What exactly are the Kodak made Lomo stocks?

So the general consensus i've heard on lomo's kodak made stocks (color negative 100, 400, 800) is that 100 and 400 are Kodacolor VR derived stocks and 800 is max 800 identical to what's in disposables. Ive also heard some say that Lomo 100 is ProImage 100 and some others that say Lomo 800 isņt max 800 but some Kodacolor VR high speed stock. Do we know the actual truth? Why would kodak even offer/still make Kodacolor VR 100 and 400 which to my knowledge aren't used anywhere else (like max800 is) to any third parties, especially relatively low volume ones like Lomo. And seems somehow as if Lomo has a monopoly on those stocks in that case, kodak neither offers them directly nor to other companies. Wouldn't make sense to keep an entire assembly line branch alive for what's probably a few thousand rolls a year.

real_liiva said:

Wouldn't make sense to keep an entire assembly line branch alive for what's probably a few thousand rolls a year.

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All these recipes can be coated on a single line, so there's no infrastructural cost to having a certain diversity in products.
I would also not underestimate the volumes. I think Lomo's sales far exceed 'a few' thousand rolls a year.

real_liiva said:

And seems somehow as if Lomo has a monopoly on those stocks in that case, kodak neither offers them directly nor to other companies.

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Kodak will coat whatever you want within their capability if you pay for it. It sounds plausible that they coat a limited number of master rolls (probably just one) of each film type for Lomo and confection it for them. As a result, that particular recipe only ends up in Lomo cans.

koraks said:

All these recipes can be coated on a single line, so there's no infrastructural cost to having a certain diversity in products.
I would also not underestimate the volumes. I think Lomo's sales far exceed 'a few' thousand rolls a year.



Kodak will coat whatever you want within their capability if you pay for it. It sounds plausible that they coat a limited number of master rolls (probably just one) of each film type for Lomo and confection it for them. As a result, that particular recipe only ends up in Lomo cans.

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How much funding would it be? And how diverse of a film can kodak easily resurrect? Like i know their IR stocks are impossible due to their IR based quality control these days but could some small company with some seed capital + crowdfunding get kodak to resurrect something like 400 iso Ektachrome? Kodacolor VR 1000? Gold 1600? Ektapress 1600? Any other beloved/missed non-IR old film stock they used to make? Or maybe just the existing Kodak 800 at a lower price than what Lomo asks (they ask a ridiculous price just because they have a monopoly on selling it, portra 800 is cheaper than it where i am lol)?

real_liiva said:

How much funding would it be?

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Ask Kodak if you're serious about this. Their sales staff will be happy to talk to you.
In my mind, it doesn't make much sense to speculate on matters like these without inside information. And those with this kind of information will never publish it here in detail.

real_liiva said:

How much funding would it be? And how diverse of a film can kodak easily resurrect? Like i know their IR stocks are impossible due to their IR based quality control these days but could some small company with some seed capital + crowdfunding get kodak to resurrect something like 400 iso Ektachrome? Kodacolor VR 1000? Gold 1600? Ektapress 1600? Any other beloved/missed non-IR old film stock they used to make? Or maybe just the existing Kodak 800 at a lower price than what Lomo asks (they ask a ridiculous price just because they have a monopoly on selling it, portra 800 is cheaper than it where i am lol)?

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The dividing line is likely the amount of custom organic synthesis required - and the rate that the clock starts ticking on the life-span of particular components after they've been made, relative to potential speed of sales. Case-in-point is deep IR sensitivity - it's not whether or not it can be made, it's the trade-off between the costs of the sensitisers, and the amount of product that can be sold before it goes bad - which is very short in the case of deep IR (maybe a year). You're more likely to see an SFX with deeper sensitivity/ no anti-hal (going by the Ilford R&D people on one of the videos about Phoenix) than a return of HIE (at the end of the day, all extended red stocks had significant institutional/ governmental/ military applications where strategic/ political need paid for the product rather than commercial sales on the open market). The Lomo films are highly likely near-current generation amateur/ professionalised amateur film stocks from the Gold/ Max derived lines - i.e. Gold/ Pro Image/ UltraMax. The only slightly puzzling one is which line the 400 is drawn from - these films also are likely to be much easier to manufacture than Portra/ Ektar etc. I also suspect that quite a few of the other products (Supra, UC etc) are professionalised derivatives/ modified colour balances of the Gold/ Max lines too.

