DuPont Superior 3

DuPont Superior 3 was the fast end of the Superior trio, a black and white 35mm motion picture negative rated at ASA 125 in daylight and 100 under incandescent. Catalog designation was Type 927B. It sat above Superior 1 at ASA 23 and Superior 2 at ASA 80, three speeds in one product family covering the lighting range a Hollywood production might encounter.

The Superior line came out of DuPont's Parlin, New Jersey plant. DuPont entered the 35mm market in 1926 and competed with Eastman Kodak for studio work through the 1940s and 1950s. Superior 3 would have been the choice for available-light interiors and night exteriors where Plus-X at ASA 80 ran short. By the late 1950s Kodak Tri-X at ASA 200 was taking that role, and DuPont never kept pace with the Eastman speed curve.

The 1956 American Cinematographer Manual is the standard surviving reference. Beyond that, hands-on accounts in modern literature are thin. Flickr hosts a few albums of old Superior 3 nitrate negatives from the 1940s with visible grain and decent midtone separation, though the examples have aged through seventy years of basement storage.

Modern comparison points are inexact. The closest living approximation is probably Foma 200 or Ilford FP4 Plus pulled to the lower end of its latitude, both with a mid-century gradation feel. Tri-X would be the obvious heir on the cinema side, but the technology is different enough that the look does not match.

Format was 35mm motion picture, 100ft and 400ft cans. There was never a still-photography retail version. Any surfacing roll is several decades expired, and pre-1951 stock is likely on nitrate base, which carries the usual fire and legal handling concerns.

The reciprocity exponent is 1.31, the silver-grain baseline. Zone Light Meter applies the correction past one second. A 30-second meter reading works out to about 90 seconds on the negative. With expired stock and decades of base fog, the math matters less than the unpredictable emulsion response. Test before you commit a scene.