My name is Andrew and I am a fine art destination wedding photographer in Italy (Lake Como, Amalfi). On the weddings and styled photo sessions I also shoot 35mm film, mostly black and white. I also use 35mm film in a daily life where I can experiment with it and review it in my blog. This article is going to be about Kodak Gold 200 shot at ISO 400 and pushed in development by 1 stop.
OK, I am sure you may say: "pushing a cheap (quality wise) film is not a very bright idea". And I would agree. But I can afford trying that so I decided to give GOLD another chance (I never liked that film for its over saturation of yellow and its awful grain). I have already reviewed this film in the past and found it so-so quality wise, but that was in Ireland so I had a lack of sun. This time I was at the Baltic Sea and in nearby area so I decided to give it a go and push this film by one stop. If you don't know what it is - you simply underexpose the film by 1 stop in camera and then ask the lab to overexpose it in the development to compensate for the lack of light. It is fun when you do that with expensive film (like #KodakPortra or #KodakEktar), and it is quite challenging when you do that with cheap film like #KodakGold. So see the result and decide by yourself if you like it or not. Just to mention that I have slightly decreased the warmth of the images as well as applied some noise removal in the #Lightroom. It was quite minimal editing so I think there is no need to provide you with the raw files as they look almost alike. Enjoy! And forgive me for no models this time, this was the time with my kids.
Kodak Gold 200 35m
Camera: Canon 300v
Lens: Canon EF 50mm F/1.8 II, Canon 24-70 F/2.8 II
Location: Baltic countries
Challenges:
The main challenge was to go ahead and push that cheap film. I never liked #kodakGold. For me, it is very cheap (quality wise) film and I have no idea why it is so expensive now. In Kodak line the Gold is the worst from all what I have seen so far. It has too much yellow and too much grain for its price. And if you happen to use it in cloudy conditions - you will be disappointed with its boring colours and grain. However, I decided to give it a second chance without even looking at samples of similar process for the same film. Shooting at ISO 400 was more convenient for me in the end of summer since we get less light in Baltic countries at this stage, so ISO 200 would be a killer.
Personal opinion:
Pushing Kodak Gold was fun and I can confirm quite a strange result: if you use Kodak Gold in sunny day and expose it correctly - it does not matter if you push it or not - the image will look great. However if you happened to shoot in cloudy conditions - GOLD is your worst choice.
See some shots of Gold without pushing for comparison below:
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