Kodak Gold 200 in 120 format...what do you feel about this film since its launch in March 2022?

[macfred]

I bought 5 rolls last summer for about 35 Euros. Like it a lot!

FUJI GW670III - EBC Fujinon 90mm f/3.5 - Kodak Gold 200

 

[Lachlan Young]

Portra 800 or Gold 200

Gold 200 isn't like Portra, but has about the same granularity level as Portra 800.

Portra 800 seems to have had a complex evolutionary path, but that's irrelevant here.

 

[BrianShaw]

If you're ok with it having about the granularity of Portra 800, then it's good stuff, if you are able to scan/ darkroom print it competently.

It really ain't Portra on the colour rendering front, just so you're aware. It's pretty warm overall, and the proclamations about mud are largely from people trying to force the curve behaviour off in directions it isn't meant to go. It's useful precisely because isn't Portra, not a cheaper substitute.

Gold 200 isn't like Portra, but has about the same granularity level as Portra 800.

Portra 800 seems to have had a complex evolutionary path, but that's irrelevant here.

Sure; there's no question about that. I can only assume that the "it" you used in prior post was refering to Gold 200. That's all I was trying to clarify. Thanks.

 

[Prest_400]

I wrote a reference to a thread in the other discussion, this is it:

Kodak Gold in 120, WOW

Let me tell you a little story. Back when the Dinosaurs still walk the earth, I was shooting Kodachrome like it was going out of style, and it was costing me a mint. Then I picked up a Pentax point and shoot with a fixed 35mm lens, and I decided to find a cheaper film to shoot in it. So I went...

www.photrio.com

Recently ordered 10 rolls for 40€ a propack. More recently due to the price increases and more choices, am starting to use two tiers of film (in BW Kentmere + Ilford HP/Delta) where the cheaper film takes more casual uses and just makes sense when Portra is about 2x the price of Gold.

Gold 200 isn't like Portra, but has about the same granularity level as Portra 800.

Portra 800 seems to have had a complex evolutionary path, but that's irrelevant here.

But picks attention and recently found a mystery regarding this (P800) evolutionary path. As per the (35mm) rebates, Gold is GB-7 which points to that number of generations. I am surprised at how Kodak went plain with 120 and just rebates it "200". I haven't actually shot P800 but seemingly there is 800-2 and 800-3 out there; and in the "pop" circles Portra 800 hasn't been marketed as incorporating Vision 3 improvements.
Saw in reddit a question which was made here and went unanswered:

Kodak Portra 800 (800-3)

I know Portra 800 was given an update sometime in 2006 or 2007, but the edge code didn't seem to change to 800-3 like I expected it to. I just got a roll of 35mm 800 back from the lab (purchased sometime in the last year). It has an edge code of 800-3 now. The 120 roll I bought a couple...

www.photrio.com

 

[BAC1967]

These were developed and scanned by The Darkroom in San Clemente, CA. I like it.

1947 Ford 1-Ton Panel Truck by Bryan Chernick, on Flickr

Emma by Bryan Chernick, on Flickr

 

[braxus]

Last month I bought 20 rolls of 120 for my up and coming trips this week and later on. At $31 a box of 5, it really is a good deal for color film. You can't even get 1 roll of 35mm for that in some cases. I used up one box so far on my trips I went this week. I have 3 boxes left, of which a second box will go this coming Saturday. When boxes of 5 go for $60 or more bucks, Im happy just paying half that for Gold 200. Its not a perfect film, but I can work around the colors a bit, since I scan myself. I actually prefer the colors off Gold 100, as 200 just doesnt quite seem the same there. When film is so expensive these days, Im glad for a cheap 120 option. If I want accurate colors on my pics, I also bring my digital camera (which gives better results in my opinion).

 

[Romanko]

Like it a lot!

I love these images! The contrast is much lower than I would expect from Gold 200. Have you reduced it in post-processing? Did you shoot it at the box speed or overexposed to reduce contrast and saturation?

