A few months back I bought 10 rolls of fresh Kodak Gold 200 and Ultramax 400. It took me a while to try the 400 as I thought it would be grainier than the Gold 200. When I shot some on this summer’s long trip I was pleasantly surprised. I don’t find that even on my largest most detailed monitor (An Apple Thunderbolt Display – finer than 2K and less than 4K) that the grain is greater than the Gold. I have been shooting Ektar and Fuji Velvia 50 quite a lot and I have to tell you that the cheaper Ultramax looked very good. I used it for landscape.
I was very pleased with these results. The middle shot of the Corn Palace in Iowa I also took with my Nikon D5500. I shot this raw and converted with LightRoom.
As is I like the Ultramax shot better. If I twiddled around with the Nikon photo above long enough I might be able to get it to look as good as the Kodak shot. But only maybe and the Kodak picture had minimal editing. Oh, and the Nikon picture is a far larger file.
I also shot quite a few people pictures with the Kodak.
To me the skin tones are also quite good. I also took a number of indoor pictures with natural light and these turned out quite good too. These pictures we all taken with my Minolta 600s, which is a late 90’s higher end manual / auto SLR. The lens depending on the shot is either a 50mm 2.8 Sigma or a 24mm 2.8 Sigma. Great camera and two really great lenses.
So I give a double thumbs up on Kodak Ultramax 400. Color saturation to me is very good. Not quite as much as Ektar, but for a wide variety of shots I like the color rendering better on Ultramax. Velvia 50 definitely has more color saturation, but is much more sensitive on exposure, and as with Ektar does not look the best with people shots.
The other 400 speed film I have shot recently is Fuji Superia 400. In my opinion the Superia and Ultramax are very similar. Both good. I like the fact you can still get the Ultramax in 36 exposure rolls.
Bob Nuttmann 