Provia 400F discontinued

Do you know that Fuji has a new 400 ISO slide film? It is called Provia 400X (RXP). I used it in Tokyo, Japan back in January.

It has finer grain and is supposed to be an ISO400 version of Velvia.

I’ll put a link to info in English later if I find one quickly. I have seen the info in Japanese. It is not available outside of Japan yet, at least at the last time I checked.

Yes, from the film lineup at www.fujifilm.co.jp Provia 400F has disappeared.

Here is the press release on Provia 400X

The data sheet is also available, but it is in German. It was introduced in Photokina 2006.

Wow, hopefully it’s coming here to the land of Oz, too. I love that Provia 400 stuff, too, James.

Provia 400X in 35mm has been on sale in Japan for a year according to the website of Yodobashi. They are not selling 400F in 35mm any more online, but they are still in 120 online.

Back in Januaray I bought my first batch of Provia 400X in 120 at Yodobashi in Shinjuku since I was shooting with my Mamiya 6MF.

According to my record I bought only one of Provia 400F and five of 400X. I had one roll of 400X left over from my short shoot, which I brought back in my pant pocket.

400X in 120 is relatively new and has been available since last September in Japan. It is 3750 JPY for a box of 5 rolls.

B&H in the US is not selling Provia400x. They probably have a lot of Provia 400F.

By the way the new Velvia 50 will become available in Japan on April 15.

The Provia 400X is available in France if you’re interested.

Sounds interesting, yeah hope they do start selling it here in OZ too.

thanks Tomoko

You are welcome, James.

I had thought of posting about the new Provia 400X now and then since January, so your post regarding the discontinuation of the 400F put an urgency to it.

Before the 400X appears in Australia, there might be stores on the ground or online in Australia where you might be able to purchase the remaining stock of the 400F.

If that is not the case, perhaps your LS friends in Japan or Australia, for example, might be of help. At Narita, it is possible to ask for hand inspection of films and you can get one.

Tomoko

Tomoko, can you tell us what the new 400X stock is like compared to 400F? I’m always curious about film stock updates – particularly in cases like the ‘upgrade’ to Velvia 100F that most people really didn’t seem to like, as the ‘fix’ for that Velvia orange saturation took away what most people loved about the film…

Anyway, what have you noticed?

Ed,

I’m not a regular 400F shooter, so it is hard to compare the new 400X with. I have been shooting at ISO 100 with a tripod, but with this shoot on my multimedia project was different because I chose to use my Mamiya 6MF for a change rather than my OM-4T. I did not always use a tripod. In fact I had a problem of a dying battery in the middle of my shoot while the camera was on the tripod on a cold and windy beach.
When I was shopping for films at Yodobashi, I happened to have noticed 400X and asked the store clerk about the properties and decided to try them. I had no idea that the film was so new that it is not available in the US yet. Otherwise I would have bought more and brought back to the US.

I shot four rolls of Provia 400X and one roll of Provia 400F under different lighting conditions. For the rest of my shoot I used Velvia 100. My subject matter of white limestone rocks at the coast does not have a range of colors, being predominantly blue and white. My Velvia 100 results had more saturating blue colors during the daytime, but my 400X results in the early morning hours were not bad.

There have been a few reviews posted on the Internet. One person said that he would shoot at a slower speed, but I had a few frames of overexposures of white rocks on 400X during the daytime while my results with the same rocks on Velvia 100 were dead on at similar lighting although the two frames had different lenses, so the amount of blue and white are different in the two frames. I might add that I did have slight underexposures in a low-light situation, so rating the film at 320 might help in such a situation, but the speed will suffer.

I need to shoot more with this film to say more, and I just have only one roll of 120 left.

Since one poster indicates that he is in Australia, there might be some 400X available there. The other poster was in Vienna. There is a woman who shot more than anyone else and who put her review on the Internet with sample images. I don’t have an URl handy, but you can easiy find all the reviews by googling with Fuji Provia 400X because there is not much on the film yet.

I will be scanning my results soon since I need to include the results in my live multimedia show in June.

My lab just called to say that the processing and the scanning were ready for pickup, so I have to go.

Ok, thanks Tomoko. I’ll google about for some of those reviews.