Anything older than the early 2000s that didn't make the transition to B38 is probably a non-starter. The latest generation Plus-X (i.e. the final evolution of 135 format PX and 120 Verichrome Pan), some of the other Ektachromes (E200) and 320TXP in roll formats are really about the extent of the potential field.

real_liiva said:

How much funding would it be? And how diverse of a film can kodak easily resurrect? Like i know their IR stocks are impossible due to their IR based quality control these days but could some small company with some seed capital + crowdfunding get kodak to resurrect something like 400 iso Ektachrome? Kodacolor VR 1000? Gold 1600? Ektapress 1600? Any other beloved/missed non-IR old film stock they used to make? Or maybe just the existing Kodak 800 at a lower price than what Lomo asks (they ask a ridiculous price just because they have a monopoly on selling it, portra 800 is cheaper than it where i am lol)?

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Anything is possible if you pay for it, but think that Kodak need a couple of years of development (with almost a year of delay since promised date of selling) to resurrect Ektachrome 100 that was discontinnued very recently in 2012.

Another thing to take into account is that Lomography Color Negative films are not new at all, they go back to 2007-2008 with Kodak still having strong manufacturing capabilities and before Kodak Alaris creation. Nowadays I don't think Kodak will even consider anything that it is not within the current film portfolio or very similar for a contract manufacturing.

I've shot quite a few rolls of Lomo CN 800 and Kodak Max 800 (or whatever it is in Kodak disposables). I didn't do any side-by-side (probably won't do anytime soon because of the Lomo CN 800 price), but always felt they were interchangeable.

I've also shot Lomo CN 100 and Kodak Proimage 100 and never thought I was getting the same results. Some people running private testing labs claimed both films are the same, but you never see their results so I did a side-by-side. Twice. Latest test I did at the end of last year. I bought a roll of each film at the same time, but I obviously can't know whether they were produced at the same time. For me this was second proof they are not the same film. Close, but not the same. ProImage is also on the Estar base, my Lomo CN 100 was still not (again, I can't know if the very latest Lomo CN 100 is now coated on Estar).

Developed in the same tank and scanned in one go:

halfaman said:

Anything is possible if you pay for it, but think that Kodak need a couple of years of development (with almost a year of delay since promised date of selling) to resurrect Ektachrome 100 that was discontinnued very recently in 2012.

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Much of the delay was due to having to adapt to the changes in the world of sources for constituent suppliers. They also took the opportunity to engineer in some improvements - some for the benefit of users, and others to help them deal with the practicalities of lower than historical production volumes.
EK uses their knowledge, skills and coating lines for more than photographic film. It may very well be the case that it is relatively easy to make use of some older technology in a production run or three - particularly when the customer has relatively undemanding requirements.

Lachlan Young said:

he latest generation Plus-X (i.e. the final evolution of 135 format PX and 120 Verichrome Pan), some of the other Ektachromes (E200) and 320TXP in roll formats are really about the extent of the potential field.

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I would give almost anything to have 125PX back in 120.

brbo said:

Close, but not the same. ProImage is also on the Estar base, my Lomo CN 100 was still not (again, I can't know if the very latest Lomo CN 100 is now coated on Estar).

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There seem to be at least 3 close variants of gen 7 Gold 100 - Gold 100, Farbwelt 100, and ProImage 100 - depending on the extent of the colour balancing difference in Farbwelt 100, it's quite plausible that testing of whole rolls without the simple (yet effective) comparative controls that you enacted would simply result in it being more-or-less balanced out or chalked up to subject/ batch variance (if it's the same testing person, the resolution tests they did, while not majorly flawed procedurally (you can forecast them if you have the MTF and know the test chart contrast), read out the results in a way that created significant errors between negative and transparency materials). It wouldn't be beyond the realms of possibility that Lomo 100/400 are effectively the Farbwelt variants of Gold/ UltraMax. I can confirm that the Lomo 800 120 is definitely on Estar base which is much less well behaved (and feels thinner) than the Estar base on Gold 200 120.

