Hypered Fuji Super HQ100 or Hypered Kodak PJ400, You decide!
    Being intrigued by reports that Fuji Super HQ 100 when hypered for only one hour offered excellent performance for serious deep sky astrophotography, I decided to compare it to the current favorite, hypered Kodak PJ400 (or now apparently sold as Kodak LE400).

  The first big problem (other than obtaining the exposures) was the fact that my scanner, a HP Photosmart Model S20 came with proprietary scanning software that offers no real way of standardizing the scan settings between the two films.  Settings for one film seem mutually exclusive of settings for the other.  (I'd rather not learn Vue Scan software either!)
  Given this limitation, I came up with alternate methods which I believe will provide a pretty fair comparison between the two films.  No processing was done (except where noted) other than within the prescan software.
  Thus they are not strictly direct, but are approximate comparisons!  Hence, this entire little excercise cannot be said to be scientifically accurate!
    In this first set, are exposures of one hour each (obtained on two different nights) at a focal ratio of effectively f/11.2  The star images are poor because a 200mm Soligor lens was coupled with a 2x teleconverter (lenses with teleconverters are inferior generally to fixed lenses of the same length).  The scan settings are the default ones provided by the Photosmart software.  I assume it incorporates some sort of logical algorithm to select settings, as the same default settings are arrived at each time the respective negatives are inserted.  They look pretty close.  You decide! 
Hypered Fuji Super HQ 100
Hypered Kodak PJ400
    In the next set (same exposures) the criteria was to try to extract the best that I could form each photo within the prescan settings without truncating the pixil data contained within the software's histogram
function.  These represent the best I could get from each under these criterea.  Again you decide!  (Humm....)
Hypered Fuji Super HQ 100
Hypered Kodak PJ400
   Now on to different exposures!  The subject is M27 - The Dumbell Nebula.  Here is were it gets interesting,
though likely not to those who have worked with this film before or studied its spectral sensitivity plots. 
    These were both taken with a 10" SCT  at f/10 (100 inches focal length) on different nights.  Each is a 40 minute exposure (admittedly short ones).  From this point on the criteria was simply to get the best look I could out of each photo.  The Fuji Super HQ100 simply died here by appearing to portray a lack of sensitivity to yellow green-ish light, not to mention the red-ish orange.  Note: the PJ400 photo is a keeper so it had received grain reduction processing, the Super HQ100 simply didn't appear to deserve the extra effort, though it doesn't really need grain reduction processing too much. 
    Addendum:  It has been brought to my attention the Fuji Super HQ 100 may actually be recording closer "true color" for this object's actual wavelengths of light emission.  This being the case, you may need to decide again!
(Set One)
(Set Three)
(Set Two)
Hypered Fuji Super HQ100
Hypered Kodak PJ400
(Set Four)
    This is a set of 12 minute exposures (airplanes and all) taken with a normal Pentax SMC 50mm f/1.7 lens at F/2.8  Both of these were obtained the same night.  The criteria was to simply try to get the most nebulosity and pleasing color out of each (I know subjectivity - again).  This is probably the best set that the Super HQ 100 did.  The PJ400 recorded a lot more (note the red nebulosity).  You decide!
Hypered Fuji Super HQ 100
Hypered Kodak PJ400
    Conclusions:  Given the PJ400 recorded more, and clearly won in sets 2, 3(?), and 4, and the fact that I planned a comparison of 2 hour exposures of NGC253, but the first 3 attempts with Fuji Super HQ100 appeared to come out relatively poor anyway, I'd have to call PJ400 the winner!
    Long live the King, whatever they decide to call it!  (PJ400 or LE400!) 
    Do note the hypered Fuji Super HQ100 is not too bad of a film though, and may well warrant further investigation, you'll need to decide!
    But I can tell you I don't think I'll ever do this little film comparison web page excercise again!!!

                                                                                          All the Best,
                                                                                                       Jim Vineyard

This page was last updated on: November 20, 2002

Geeze, nothing the pro's didn't know all along too!