Anybody used Kodak Hi Def film?

[Ah Pao]

http://www.kodak.com/eknec/PageQuerier.jhtml?pq-path=9/543/1094/1097&pq-locale=en_US

Saw it on sale at Color Lab at Adelphi...costs something like $5.90 for a 400/36 roll...darn ex...it seems the one selling at Color Lab is imported (Japanese words) and don't see it selling anywhere else I've been to (well, at least not displayed on-shelf).

Anybody used it and is it really worth the price? :dunno:

 

[ckiang]

Yeah, I saw it at Colour Lab as well. Thinking of trying it out. Hopefully it's not as crappy as the Max 400. From the specs at the Kodak site, it appears to be very good.

Regards
CK

 

[mikerfns]

HD-400 is Royal Gold 400 (improved??) in a new package. Nothing more, nothing less. Just another lame marketing ploy from Kodak.

Mike

 

[showtime]

HD-400 is Royal Gold 400 (improved??) in a new package. Nothing more, nothing less. Just another lame marketing ploy from Kodak.

Mike

are you sure? that could be slander you know. u are saying that they are conning us by charging that ridiculous price for newly pakaged kodak max 400...

 

[showtime]

i would try this film and compare it against max 400... any difference would be easy to tell as the latter is noted for big grain and warm colours.

 

[Ansel]

are you sure? that could be slander you know. u are saying that they are conning us by charging that ridiculous price for newly pakaged kodak max 400...

Please read carefully, he wrote "Kodak Royal Gold 400" not max 400.

This HD400 is quite different, actually really good. Much much better than the seriously "crappy" MAX 400. In fact I think it is better than Fuji's Superia Xtra 400, which I think is already quite good. The pictures on this thread were taken on HD400:

http://www.offstone.com/photo/showthread.php?s=&threadid=8346

 

[Ah Pao]

Would be interested to give it a try.
How much did you get it for, and where did you get it?

 

[showtime]

Please read carefully, he wrote "Kodak Royal Gold 400" not max 400.

This HD400 is quite different, actually really good. Much much better than the seriously "crappy" MAX 400. In fact I think it is better than Fuji's Superia Xtra 400, which I think is already quite good. The pictures on this thread were taken on HD400:

http://www.offstone.com/photo/showthread.php?s=&threadid=8346

sorry for the mistake(i said max 400 instead of royal gold))... so its still a gimmic to replace royal gold? how much does royal gold normally cost?

the picture you posted has indeed got good color definition.. very accurate and minus the max400 grain... good stuff.

 

[Ansel]

Would be interested to give it a try.
How much did you get it for, and where did you get it?

Got it from ColourLab at Adelphi. I think I paid ~$5.00+ for a 27 exposure roll, strange, but it was a Jap market product. It's really worth a try.

 

[Ansel]

sorry for the mistake(i said max 400 instead of royal gold))... so its still a gimmic to replace royal gold? how much does royal gold normally cost?

the picture you posted has indeed got good color definition.. very accurate and minus the max400 grain... good stuff.

I have never used Royal gold, so can't really say if they are the same product. But I have read that Kodak has stopped investing in film R&D and that they have an accumulated quite a bit of technology which they originally intended to roll out slowly. Now they are just rolling them out in the hope of salvaging their declining popularity among professionals and consumers alike.

Yes, the HD400 has got good grain and latitude. Those pictures I posted were actually underexposed by 1 stop and yet, the result was still good. You can't really tell that the images were from an ISO400 film. Anyway these are just my personal observations. I have not enlarged the picture to 12x16, so can't say if it is capable of that size enlargement without ugly grain, but looking at a loupe shows that it is quite good.

 

[finkster]

Saw this film in Melbourne last month. Looked quite interesting, so bought a tri-pack and shot one roll with it so far. It was not a 'Jap market' product.

Compared to Fuji Superia 200, the colors and sharpness are pretty darn close. As someone mentioned earlier, u got to print enlargements before you can tell the difference. For an ISO 400 film, the grain is good.

