Fujifilm Press 800

Press 800 was Superia 800 with a paperwork upgrade. Same emulsion, same fourth cyan-sensitive layer that defined the Pro and Superia lines after Reala introduced the architecture in 1989, same Super Fine Sigma grain Fuji used across its faster color stocks. The Press version went into refrigerated pro packs at the factory and stayed cold through distribution, which mattered for an ISO 800 emulsion that fogs faster when warm. Press photographers paid for the cold chain. The keeping showed up in cleaner blacks.

The intended use was the work that filled daily newspapers before digital sensors caught up. Indoor sports, evening politics, low-light press conferences, court rooms with bad fluorescent fixtures. ISO 800 let you shoot at 1/250 inside an arena without a strobe, and the fourth color layer kept the mixed-light disasters from going green. Compared with Kodak Portra 800, the Fuji ran cooler and slightly grainier. Compared with the contemporary Pro 800Z that Fuji marketed to wedding shooters, Press 800 was less optimized for skin and more tolerant of the casts a newsroom actually meets.

Grain at ISO 800 is more visible than at 400 but tighter than Superia 1600. Latitude is in the same plus-three minus-one neighborhood as the rest of the Fuji color negative family from that era. Push to ISO 1600 in lab and the shadows go thin but the grain stays reasonable. Most press photographers did not bother and let the speed do its job at box.

Fuji discontinued Press 800 in 2008 alongside Press 400 and Press 1600 as wire services finished going digital. The film was 35mm only; no 120 was ever produced under the Press label. What surfaces on auction sites now is at least fifteen years past date.

The reciprocity exponent is 1.20. Zone Light Meter applies the correction past one second. A 30-second metered exposure becomes about 60 seconds at the negative. For most press work at ISO 800 the threshold rarely came up, but for tripod-mounted night scenes the math kept the highlights from going thin.