Kodak HD

01 Jul 2005

High definition? Huge disaster? Horrible disappointment? Heinously difficult?

I went to buy a three-pack of 24 exposure 35mm film for my SP 500 today, and, because it was on special (probably because the film expires next month), treated myself to Kodak’s over-marketed offering that I’ve always been a little dubious about. Disclaimer at this point – I don’t think there’s anything technically wrong with the film by any stretch of the imagination. I’m sure it’ll produce great shots. But the branding and marketing of this doesn’t exactly assist the photographer (I so nearly wrote “end user” there – must get out more.) in capturing great shots, at least not in terms of exposure.

To explain: this film is billed as being multi-purpose. It does everything. Apparently. It also does it well. Apparently.

Okay, nothing wrong with that. You could use good quality ISO100 stock to do “everything”, albeit with a little bit of pain. By the same token, this film stock does “everything”. It’d just help if I’d known what I was using before I got home and had time to look up the specs online.

The bottom line is this: on the exterior packaging there is absolutely no mention of the speed of the film enclosed, aside from fleeting comparisons to other Kodak products, saying “look, this is better, it does more stuff” – never mind that if you inspect closely it’s actually slightly different stuff. Deceptive marketing certainly plays a part in the problem.

So, I couldn’t find information about that anywhere on the packaging. I loaded it into my camera and ran off a roll of it, with the ISO speed set to 400 (that’s something I’d personally consider fairly useful, if not overly versatile – certainly something I’d consider probable if they’re marketing a consumer brand high-quality stock), trying not to worry too much about it.

Yeah, a recipe for disaster.

I got home, checked Kodak’s specs, and it turns out the film was ISO/ASA/DIN/whatever you want to call it 200 speed film. Nothing I can do about it now, of course, apart from hope that post-processing will be able to clean up the underexposed mess. I went and had a closer look at the cartridge after I’d thought about it for a bit, and it does say the speed on the side of it – but of course, I didn’t think to check this until I’d already wound the film on, so even had I thought of it at the time it wasn’t the best option.

Why can’t film manufacturers label their products more thoroughly and cut down on overhyped marketing that fails to actually inform the consumer of what their product is?