Fujifilm Reala 100

Reala 100 was unusual in ways that took a moment to explain to photographers who had not looked at the datasheet. Most color negative films use three dye layers, one each for cyan, magenta, and yellow. Reala added a fourth layer tuned to cyan sensitivity, positioned between the green and red layers, which it used to correct for metamerism: the tendency of different light sources to shift apparent colors in ways that three-layer films cannot fully compensate for. Under fluorescent light in particular, three-layer films often rendered greens and cyans inaccurately. Reala's fourth layer corrected for this.

In practice, the effect was a color accuracy that photographers noticed most in difficult light. Skin tones under mixed or fluorescent sources came out cleaner. Blues and cyans held their hue. The film became a reference material for photographers who needed accurate color reproduction and could not control the lighting. Lab technicians who printed color negative regularly developed opinions about which film came in easiest to correct; Reala was consistently among them.

Fujifilm positioned it initially as a consumer film, which put it in a strange market category: technically sophisticated, arguably more capable than competing consumer stocks, but sold alongside budget options at the same retail level. Japanese household photographers used it for years without necessarily knowing what made it different from Fujicolor 100 or Kodak Gold.

The 135 format was discontinued in 2012 and the 120 format followed in 2013, as consumer film sales dropped across all manufacturers. No direct replacement for the fourth-layer technology followed it out of production. Photographers who had used it for accurate color rendering moved to Portra 160 or Ektar 100, accepting the color-science difference.

Reciprocity exponent is 1.20, slightly steeper than average for a consumer color negative. Zone Light Meter applies the correction past one second: a four-second reading corrects to roughly 4.7 seconds, a ten-second reading climbs to about twelve.