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Kodak Gold color films are very good products. They have higher color saturation than many color films, but the color is reasonably accurate. The "look" is bright and sunny. They have wide exposure latitude, particularly for overexposure. Meter as you would for black and white, at the rated ISO. The latitude for all these films is much greater than any slide film and even more than some black and white. They are quite foregiving about exposure, and they can be used effectively in pretty high contrast situations. Gold 100 has extremely fine grain - not as fine as Velvia, but extremely fine none the less. Gold 200 is the most generally available of these films. It has very fine grain that should give you no problems even with considerable enlargement. Gold 200 also has the widest latitude of this group, IMO. Gold 400 is grainier (I think about the same or a little more than Tri-X), but it performs very well in low light.
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As part of the design team for the first Kodacolor Gold 400 film, I suggest that you meter at 320 rather than 400. This gives a bit less grain and a bit better color. The film is a true 400, but this little trick will improve results, as it will for all consumer color negative films. Rate Portra films at their box speeds.
Gold has a contrast of about 0.63 to 0.65, a bit higher than the norm of 0.60 for the Portra films. This gives higher contrast in professional cameras, but "normal" contrast in the cheaper single use and consumer cameras due to lens flare.
PE
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"I've shot slide, I've shot BW film.
For color, I've shot digital"
That is correct and is all you should do. No film will change your status as color photographer. To many variables out of control to make color photos of any value. You can make it (color pic) and it is all, but you already do it.
Daniel OB
www.Leica-R.com
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 Originally Posted by DanielOB
"I've shot slide, I've shot BW film.
For color, I've shot digital"
That is correct and is all you should do. No film will change your status as color photographer. To many variables out of control to make color photos of any value. You can make it (color pic) and it is all, but you already do it.
Daniel OB
www.Leica-R.com
Interesting perspective.
Just to make sure I understand... you're saying that it's only worth shooting color film for the sake of the medium?
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Originally Posted by Photo Engineer
As part of the design team for the first Kodacolor Gold 400 film, I suggest that you meter at 320 rather than 400. This gives a bit less grain and a bit better color. The film is a true 400, but this little trick will improve results, as it will for all consumer color negative films. Rate Portra films at their box speeds.
Gold has a contrast of about 0.63 to 0.65, a bit higher than the norm of 0.60 for the Portra films. This gives higher contrast in professional cameras, but "normal" contrast in the cheaper single use and consumer cameras due to lens flare.
PE
Interesting. I left colour behind when GOLD 100 came out. (I shot mostly Koda-colour X) When i came back using an automatic Canon EOS I got reasonable results but my Pentax K1000 was getting terrible results. Then I tried Porta 160 NC and seemed to get more normal results with the Pentax.
I wonder if Canon and others adjusted the exposure sensors to work well with Kodacolor Gold. Meanwhile my old Pentax K1000 just doesn't get good results with Kodacolor but works great with PORTRA. I will have to try exposing at the lower EI and see if it improves things.
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Well, an ISO of 400 on a meter is 400 in all cameras unless there is an error in calibration. OTOH, lens flare has a lot to do with image quality as well. It is hard to say and would take a thorough comparison to come to a reasonable conclusion.
Shoot what you like at the rating you like. That works for me.
PE
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I think Kodacolor-X was a bit less saturated than the Kodak Gold films, although the Golds seem to have better color accuracy and much finer grain. Portra 160NC (before the recent improvements), IMO, was probably the most accurate color film made at the time. It also had low contrast, normal saturation, and extremely fine grain. That may have influenced your preference. I think the Portra films are a quite a bit nicer than the Golds, But Gold is still a great film and may be preferable to some people.
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I wish they made the gold 100 in sheet film sizes. In the recent past kodak has custom cut film for orders of $10k or more. I wonder if they'd entertain doing the same with the beautiful gold 100.
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With consumer films you really should overexpose 1/3 stop, dunno why. Don't overexpose it if you print it optically. The contrast will go all wacky, and you won't be able to correct it. Get it close, but it doesn't really care beyond that.
Generally you can get something out of -2 stops to +5 with good being -1 to +3. That's if you're digitally contrast correcting, though.
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I've tested both the new versions of Gold 100 and 200. See a previous posting of mine to read it. Anyway the new Golds are drastically different then previous version 6 of the 100 and 200. The new versions have better color, but the sharpness is now less. Grain is ever so slightly better. Im not sure I like the new versions over the old. The trade off of sharpness for better color throws me into a loop. The old films were definately more contrasty.
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