 

[koraks]

The contrast is much lower

They're scans. Contrast is a function of how it's scanned with color negative. You can scan a high-contrast film like Ektar and scan it totally flat, or take a slightly flatter film like Portra 400 and give it lots of punch. That's one of the many nice things of a hybrid workflow - you're in control, which releases you from the inherent properties of the film to a large extent.
Color balance is a matter of taste; I guess these particular scans show the "warm/yellow rendition of Gold", which really is a subjective and aesthetic choice in how the scans are balanced, not a given. Both scans show a bias/color cast that's likely caused by subject matter (i.e. dominant colors in the frame). But the scans do look pretty nice as they are!

I'd personally do some minor adjustments to both, color-wise:

Left = more blue, more green. Right = original.
There's a distinct yellow cast to the original frame, but as said this is likely due to how the color correction algorithm responded to the subject matter. Filtering this out IMO brings back the life into the cooler shadow areas especially on the fur and the reflections on the wet tarmac. A true-to-life rendition would of course be even more blue given the nature of the light this was shot in.

Here, the dominant cast in the original image is cyan (original = right), as evidenced in the sky, the green tinge to the white-washed building and especially the green tarmac. Restoring the red channel and also adding a bit of blue (which was digitally suppressed due to the presence of a large patch of blue sky) again in my view brings back the life in some of the hues, particularly on the car.

For some these adjustments may seem insignificant, but I find that if you work with color a lot, it becomes difficult to "un-see" this sort of thing.
I hope this small demonstration also works as an illustration that color balance for the most part is an aesthetic choice you decide during printing or digital post-processing. It's not as "baked in" into the film as many people believe. This is because there's no such thing as a "straight scan" when it comes to color negative - it's always interpreted.

Much of this interpretation is generally left to the scanning software if we let it handle the inversion, and this invariably involves color casts based on subject matter. That's OK - if we filter manually and entirely by eye, we also tend to introduce casts based on our preferences, memory of how something looked etc. This becomes especially apparent if you scan an entire roll of film exposed under different lighting conditions in one go as positive and then invert and balance all frames manually with the same curve adjustment. Some frames will come out looking fine, and some look totally wrong. It's not the film that's at fault - it's the fact that reality is just very variable, but our brains have an extremely effective auto-white balance functionality that makes everything look natural, always!

Btw, both are very pleasing images to my eye and this Gold 200 is evidently a very capable, high-quality film as evidenced by these very nice examples shared by @BAC1967 - thanks for posting them! If you prefer not to have the color-balancing exercise done on your images above, please don't hesitate to mention it and I'll happily remove them.

 

[sperera]

thanks for the discussions and posts and images!!!.....the film looks like a good performer to my eyes, I particularly like the shot of the blue car as that revealed quite a lot about the film in my eyes....I am going to buy at least a roll and try it out......waiting for BHPhoto to restock on Portra 160 and then I will get Gold 200 as well.....

 

[sperera]

Great post @koraks ....you have summed it all up better than I have. All professional work is scanned for marketing purposes. Unless of course you want to sell handmade prints. In my case I scan....so I can override a films tendency to everything colour related. What you look for in choosing a film is grain 'type', how it resolves fine detail, performance in shadows and performance in Highlights. For example, look at the attached.....the subject is quite far away so I need a film that will not 'mush up' the details of his face and be lost inside the grain if you know what I mean....and my Portra 160NC from 2012 did rather well!!

 

[macfred]

I love these images! The contrast is much lower than I would expect from Gold 200. Have you reduced it in post-processing? Did you shoot it at the box speed or overexposed to reduce contrast and saturation?

