Kodak Gold 200 - The Latitude of Consumer Colour Negative Film
One of the reasons colour negative film is so great is because it generally has a pretty wide exposure latitude.
If you've under or over exposed your film (within reason), you will still more than likely get a useable image out of your negatives whether it be a print of a digital scan.
We've seen plenty of these comparisons with higher end films like Portra 400 and Fujifilm Pro 400H, but thought we'd do a quick writeup for those who are shooting film on a budget!
For our test, we set up a tripod and shot a roll of Kodak Gold 200 at 3 stops under, through to 5 stops over.
We were actually quite surprised with the results of our test because Kodak Gold is quite a cheap film. Despite being less than half the cost of Portra 400, colours held up very well even underexposed.
Anywhere between -2 stop through to +3 stops gave us useable results that scanned well.
-3 stops resulted in an image that is quite grainy and muddy in the shadows, but may still be salvageable if you were desperate.
After +4 stops we start to see a bleaching effect on the film, colours start to shift and detail is lost in the highlights. Again, this may still be useable if you were desperate.
It's always best to err on the side of over exposure and try to shoot in nice light when possible.
We always rate our Kodak Gold at +1 stop (i.e. set your camera ISO to 100 instead of 200), and meter for the shadows.
What do you think? Join the discussion on Instagram here
