redistribute, edit, or sell these pictures, or use them in any manner other than as permitted above, without prior consent from me.
Not having used every colour negative film in its speed class, I can't evaluate this. I agree that it has fine grain. While I'll include links to scans here, the scans are nowhere near high enough resolution to show grain; any odd appearances in grain-prone areas are more likely to be scanner noise or JPEG artifacts than actual grain.
Most of the pictures on the first roll were taken in rather flat lighting conditions, which are not good for vibrant colours. The scans, being too light, also look washed out. But from some of the pictures, I'd say that the colours show promise. My cat lying on a colourful comforter shows good colours on the comforter. The evergreen leaves around this Great horned owl don't look great on the scan, but show pleasant colour on the print; enlarged on Supra III professional paper (Kodak's medium-contrast paper), the leaves are a fairly rich, realistic shade. This bird's feathers show good saturation on the print, and this bird's feathers are bright (and out of focus - I got the eye nice and sharp but didn't stop down enough).
The Easter parade demonstrates that this film is capable of vibrant colours. There were a lot of different colours, in a lot of different shades, and while I can't state whether the colours are accurate (since I don't have the parade participants handy for comparison with the prints :-), they certainly are vibrant. Bright and deep colours both show up nicely, and subtle colour changes (such as the different shades of colour on a coloured balloon) look good.
I'd agree with this. While I feel that Portra gives better skin tones, Supra 400's aren't bad. Skin tones didn't appear to be over-saturated, and it didn't make blemishes stand out. I don't feel that I need to be afraid of including people in pictures taken on Supra 400.
Qualex apparently had no difficulty scratching one frame, despite this new overcoat. The scratch is quite evident on the negative, and shows up in the print, too. It doesn't show up in the scan; I don't know if this is because the scratch came after the scan, or because it's too fine to show up in the scan.
For wildlife, it's sharp and produces attractive colours. I had the great horned owl enlarged to 16x20" and it's worthy of framing and hanging on the wall. 16x20" from a 400-speed 35mm frame is amazing! Grain is visible but not at all obtrusive, and the enlargement is pretty sharp. The colours on this bird's feathers are bright and attractive.
The Easter parade would count as news photography, and the film is well suited to that, too. Image quality is certainly good enough for newspaper use, and I think the pictures would look fine as a two-page spread in a magazine.
I can see that it would be good for fashion as well; the Easter parade costumes looked great. It would do very well for sports photography, too. I'm not entirely sure what lifestyle is; my guess is that it would require the same attributes as news. Product photography sounds to me like something you'd do under controlled conditions, so I'd pick a slower film, but if you have to use a 400-speed film and want sharp, colourful pictures of your product, Supra would work well.
I did not test this.
If you do your job correctly (use a sharp lens, eliminate camera shake, focus correctly, etc.), this film will definitely produce sharp results. You can clearly make out individual hairs on my cat in the print; the same applies to the other three pictures I took of Toby. The great horned owl shows lots of detail in the patterns on his feathers, and the feathers on this bird have clear structure - they're not just coloured areas (sorry, but I don't know the proper biological term to describe what I'm saying - if I view the print under a loupe, the feathers are made up of a single central line, with diagonal lines running out from there towards the edges of the feather).
I'm impressed. The background of this picture (which was taken with direct flash and virtually no ambient light; the background is at least 4-5 times as far from the flash as is the subject) is not only not pure black, but in fact you can see that the out-of-focus mini-blinds across the top have structure rather than just being a mass of one shade.
If you look at the hotel in the bottom center of this picture (the hotel is the wide building with two red signs on top), you can actually see that the walls are lighter than black; in the print, you can make out individual windows (black) against the wall (dark).
In this photo (which is the -1 shot in a bracketed set), there is still shadow detail despite the underexposure - about 1/4 of the way in from the left side, on top of the wide building, is a sign advertising suites for rent, and it's readable on the print (though it's murkier than it is on the 0 and +1 shots).
The dark (melanistic) jaguar in this photo does show some detail - it's not pure black; his face shows contours, and his back is visibly dark brown with black patterns.
There were a lot of shadow areas in the Easter parade pictures - such as the shadowed foyers of stores across the street, and the road beneath the vehicles in the parade. There was at least some detail in almost all of the shadowed areas - and given the very bright conditions and high contrast, holding detail in most shadows, and quite a bit of detail in some cases, is impressive.
I'm not as impressed, though I can't judge this as well. For shadow detail, the too-light scans bring out detail that doesn't really make it on the prints; for highlight detail, the scans block up, and the print blocks up a bit, too. Viewed under a loupe, some negatives show highlight detail which is not visible in either the prints or the scans.
The white fur on my cat's nose is essentially featureless white. The feathers on the head of the bald eagle don't show a great deal of detail (though, to be fair, this was at the long end of a consumer telephoto zoom, so the lens isn't exceptionally sharp, either). There's very little detail in the white feathers just below the head of the great horned owl.
I also noticed a lack of highlight detail in both white and brightly-coloured areas of the Easter parade prints - but again, when I check the negatives under a loupe, there is detail there which is simply not visible in the prints.
I took a picture of downtown Toronto, from my balcony, three times, bracketed at one-stop intervals. Note that these are relative to the camera's selected exposure in center-weighted average mode, which may or may not be truly the correct exposure.
Normal exposure: There is good shadow detail; the scene doesn't present much in the way of detailed highlight areas. The "RENTING" sign near the bottom left is clearly readable, though not tack-sharp. Grain in the sky is visible but quite small.
One stop under: Shadows are less black and much murkier, with more visible grain. The "RENTING" sign is still readable but much less clear. The sky is somewhat grainier, and the photo overall is less sharp. The sky colours are less vibrant.
One stop over: Blacks are slightly deeper black, and non-black shadowed areas show less murky colours. The "RENTING" sign is noticeably sharper. Grain in the sky is present and only slightly smaller than in the normal exposure.
I think the shadow detail is very good. Highlight detail is also present, but either it's not as good or the printing machines routinely sacrifice it. Supra 400 handles high-contrast scenes well, without making lower-contrast scenes look dull. Colours are beautiful; this film can portray bright colours, deep rich colours, and subtle graduations of colours in the same scene. Skin tones are acceptable; if I knew I would be taking pictures that would feature people, I'd use a film that is optimized for skin tones (Portra), but Supra 400 seems to do a reasonable job with skin. For a 400-speed film, grain and sharpness are excellent.
I don't have a real apples-to-apples comparison of Supra 400 vs. PJ400 so I can't really say which one is better (overall or in certain areas).
Bottom line: I have a few rolls of PJ400 left in the freezer and I'm going to have to force myself to use them up rather than leaving them there and buying more Supra :-)
In addition to my earlier comments about scratching the negative and the dull-looking scans, I would also like to note that Qualex included plenty of dust on the negatives. It's not there in the scans, but it is there in the prints. Perhaps this is their way of adding something extra for their customers.