If I had a rooster, I'd kick him in the butt now and wake him up... Warren Sunkel wrote:
>I just received five rolls of Astia from Calumet in Chicago...$9.05 per >roll plus s/h. The catalog price for Provia is $8.89, and the catalog >is more than a year old. Either you're getting a really good deal on >your Provia, or someone is ripping you off for your Astia. Calumet is the highest price mail order source for film. No kidding. Look through Shutterbug, then look back through the current Calumet Essentials catalog. Big difference. I buy my film from B&H in New York. Their per roll price on 35mm 36 exposure Fuji slide film is: Velvia $5.39 Provia $5.39 Astia $7.49 Sensia $3.29 They have always been like this and the film is always fresh. What is the advantage of buying film from Calumet? >>Especially after looking at all of my RD Sensia from >>Wyoming and not being able to tell the difference from Provia. >I'm sure that in bright sunlight most similar films will look alike. Sensia and Provia look alike because they are exactly the same film, not just similar. The Fujifilm Data Guide describes them identically also. Provia was refridgerated at the time that the batch test indicated optimum color balance. Fuji's batch consistency in general is good. There is more variation in processing I have found, than between their consumer and pro films made from the same base and emulsions. We have to compare apples with apples here though, for example, the new Sensia 2 is a different emulsion than Sensia RD, so it won't look like Provia unless by coincidence. >I wonder how they perform in high contrast situations. (Provia and Sensia) Just like two different batches of the same film would. Even if we could see a slight difference, I doubt we could tell which one was which if the slides weren't labeled. If quality control is good, there should be no difference between a consumer and a pro version of the same film providing that the film base is exactly the same which is the case with Sensia (RD) and Provia (RDP II). With Kodak Kodachrome, many times the pro film looks better because the consumer film is so bad. Starts off too green and ends up too magenta. If Fuji's consumer film was so varied and inconsistent like Kodak's, then Fuji's pro films would obviously look better than their consumer films. It's disgusting that the Japanese are putting out a higher quality product in the US market as far as consistency that Eastman Kodak seems capable of, but it's true. I see this every time I use another roll or sheet of Fuji film and every time that I try to go back and give Kodak a fair shake again. It's disapointing, but no longer surprising to me. Since I've never had a bad batch of any type of Fuji film yet (I started shooting Velvia in 1990, but hung onto Kodak in some form for another six years), I'll stick with the green boxes at this point. I wish I could say that I've never had a bad roll of Kodak film... that's actually a pretty comical thought now, isn't it? I can't wait to go digital. See you tonight at the slide show, Warren. :) Dave Cohen Photographer [EMAIL PROTECTED] --> SPORRS: Serious Photographers of Railroad Related Subjects X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 2545