Thank you - these were captured @Iso 100 - processed normaly in C41

 

[BAC1967]

They're scans. Contrast is a function of how it's scanned with color negative. You can scan a high-contrast film like Ektar and scan it totally flat, or take a slightly flatter film like Portra 400 and give it lots of punch. That's one of the many nice things of a hybrid workflow - you're in control, which releases you from the inherent properties of the film to a large extent.
Color balance is a matter of taste; I guess these particular scans show the "warm/yellow rendition of Gold", which really is a subjective and aesthetic choice in how the scans are balanced, not a given. Both scans show a bias/color cast that's likely caused by subject matter (i.e. dominant colors in the frame). But the scans do look pretty nice as they are!

I'd personally do some minor adjustments to both, color-wise:
View attachment 374273 View attachment 374270
Left = more blue, more green. Right = original.
There's a distinct yellow cast to the original frame, but as said this is likely due to how the color correction algorithm responded to the subject matter. Filtering this out IMO brings back the life into the cooler shadow areas especially on the fur and the reflections on the wet tarmac. A true-to-life rendition would of course be even more blue given the nature of the light this was shot in.

View attachment 374266 View attachment 374267
Here, the dominant cast in the original image is cyan (original = right), as evidenced in the sky, the green tinge to the white-washed building and especially the green tarmac. Restoring the red channel and also adding a bit of blue (which was digitally suppressed due to the presence of a large patch of blue sky) again in my view brings back the life in some of the hues, particularly on the car.

For some these adjustments may seem insignificant, but I find that if you work with color a lot, it becomes difficult to "un-see" this sort of thing.
I hope this small demonstration also works as an illustration that color balance for the most part is an aesthetic choice you decide during printing or digital post-processing. It's not as "baked in" into the film as many people believe. This is because there's no such thing as a "straight scan" when it comes to color negative - it's always interpreted.

Much of this interpretation is generally left to the scanning software if we let it handle the inversion, and this invariably involves color casts based on subject matter. That's OK - if we filter manually and entirely by eye, we also tend to introduce casts based on our preferences, memory of how something looked etc. This becomes especially apparent if you scan an entire roll of film exposed under different lighting conditions in one go as positive and then invert and balance all frames manually with the same curve adjustment. Some frames will come out looking fine, and some look totally wrong. It's not the film that's at fault - it's the fact that reality is just very variable, but our brains have an extremely effective auto-white balance functionality that makes everything look natural, always!

Btw, both are very pleasing images to my eye and this Gold 200 is evidently a very capable, high-quality film as evidenced by these very nice examples shared by @BAC1967 - thanks for posting them! If you prefer not to have the color-balancing exercise done on your images above, please don't hesitate to mention it and I'll happily remove them.

No problem, thanks for the explanation, you definitely have a better eye for color than I do. both were shot on the same roll and scanned together. Emma, my neighbors dog, was shot near Seattle on an overcast day. The car was shot in San Francisco on a sunny day, so the lighting was quite different.

 

[Lachlan Young]

In my case I scan....so I can override a films tendency to everything colour related.

Not as much as you think. The fundamental characteristics of a given film will still come through no matter how much you think you can muddle it up in post (or via the sometimes bizarre understanding of colour neg that some high end scanners' software has), although you can suppress/ shift aspects of colour representation to the point that they look like they could be something else. And there's a lot you can do through extended/ graphic arts techniques (i.e. separations, chemical interventions etc) in traditional darkroom work too.

 

[albireo]

I think it's a fantastic product.

I adore Gold 200 in 120 format and some of its colour features will come through in my standard scanning workflow, reliably and predictably, so much so that I will pick Gold 200 over Portra 160 in the same workflow anytime. I just prefer it, given my baseline.

 

[Steven Lee]

@macfred Loved your samples, and not only compositions but your scanning and color-balancing.

 

[albireo]

@macfred Loved your samples, and not only compositions but your scanning and color-balancing.

Agreed, beautiful!

 

[Anon Ymous]

@macfred Loved your samples, and not only compositions but your scanning and color-balancing.

Indeed!