Richard Haw's Classic Nikon Repair and Review

Hello, everybody! This is a follow-up post of my Fujifilm Natura 1600 review from a few weeks back. I believe that I have generated some interest in this film just by looking at my blog’s stats so I decide to write this.

The previous part showed how this film looks like in a crowded Tokyo alley lined with all the vivid colours and shades that you will find in a techno-punk scene and in this article I will show you more low-light scenarios where this film will be handy.

Before anything else, I would like you to know that I process my film after I digitize them and part of the process is to colour-correct my pictures. I do not add any contrast to it but the colours aren’t as faithful as the original. Other than that, everything is pretty straight. I do not even add or remove sharpness or meddle with the noise reduction for all of my digitized film. Having mentioned that, please enjoy some more pictures from Fujifilm’s Natura 1600 shot my me here in Tokyo!

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The samples above were shot in the shade in midday and during the late afternoon when the sun is almost gone. While Natura 1600 is a great performing film in many conditions, it is not ideal to shoot it in these scenarios as there are better film for this as you can see in the shadow areas where it can look muddy. The portrait of a female busker looks great but this is more of an exception because we do not have anything directly in the shadows in that picture. It was shot with the Nikkor 85mm f/2 Ai-S, an exquisite lens for portraits.

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The pictures above were shot at night and this is what Natura 1600 is made for. Do note that I colour-correct my shots in post (I am not a purist) but Natura 1600’s white balance was formulated to look natural in this scenario where the scene is flooded with artificial lighting like neon and mercury lights. As mentioned in part 1, Natura 1600 loves is a film that loves to be overexposed in scenes like this! The pictures were mostly over-exposed by a stop or more except for the picture of the famous Shinjuku Tiger Mask, who is kind of a local celebrity here. Notice how the picture looks a bit muddy. I sometimes wished I had overexposed it more since I was shooting with my Nikkor 35mm f/1.4 Ai-S lens.

I mentioned how Natura 1600 doesn’t make white folks and Asians like me look off. Skin looks like skin instead of boiled seafood or bread. I intentionally shot this person just so I can show you show Natura 1600 handles people with darker skin. See how natural it is? I am aware that I wasted a frame for this but never mind that. Dude sure looks happy!

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Here are scenes shot with high luminance contrast. OK, I just made up that term but all I want to say is that the scene has both dark and really bright elements. Natura 1600 looks great in this and it can handle it really well where some daylight films will look muddy. I highly suggest that you click on the mannequin photo and see how gorgeous Natura 1600 handled the scene. The picture of the pineapple vendor looks nice,too.

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Food photography has become really popular lately and Natura 1600 is also great for that application! Imagine shooting with it in a dark bar or restaurant! I love the picture of the skewered seafood and how natural the shellfish’s skin look. Even gastropods look pretty with Natura 1600! I also love the Nikkor 35mm f/1.4 Ai-S’s rendering of the scene,too.

Conclusion:

OK, I wasn’t expecting such a positive feedback of my first film review so I made a follow up article with more sample pictures. I have shot with Natura 1600 continuously and I’ve shot 3 rolls in total. This is a film that I occasionally shoot before but I have grown to love this film lately despite it’s quirks. My goal here is to show you that an amazing ISO 1600 film exists and we should buy it more before Fujifilm goes crazy again and kill another one of it’s amazing film stock! Do you like what you see? I hope you did!

I hope that you liked this article and I hope that the pictures that I shot under different low-light scenarios will give you some insights about how this film looks. Thank you for your continuous support of my blog and see you guys again soon. Love, Ric.

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Maintaining this blog requires money to operate. If you think that this site has helped you or you want to show your support by helping with the upkeep of this site, you can simple make a small donation to my paypal.com account (richardHaw888@gmail.com). Money is not my prime motivation for this blog and I believe that I have enough to run this but you can help me make this site (and the companion facebook page) grow.

Helping support this site will ensure that this will be kept going as long as I have the time and energy for this. I would appreciate it if you just leave out your name or details like your country and other information so that the donations will totally be anonymous it is at all possible. This is a labor of love and I intend to keep it that way for as long as I can. Ric.