Thanks for the comparison! At first I was sure that Kodacolor would render more saturated colors! I observed that Pro Image in my case gives a bit desaturated, pastel colors in general even when exposing at box speed.
I read online that Kodacolor 100 may be the same as Lomo 100. Maybe it would be worth comparing those as well?
Lomo films are a little harder to come by here, but that would be my best guess, also.
Although last time I compared all the ISO 800 colour films, I found that there are two non-portra versions (both of which must have been made by Kodak), and the Lomo version was a little different than the rest.
I’m planning another comparison soon, but it’ll involve the new Lucky film ;)
Subtle differences might be caused by different production batches. Back in the day, photographers used to use the same batch stock for any given work. While the same stock from different batches will behave in the same way, mixing it would lead to small (but potentially perceptible) differences in tone and contrast.
Anyways, Kodak has dozens of film patents, many of them versions of the same film. So it’s not crazy to think that they used different versions for their own brand, very close to Proimage and identical in practice to ColorPlus for legal purposes.
That’s a good point. A better comparison should probably examine that baseline directly (the differences in batches of the same film).
So far, I’d say the evidence I have points to the differences between ProImage and Kodacolor 100 being greater than batch variation, but it’s not 100% conclusive. I’m referring to my earlier test: Kodak ColorPlus vs. Kodacolor 200 vs. Kodak Gold (analog.cafe/r/kodak-colorp…). I’m assuming that since ColorPlus and Kodacolor 200 use the same formula (as the above article explains). They are also quite likely to have been produced in separate batches (due to different production dates). And yet, both films render images that appear identical in my scans, whereas the third film in the mix — Kodak Gold — looks identifiably different.
All of that, of course, comes with a huge caveat: age, dev chemicals and methods, and, even more so, the scanning process, can erase or exaggerate the slight differences I found.
Robert Pustułka
Dmitri
Andrés PB
Dmitri