There's luck, and then there's luck

My home office is something of a dumping ground. Because of its proximity to our front door it is where Amazon boxes, backpacks, and various and sundry things end up. So, I was doing a cleanup of the office and struck gold. Somehow, a roll of 35mm film had rolled off my desk and wedged itself between the desk and wall. How long the roll had been there was a mystery to me, but being that it was FujiColor 200, I had some idea. I hadn't shot Fuji since last summer and I had a feeling that this was older than that. In fact, I was almost certain that it was from around 2020.

I became giddy with anticipation. If this was, in fact, film I had purchased five years prior, then it would be Fuji's old C200 emulsion. At some point during the COVID pandemic, Fujifilm outsourced their production to Kodak in North America. It is widely known that modern C200 is repackaged Kodak Gold - not a bad thing as Gold friggin' rocks - but what I fell in love with was FujiColor 200

Close-up of large sunflower head with dark center against blue summer sky.

I took this as an opportunity to shoot an emulsion that I didn't know if I would ever get my hands on again. I wanted to make this special. So, I dusted off my Leica R4s, the camera that helped me fall in love with FujiColor in the first place, slapped my 28-70mm zoom lens on there, and took Link with me on a photo walk. But I didn't want to use this roll to get street photos. Any good color film can do that. No, I wanted to really let the colors shine. So we went out to Krome Avenue, the western most street in Miami before you hit swampland, and drove up and down the farms and fields looking for beautiful colors and compositions. This roll is, then, an ode to Fuji's colors and the natural beauty that it captures unlike any other film.

Sunflower Power

I had two cameras with me: the aforementioned R4s with C200, and my Leicaflex SL with a 35mm lens and Kodak Tri-X. Link took my Leica Q and good, old reliable Leica V-Lux 1.

The first spot Link and I visited was a sunflower field. A huge swath of the field had just been harvested, and stems littered the freshly disturbed land. We stayed among the flowers for about ten minutes, taking in the aroma of fresh cut flower stems, untilled land, and open air. Miami is so vast that it is easy to forget that we also have farmland aplenty.

I chose this first spot specifically because of how I anticipated the colors would render with the C200. FujiColor has my favorite greens, without question. The softness and slightly cool tone to greens on C200 are, in my opinion, unmatched by any other color negative emulsion.

Dirt path winding through vast sunflower field under cloudy summer sky.

When juxtaposed next to the subtle blue of the skies, the greens really sing. The rendering is totally different from the classic Kodak Gold rendering. In fact, what it has always reminded me of is Studio Ghibli's colors. The colors that Hayao Miyazaki tends to choose for fields and skies are, to my eye, very similar. Could it be that Miyazaki was influenced by the classic Fuji colors? Or maybe it is even more traditional than that and these colors are more closely associated with Japanese paintings and art? Maybe I'm overthinking it!

What I do know, is that when you add something like a pop of yellow, like the sunflowers offer, it really jumps out at you. And with the introduction of a vibrant color, like the maroon of Link's Boston College cap, the color pop is amazing. This is, of course, helped by the amazing Vario Elmar-R 28-70mm lens, a lens with quite a bit of 3D pop itself.

Person in baseball cap stands among tall sunflowers on sunny day.

When I got the scans back, I could not have been happier. I had attempted to do something artistic with these frames specifically to play into FujiColor's strengths, the way I remembered those strengths, and was ecstatic with the results! And Link got some pretty great photos of this field with the V-Lux 1 as well! It was a great first stop on this Fujifilm adventure.

Macro shot of sunflower with bees collecting pollen on dark center disc.

Lone figure walking along dirt path beside expansive sunflower field.

Fields Forever

So we drove on, forging further south, toward Homestead. We came across this field that had been harvested some time before. No crops had been planted in what seemed like a while. It was overgrown and beautiful in its abandonment. The empty box hanging there seemed to speak for the entire field. Barren and broken, it looked as though no one would ever pay attention to this chunk of land ever again. Even the tall electrical tower in the background was overgrown.

Interestingly, this is very similar to the kinds of photos I was making with FujiColor when I first got back into film in 2020. Everyone was quarantining and trying to survive lockdown. Apocalyptic? Maybe. Photographic? Certainly. And the colors, of course, are no less beautiful. C200's ability to capture the spectrum of light is beautiful.

Rows of grapevines stretch into the distance under a blue sky with white clouds in a vineyard setting.

Beyond anything else, though, Link and I had time to just be together. Almost as fortuitous as the finding of the roll of film was the timing of it. I had come back from teaching a weekend course, Steph was home working on a future event (a rare occasion as her work usually pulls her away on the weekends), and Wes was napping. That meant Link and I had quite a bit of time to just hang out.

We talked about all sorts of stuff. Transformers, school, Jurassic Park, cooking, moving up to middle school. It was a great way to spend the day. And because of the nature of what we were photographing, we were moving at whatever pace was comfortable for us. So often, I feel rushed when making street photos. But this was deliberately slow. We took our time, made photos, and had laughs.

Photographer captures vineyard rows on a sunny day with blue sky and white clouds.

A winding dirt path curves through green farmland with a young tree in the foreground.

Cornfield stretches into the distance under dramatic cloudy sky creating dark rows between tall stalks.

Connecting with Still Life

This strange thing has been happening with me lately. Back in January, I made photographs at a railroad crossing and a park. These photos were largely devoid of human subjects. I have, for so long, photographed human subjects with intent. I will often stake out a location I really enjoy and then wait for the right subject. But I was really enjoying making still life photos and was REALLY enjoying looking at them. Maybe I've just been revisiting William Egglestone's Guide a lot lately, I don't know. But it influenced this roll too.

Towards the end of this photo adventure, Link and I stumbled upon this scene. Something about it stuck with me and it really determined the direction I took for the rest of this roll. I can't explain why, but I've looked at this photo of a broken mailbox more than any other from this set. It is sad and banal. I don't understand why I am so drawn to it.

A wooden post and black mailbox sit in a grassy field on a sunny day.

I did not finish the roll on this photo walk. I was in no rush to finish it. In fact, I wanted to take my time with it and make sure I got the most out of this roll. Who knows if I'll ever get a chance to shoot this emulsion again.

Over the next few days, I carried my R4s with me and simply made still life photos whenever I spied a composition. There weren't many exposures left on this roll, but I think I made the most of it. It was a calming, cathartic experience that allowed me to slow down, focus on colors and compositions, and enjoy being in the world, observing beauty in the many simple ways that it can be found in the world.

Basketball hoop against blue sky with white fluffy clouds in natural lighting.

Final Focus

I had not included a Final Focus section in a blog in a while. And while I was bringing back an old favorite film, camera, and lens, I figured why not bring back this reflective section as well?

Shooting this roll was bitter-sweet. It was amazing to find it, know what I had found, and use it exactly as I would in retrospect. I thought it was the old Fuji C200, but didn't have confirmation until I saw the scans and negatives. But it was also sad to know that I won't be able to shoot this emulsion again in the foreseeable future.

These colors, contrast, and grain are, without exaggeration, the reasons I fell in love with film again so many years after I stopped shooting it in my youth. I wish I could still get these easily. It would make up the bulk of my film shooting these days, where Kodak Gold and UltraMax have picked up the void that this left behind.

In November I'll be visiting Japan for the first time. I'll be taking some Kodak and CineStill films with me, but I plan to stock up on true FujiColor 200 and shoot it sparingly and with purpose. Hopefully Fuji can begin shipping this to the States again, sometime in the near future. Because I've had a fix and need another.