This is Fuji Eterna Vivid 160T. Introduced in 2007,^[1]You can read the press release announcing Eterna Vivid 160T here. this film was part of the Fuji motion picture line of films until Fuji ceased all motion picture manufacturing on March 31, 2013.^[2]Fuji’s discontinuation announcement can be viewed here.

Boasting intense color, high contrast, and exceptional image sharpness, Eterna Vivid 160T was the product of new technologies that Fuji developed at the time, including the ability to control the structure of silver-halide crystals to the nanoscale resulting in extremely fine grain that limits light scatter and boosts sharpness, as well as improvements in color and definition to create crisp clear images. Eterna Vivid 160T also features enhanced telecine characteristics that improves scanning by minimizing noise.^[3]For more details, Fuji’s brochure describes the technologies that enabled Eterna Vivid 160T’s development.

Movies that were at least partly shot on Fuji Eterna Vivid 160T include Slumdog Millionaire,^[4]See Slumdog Millionaire (2008) Technical Specifications » ShotOnWhat? J. Edgar,^[5]See J. Edgar (2011) Technical Specifications » ShotOnWhat? and The King’s Speech.^[6]See The King’s Speech (2010) Technical Specifications » ShotOnWhat?

Eterna Vivid 160T was designed for studio work and therefore is color balanced for tungsten lighting, but it is easily adapted to daylight shooting with an 85B filter at ISO 100. I gave this film an extra 2/3 of a stop given its age and was duly rewarded. These photos were taken on Canada Day 2023 and after seeing the results, I wish I had more rolls to shoot. I love the saturated colors and fine grain of this film. It was easy to scan and required no post-processing other than dust removal.

This film was hand-rolled by the now-defunct QWD (Quiet We’re Dreaming) using one of the newer reloadable “snap-tite” cassettes that many film companies are using.^[7]Lomography, Orwo and Flic Film are a few that use these cassettes (pictured here). I’ve given them the name “snap-tite” to tell them apart from the normal metal film cassettes. I find these new cassettes problematic when used in my cameras with motor-driven winding and have stopped using them with my Canon Rebel 2000.^[8]They work just fine in my cameras with manual film advance and winding. I suspect the issue is one of tightness: either the cassette’s opening is too tight or the film inside doesn’t have enough room to spin smoothly when winding. As a result, my Rebel 2000 choked and failed numerous times when trying to advance the film at the end of the roll,^[9]When film is first loaded, the Canon Rebel 2000 unspools the entire roll and then winds each photo taken back into the cassette, thereby protecting those photos from light leak in case the back is accidentally opened. My Rebel 2000 struggled to spool the film back into the cassette with each successive shot. before flashing an error message and turning off.^[10]LomoChrome Metropolis and Orwo Wolfen NC500 have also caused similar winding problems on my Canon Rebel 2000 and my Canon EOS 3. When I developed my roll of Eterna Vivid 160T, I found that there was excessive spacing between frames as a result of my many attempts to get the Rebel 2000 to wind this roll between shots. I figure there must have been about 5 frames worth of wasted film.

This was my first time developing film in ECN-2 chemistry. I used Flic Film’s ECN-2 8 Roll Kit and I believe the result speaks for itself. I was thrilled with how all my cinema film turned out, both my rolls of Fuji motion picture stock and my rolls of Kodak Vision3 films. I highly recommend the ECN-2 kit, but be forewarned that it is time consuming to heat and mix all 6 chemical baths as many are mixed and used at different temperatures.