Tim Parkin - Landscape Photographer

Fuji have a christmas surprise for large format photographers everywhere with the declaration that they are to discontinue production of QuickLoad film from April 2010.

The British Journal of Photography website says:

BJP has learnt that Fujifilm plans to discontinue its Quickload film products next year.

The 4×5 film holders, beloved of large format landscape photographers, will cease manufacture in April 2010, though stocks are expected to last until the end of the year in the UK.

Designed for use ‘where carrying many double-dark slides could be either inconvenient or impossible’, they hold the 4×5 film in light-tight envelopes that can be loaded into a special holder in daylight, and which are less bulky than a dark-slide loaded with film.

BJP understands that its Acros Quickload products were discontinued earlier this year, and that its Velvia 50 versions have been in very short supply.

Fujifilm UK will continue to sell Quickload versions of Pro 160S, Provia 100F, Velvia 100 and Velvia 50 while stocks are in supply.

A spokeman for the firm in the UK described it as ‘an end of an era’.

Hopefully this has no implications for the production of 4×5 film itself (although all bets are off I imagine).

My worry over the sheet film is based on the fact that Fuji say QL discontinuation is based on lack of sales and my observation that nearly everyone I know who shoots colour films uses quickload. This must mean that colour film sales are low also?

For those interested in the weight implications, a set of three double dark slides is approx 500g wheras a quickload holder is 350g and six sheets of QL film is 150g.. So if you are carrying six sheets of film only, there is no difference in weight.

If you carry twelve sheets of film, the weight for DDS is now 1kg whereas it is 650g for quickloads. Not too much of a difference really.

However if you want to get out and about with 18 sheets of film, your DDS package would weight 1.5Kg whereas your quickload equivalent would be 800g.

I don’t know many walks where I’ve taken more than 10 sheets (and most of the times I have done so are when I’ve taken multiple exposures). Even if you do want to take 18 sheets of film, the extra 700g is hardly onerous.

My recommendation would be – stop taking B sheets and get it right first time 😉 (ok, glib comment, sorry)