Welcome to another Film Friday spotlight! Here we go again, offering our thoughts on another of the film stocks in our inventory and giving you some of our real world experience with the film. This time we’re turning our attention to a film that is simultaneously quite popular but still somehow under-appreciated: Kodak Gold 200.

Kodak Gold is a “consumer” grade color negative film that performs much better than you might expect. Gold was introduced in 1988, has been around for over 30 years at this point and is currently on its seventh generation, which was rolled out in 2007. Being a consumer film means a couple of things. The first is that the film targets a much lower price point than Kodak’s professional films like Portra or Ektar. It also means that in order to be available to the consumer market, it needs to be found everywhere. These two characteristics boil down to give you Kodak Gold’s first two big selling points: it’s inexpensive and it’s easy to find.

But inexpensive isn’t the same as cheap, if you get our meaning. Despite being a “consumer” film, Kodak Gold 200 is much better than you might expect it to be. Oftentimes when a customer asks us which b&w film is good, we respond by saying that they all are, there aren’t really any “bad” B&W films… just films with different qualities. To a large degree, you can make the same statement about modern color films. The film market has been narrowed down so much, and companies have spent more time refining existing emulsions rather than creating new ones, that the color films you have on the market are all solid choices for one reason or another. Sure, Kodak Gold 200 may not be as fine grained as Portra 160, but it’s grain isn’t that bad either. To give you more specific numbers on this, Kodak rates the graininess of their film using a measure called the Print Grain Index (PGI). Essentially they make a print using the film and gauge the perceptual amount of graininess at a distance of 14 inches (standard viewing distance for a 4x6 print). A PGI score of 25 is considered the lower visual limit of graininess while higher numbers represent greater levels of perceived grain. Kodak Gold 200’s PGI score is 44 - well above the visual threshold. Portra 160 has a PGI of 28 and Portra 400 has a score of 37. So Kodak Gold 200 is quite a bit grainier than Portra 160 and grainier even than Portra 400. For curiosity’s sake we looked up the PGI for Portra 800. That films scores a 48. So Kodak Gold 200 is almost as visibly grainy as that highest speed Kodak Portra film. But don’t let this deter you. Grain is not a bad thing by default. Some photographers appreciate the texture that grain gives an image, while some prefer the smoothest possible image they can. In Gold’s case, the increased graininess is one of the tradeoffs you make for the decreased cost of the film.

Aside from its grain, the other important quality to Gold 200 is its colors. This film has bright colors and gives fairly true renditions of those colors. Those colors are also quite sharp and clear. Yet Gold 200 still has a palette all its own. For example, one of our staff took a trip to the Faroe Islands in the spring of 2023 and took a couple rolls of Gold 200 with them in 120. During the spring the landscape of the Faroe Islands is dominated by shades of brown and ochre. The images Gold 200 made of these landscapes were quite rich in color and it handled those shades really well. Blues seem to be another color this film likes and in our experience it renders very clean and crisp blues. Reds and oranges have a nice level of pop to them too. Greens on the other hand feel a bit less vibrant and a bit more muted.

While a polarizing filter would have really helped with the color saturation on this shot, the red berries still respond nicely with Kodak Gold 200.

Kodak Gold 200 rendering a varied color palette quite nicely…or just a happy kitty.

Kodak Gold 200 in 120 earned a place in the camera bag of a staff member on their trip to the Faroe Islands in 2023. Image made with a Pentax 67.

The lack of color in this scene helps showcase how neutral Gold 200 is in terms of its color palette.

If you rewind the clock to about 2016, our favorite low-cost film for around then was Agfa Vista. It was such a good “bang for the buck” film. We loved it and our customers loved it. So when it was discontinued we were crestfallen and we had to start to look for a replacement. We ordered in some Kodak UltraMax and Gold 200 and started test shooting them. We were pleasantly surprised by both and it was the lovely qualities that Gold 200 possesses that helped us get over our loss of Vista. These days Kodak Gold 200 has deservedly earned a permanent spot on our shelves. In a world where film photography has slowly become more and more expensive, it is nice to have a high-performing, but low-cost, option to lean on. Our only gripe about Gold 200 then would be that we wish we could get it in medium format. That and we wish they’d design a new box for the film. (Update: Kodak Gold 200 was reintroduced in 120 format in March of 2022 and it received a box redesign during the summer of 2023. How about that.)

It is worth mentioning that one of the reasons Vista was such a popular film in our lab was because it was an easy film to print. Printing color film is an art all in itself, and it is not as easy as you might think. Not all color films are made equal, and some print better or more consistently than others. Vista was amazing in this regard, and Kodak Gold has proven to be very similar. While you might think that only photo lab techs stand to appreciate this quality of Gold, we’d point out that a film that prints consistently well is a huge benefit to you as well. It means that you are likely to get better results regardless of the lab doing the printing or scanning, despite their proficiency or lack thereof. In fact, Kodak films in general tend to all have this quality to them. Kodak engineers have specifically put time into making their films consistent in regard to how those films print and scan, and this attention to detail was not limited solely to their professional films.

Gold 200 is a bit grainier than other slow speed films, but it is not a bad grain at all, having a fairly traditional look to its structure.

So let’s sum this up a bit shall we.

The first reason we typically recommend Kodak Gold 200 is the price, hands down. It is a great value film.
But value isn’t the only thing going for it. Gold has surprisingly great color, being both bright and natural.
Very versatile in terms of exposure. Kodak claims you can underexpose it by two stops or overexpose it by three stops. This film gives you a big target to hit.
It’s available in 24 and 36 exposure rolls. This may not seem like a big deal, but sometimes you want a quick roll and don’t want to commit to 36 exposures. Or you shoot half-frame, in which case this is 48 pictures instead of 72 to complete.
As of 2022 it is once again available in 120 format and brings all its perks to medium format cameras. This larger format also helps mitigate its graininess - giving it far more upside than down.

Is this enough to make you want to try a roll? We have it right here.

What is the deal with our Film Fridays? Read more here.

While nice light will always make the photo, regardless of the film, Gold 200 rendered the late afternoon glow through the leaves beautifully.

We thought Gold 200 struggled a bit with this portrait made in open shade, but it still performs better than Ektar usually does.

Kodak Gold is easily a take-anywhere type of film. Be your destination a hike to a waterfall, a trip to New York, your cousin’s graduation, or what have you, Gold will be a great partner at capturing the colors you see in the scenes that await you.

Film Friday - July 26th, 2024. Kodak Gold 200