Kodak HD 200 and HD 400

[braxus]

I've used HD 400 a couple times before and got decent results from it shooting it at night especially. I don't think I did any people pictures with it though, so I can't say how the skin tone reproduction holds up. It does have PGI 39 which is the finest grained 400 speed color film they make. I've also used its cousin 400UC. I cant say how the colors compare against the two.

Now I've used Royal Gold 100 before and liked it for around town shooting of the area and buildings. I've read people don't like it for skin tone reproduction though. Which leads me to HD200. Without shooting 100UC which I dont like for people pictures, can one get good results for skin tones and portraits with HD 200? HD 200 has a PGI 32 which is the best "normal style" Kodak makes today. All the Portras start at 32-34 and up. But Portra 160NC can be bland for some shots, but its the lowest Pro color film they make at PGI 32. So that again leads me back to HD200. How do people like this film? It doesn't seem to be a popular seller basing on how many stores carry it. If its going to kill skin tone reproduction I might stick with Portra films. I know its a contrastier film, but I don't think it will be as bad as 100UC. Also anyone shoot HD200 at 100ISO and if so what were the results?

 

[bob100684]

the HD series IS royal gold. If I'm remembering....I liked royal gold 200 a lot. 200 speed films dont sell so well as they're not MUCH faster than 100 speed. The general consumer still buying film from my experience at a drugstore photo lab will buy either 100 or 400 for outdoors and 800 most of the time.

 

[Lee L]

I don't know whether this is true or not, but I've heard it said that some of the 100 ISO color negative films are the same emulsion as 200 ISO films, just with a 0.30 neutral density mask built in. Maybe PE could chime in on this.

Lee

 

[Brac]

In the UK the sale of Kodak High Definition films was stopped some time ago so I presumed they were no longer manufactured. I though the HD200 was excellent in all respects. We can now get Kodak Elite Colour neg films but I haven't used those.

 

[smileyguy]

I've got a whole whack of HD400 that I bought from a guy going digital a while back. It was a great deal (less than $1/roll) so I found it hard to refuse. It is my choice for shooting basic family events and stuff. I find it to be a fairly warm coloured film and fairly saturated as well. I didn't think it did very well with skin tones but for what I was shooting it didn't really matter. It looks like it would be great outdoor stuff. I was shooting indoors and found it really pumped up the tungsten light to a degree that I wasn't really happy with.

I'm no pro but there are my $.02!

 

[Samuel B]

I don't think HD200 is available here in Australia any more either, and I have never seen HD400 here. I bought quite a few rolls of HD200 from a supermarket on sale last year. It's a nice film, very fine grained, although I found it needed to be overexposed by one or more stops for best results. It always seemed to be underexposed at 200asa. It seems to me that it was a different emulsion to the Gold 200, though a few people have told me it was the same.