Having shot a fair amount of the Lomography branded films, as well as having been a big fan of Kodacolor VR and not of Gold.....I'd say that Lomography 100 and 400 are interchangeable with the 90s Kodacolor VR stocks. Maybe a full on laboratory test would show up some differences but they it seems highly likely that they are at least derived from those Kodacolor VR stocks rather than Gold or some other modern product....judging in particular by the way they handle reds and browns. I am prepared to say that I don't think Lomography 100 is Pro Image for the same reasons. The Lomography stocks are more "flat", less saturated, they don't "pop". They act more like the Kodacolor VR films did...or like Color Plus does.

Lomography 800 has a more modern look to it hence the idea that it's Max 800 or very similar.

Kodak have stated that if you pay, they'll coat pretty much anything they reasonably can for you. So it's possible these films aren't exactly what you'd have got buying Kodacolor VR in the past....but most people who have actually used them and who used VR back in the day feel that they must be at least closely related.

Agulliver said:

Maybe a full on laboratory test would show up some differences

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The kind of test @brbo showed above is a very good starting point. It's within the means of anyone with a flatbed scanner or digital camera.

I agree with @brbo that Lomography CN100 is not the same as Pro Image 100. The latter has the over-blown reds that Gold has....but not the brown mud-like look.

Agulliver said:

I agree with @brbo that Lomography CN100 is not the same as Pro Image 100. The latter has the over-blown reds that Gold has....but not the brown mud-like look.

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It also depends on which generation of Gold 100 you are talking about - it seems to have gone through several iterations up to 2007-ish, including new couplers (to eliminate the formaldehyde stabiliser). It would also seem that around the late 90s/ 2000-ish, Gold 800 forked to evolve into Portra 800 and Ultramax 800.

And, the important factor about the results shown above is that it is easy to colour balance the Pro Image to match the Lomo 100. How much that is due to manufacturing batch tolerance & Lomo's warehousing or to different colour balance aims at manufacture is an open question. But it certainly answers the question about why some have tried to decisively claim ProImage and Lomo 100 as the same, when the material evidence would seem to much more strongly support the idea that they are both Gold 100 derivatives.

Lachlan Young said:

Farbwelt 100

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I've always been curious as to why Germany needed their own national Gold derivative. It's not like German skin tines are different from the rest of europe or something. I always assumed it was the same Gold just named differently but if it's really a derivative made specifically for the German market, why.......

real_liiva said:

I've always been curious as to why Germany needed their own national Gold derivative. It's not like German skin tines are different from the rest of europe or something. I always assumed it was the same Gold just named differently but if it's really a derivative made specifically for the German market, why.......

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Edited after finding new information:

I've now found a datasheet for Farbwelt 100 & 200 from 2007 - and the curves, dye densities and spectral sensitivities given there are identical to those in the 2007 Gold 100 & 200 - but the information that Shanebrook (@laser ) gives in his book states that the colour balance of Farbwelt was for the German market - it's definitely something that would be interesting to know more about.

The only immediate thing I can think of is that perhaps Agfa was more influential in the world of industrial photofinishing in Germany & it made sense to adjust Gold for that market to fit the defaults being used, rather than trying to get the photofinishers to keep changing channels for other manufacturers. On the other hand, there is nothing specific in the Farbwelt data sheet to the effect of anything to do with this. I'd be really interested to know what each country's colour balance preferences were!

As for Pro Image and Lomo 100, after cross checking with the available data (1997 in the case of Pro Image - so, an obvious big, big caveat if there have been subsequent changes), you can see where the differences are with Gold-100-7 - Pro Image is contrastier overall, has shorter red sensitivity with less of a gap at 575-625nm, and other differences in terms of colour sensitivity (harder cut-off at bottom of blue sensitivity and higher overall blue/ green sensitivity) and dye densities (e.g. generally higher overall and with higher minimum density in the 480-580nm range). Overall, the results from @brbo tally with this. It gives more weight to Lomo 100 being Gold 100, I'd argue - however, with a small contrast and colour adjustment, the Pro Image can be brought remarkably close to the Lomo, so I can see where the claims others have made could come from. And none of this necessarily precludes Gold 100 from being where Pro Image derives from - it may have different finish addenda, anti-halation, sensitisers/ super sensitisers/ trimmer dyes, means of boosting the dye density from a given set of couplers etc.

Here are the PDFs of Gold 100/200 version 7 and ProImage 100 from a couple decades ago.