But for the price, it may or may not be worth the extra expense. But it definitely is a good film, not one to be compared with MAX 400, which is actually ISO 800 film(or thereabouts) but rated at ISO 400. Read this from somewhere before. Hence the graininess of this film.

 

[Zerstorer]

Hi finkster, did you compare the scans(wat resolution) or the prints? Sounds really interesting if its close to Superia 200.

 

[finkster]

Yoz...

I had them printed at 4R only, as they were just holiday shots in Melbourne. Don't have a film scanner too(Planning to get one though).

Anyway, the comparison was done just by eyeballing. I finished a roll of Sup200 at the top of the mountain, loaded the kodak hi-d in, and took a couple more shots before going down again. So I compared the prints that were shot only minutes apart in similar lighting conditions.

But I wondered if bringing my kodak film to have them developed at a kodak lab instead of fuji might have made a noticeable difference.....

 

[sriram]

Last week, I picked up a roll of HD-400 from colourlab since Cathay didn't have NPH. Used and processed a roll over the weekend. The real speed seems to be around 200-250. It does well outdoors, but if I underexpose (specially indoors) there is a loss of definition and increase in muddiness and grain. This is very noticeable compared to NPH. Colours were more or less accurate. On the whole, I'd say this is an OK film, but needs to be exposed more accurately compared to other print films. The negatives seem very thin and the image density low compared to Fuji NPH and Superia, but it scans OK on my Minolta scanner. Still, it's expensive compared to other films, and I'm going back to good old NPH. Nothing remarkable about HD-400 which would make me want to switch to it.

 

[sriram]

But it definitely is a good film, not one to be compared with MAX 400, which is actually ISO 800 film(or thereabouts) but rated at ISO 400. Read this from somewhere before. Hence the graininess of this film.

Erm... from my experimentation, the real speed of Max 400 is around 200-250. In fact it gives pretty good results at this speed, except for the colours. Image density on the negatives is pretty good at these speeds and it even scans well without much grain. If you rate it at 800 god save you.

 

[finkster]

Well, grain was all over the place when I checked out the prints from a friend who shot with this film a couple of months back.

Details about the MAX 400 being actually ISO 800 film is something like because it is a lower end consumer film, Kodak intentionally used a faster film to ensure the average consumer would have a better chance of getting well-exposed shots and no camera shake.

 

[ckiang]

Then again, if it's (max 400) actually a 800 film and consumers are shooting it at 400 (1 stop over), then grain shouldn't be an issue. More likely it's a 100-200 film rated at 400 to have that kind of horrible grain that everyone loves to hate. I didn't remember the predecessor of the Max 400 being that bad (I was a Kodak person back then). When they came up with the "New and Improved" Max 400, i talked to a lady at CP about it and she said "They might as well don't improve, now they made it worse"

Regards
CK

 

[Ansel]

Saw this film in Melbourne last month. Looked quite interesting, so bought a tri-pack and shot one roll with it so far. It was not a 'Jap market' product.

What I meant was that the roll I bought from Colourlab was a Jap market packaging, with a strange 27 exposures in a roll.

Yup. The price of this film is a real concern. Otherwise it is a really nice film to shoot with.

 

[finkster]

What I meant was that the roll I bought from Colourlab was a Jap market packaging, with a strange 27 exposures in a roll.

Yup. The price of this film is a real concern. Otherwise it is a really nice film to shoot with.

Yeah, I know what u mean. The package I got was printed in English, and came with one roll of 36exp, the other two were 24exp.

ISO 800 film would have the inherent grain structure of such a speed. Whether you expose one or two stops over or under, the grain which is already there won't go away. The print and the resulting grain can be made to appear a little better or worse, but what is there originally can't be 'ungrained'.

Well...anyway, I doubt many of us would want to use MAX 400 for our regular shoots.... unless really got no choice.

Now, back to your regular scheduled programming about the Hi-Def film...

 

[jordan2101]

what do u guys think of Kodak Supra 400 then...?