Fujifilm F-64D 8522

F-64D 8522 was Fujifilm's slow daylight cinema negative in the late Super-F lineup, ISO 64 at 5500K, designed for outdoor scenes where the cinematographer wanted the cleanest possible grain and an emulsion that could hold detail in both bright sky and shaded foreground. One of the few sub-100 daylight cinema stocks ever made, and the only Fujifilm one. Production ended March 31, 2013 with the rest of the line.

The credit list is short but heavy. Anthony Dod Mantle ran 8522 alongside Eterna stocks on Slumdog Millionaire, picking it for the brightest daylight Mumbai exteriors where 500T would have been overkill. The same logic put it in Danny Cohen's bag for The King's Speech in 2010, used for window-lit interior daylight scenes through tall windows. Rob Hardy ran it on The Invisible Woman. Linus Sandgren picked it for Promised Land in 2012. Around two dozen feature credits, mostly from cinematographers who already knew the Fujifilm house style.

For still shooters, the practical recommendation is to rate it at 50, not 64. Most cold-stored stock has drifted enough that box speed is optimistic, and at 50 you get a more reliable shadow base. The look is sharp, fine-grained beyond what you would expect at this speed, with a recognizable magenta lean in the midtones that some shooters chase and others correct out. Next to Ektar 100 it is slower, slightly less saturated in the reds, softer in highlight roll-off.

The usual remjet caveat. The anti-halation backing on the base side will jam any C-41 dip-and-dunk lab. You either pre-bath at home in baking soda solution and process in a home C-41 tank, or ship it to an ECN-2 cinema lab. C-41 cross-processing lifts contrast and pushes the magenta cast harder. ECN-2 gives you the look the cinematographers above were using.

No new manufacture since 2013. What is left is freezer stock and short-ends repackaged by outfits like Reflx Lab (which sells a freshly coated F-64D-style emulsion under their own label) and FilmNeverDie, plus the eBay scatter of original Fujifilm cans.

Reciprocity exponent is 1.10. Zone Light Meter applies the correction past one second. A metered 20-second exposure becomes about 27 seconds at the negative. For long daylight exposures with ND filters, the math matters past about ten seconds, and even there it stays under a half stop.