Testing Kodak Gold 200 on The Nikon AF600
My journey of finding my favorite film stock continues with a roll of Kodak Gold 200. This roll was developed at home using standard c41 process, and scanned at home on a Fujifilm X-T5 and the Nikon 60mm AF-D Macro lens. Negatives were converted using Negative Lab Pro with basic color profile and the Portra preset.
Kodak Gold 200 originally comes from the kodacolor gold line of films introduced in 1988. The film emulsion has since had several revisions, with the current revision being Kodak Gold v7, which was introduced in 2007. In 2023, the film base was changed to Kodak Estar base which is supposed to provide better clarity and allow the film to be more stable across storage conditions.
This film has a super fine grain structure, and really renders tons of detail. I don’t think the lens on my Nikon AF600 is sharp enough to get full detail out of the film.
The colors from Gold 200 were super predictable and pleasant, and perhaps a little boring.
The dynamic range was stellar however, detail was always retained no matter how tricky the lighting situation or how backlit the subject.
I find the photos produced with this film to be easy to look at and generally calming. This definitely suits a shooting style that is relaxed. I think this film also makes a great film for documenting life because of its truthful nature.
I do like this film, but I do find it a bit boring overall. It works well, is affordable, and versatile. One major downside for me however is the 200 speed is quite slow for my 3.5 lens, making interiors a bit more difficult to shoot. I’ve seen samples of this film shot on 120 format, and it seems to have a completely different character, and almost looks like Portra to me. I will of course have to test this for myself.
