Royal Gold and Ektar

[larrydressler]

Many years ago when I was into film photography I used a wonderful

film from Kodak called Ektar1000 I also loved the Ektar 25. Well low

and behold it was not there when I got back into film but a little

search of the Kodak web sight gave me this little bit of information.

 

Kodak, Ektar, Gold, and Royal Gold are trademarks of Eastman Kodak

Company. {[2] i}[2]n France and the Benelux region, Kodak Royal Gold

film is marketed under the Ektar brand name.

 

Now for the big Question. Is this the same film and what is close to

the 25 speed film. Thanks in advance.

[michael_goldfarb]

The Ektar and Royal Gold lines are long gone. Not only are 25-speed color films a thing of the past at Kodak, but even their last fine-grain 100-speed derived from these families - Supra 100 - is now gone. There is something called "Royal Supra", but the slowest speed it's available in is 200...

 

Most slow b/w films (e.g., Agfapan APX 25) are also gone. I believe Ilford's still got one that's ISO 50, but that's about it. Between the film market contracting as digital cameras have become cheap and ubiquitous, and the need for fast films for the notoriuosly slow-lensed zoom point-and-shoots and autofocus SLRs being the main market factor, slow films are disappearing very quickly.

 

As a Minox shooter, this has been particularly rough for me. Recently, I've been using T-Max 100 for b/w and Fuji Superia Reala 100 for color. Reala is the finest grain, truest-color 100-speed print film out there... but it's very neutral compared to the old Ektar, Royal Gold, and Supra emulsions from Kodak, which had higher color saturation.

 

There's also a new Kodak emuslsion called "Ultra Color 100" out recently, but I haven't tried it yet. I'm afraid it's going to be TOO saturated, and besides, its published grain statistics are worse than the old Royal Gold 100 and Supra 100 were!

 

I NEVER would have believed there'd come a time when Kodak wouldn't make a fine-grain 100-speed color print film!

[r.t. dowling]

If you liked Ektar 1000/Royal Gold 1000, try Kodak Portra 800 or Fuji NPZ 800. You'll like them much better than Ektar 1000.

 

A possible replacement for Ektar 25/Royal Gold 25 would be Konica Impresa 50.

[kelly_flanigan1]

Ektar 25 is a fine film; it keeps a long time when frozen; long after Kodak pulled the plug on production.

[chris haake]

R.T, I don't think Impresa would look anything like Ektar 25. It has a very definite cool tone to it. It is, however, SUPER sharp and SUPER fine-grained.

 

Someone (too lazy to go back and see who--sorry) said that all the 25-speed films are gone. Don't forget Kodak's own TechPan! I've never used it as I don't do traditional black and white, but I've heard it can be incredible stuff (I've also heard it can be unbearable to work with).

[rowland_mowrey]

Just FYI, AFAIK, Ektar 25 was the most difficult of all Kodak films to manufacture. It had very tight specifications on speed, grain, curve shape, and sharpness.

 

Ron Mowrey

[scott_eaton]

Impresa is a 'soft' version of RG25 at the most. Grain wise it's in the same category (RG 25 still had higher fringe resolution), and has similiar contrast, but it's color saturation and density range is dramatically inferior to RG-25. I have 4000dpi scans of RG25, and Impresa is a totally different film. Worth trying, but not a replacement for RG25. Those of us who want RG25's image qualities will shoot slow speed slide film (provia for instance) and scan it to get the same image dynamics because no print film can match RG25. A roll of 120 RG25 once blew a fuse on my $100,000 Kodak PVAC because the voltage pots on the display analyzer couldn't handle the red intensity.

 

Ektar was originally the first color dye coupled version of Kodak's new TMAX technology. The Ektar line became the Royal line after Kodak had less than stellar sales with the materials because the skin tone rendition of Ektar emulsions was mediocre, and color saturation was inferiour to Gold 100.

 

UC 400 is the final incarnation of Ektar technology (skin tone problem fixed) even though it took Kodak over 10yrs to get there.

 

Fuji NPZ 800 mops the floor with Ektar 1000. So does Konica 1600 if you can find it.

[jeff_drew4]

One can always shoot slide film! Yes I miss Ektar25, but never really cared much for the Royal Golds. I really prefer the Portra series and have had good luck with it across the entire lineup. I still am shooting Supra 100 & 400 in 35mm(stocked up a while back)for more general tasks. Agfa Optima is also in my rollfilm lineup at ISO100. It's tuff to beat some of the Fuji Reala choices too. All-in-all, I get as fine a grain from today's films vs. older, slower ones except for K25. I also shoot Minox and agree that fine grain color can be a challenge. FWIW: I have had good luck shooting Portra 160VC at ISO125 in 8x11mm.

[jay_.]

<< NEVER would have believed there'd come a time when Kodak wouldn't make a fine-grain 100-speed color print film!>>

 

Just like people don't believe there'll come a time when nobody will make *any* film. But it's coming.

[r.t. dowling]

"R.T, I don't think Impresa would look anything like Ektar 25. It has a very definite cool tone to it. It is, however, SUPER sharp and SUPER fine-grained."

 

Very true, I tried a couple rolls of Impresa and it definitely tends to have a cool bias. However, as far as the current crop of C41 films are concerned, it appears to be closest match for EK25/RG25 in terms of grain and sharpness. But for that matter, I'd rather use any of the current Fuji E6 films!

[rowland_mowrey]

Scott;

 

By TMAX technology, what are you referring to?

 

There is a T-Grain technology. It was introduced in Gold 400 in the 80s. Ektar production was terminated in the early 90s. The first Gold 400 in the 80s was the last one to use K-Grain technology. It was introduced in the early 80s followed a few years later, about 1985, by the T-grain version.

 

T-Max B&W films use T-Grain technology.

 

Early 1000 speed B&W and color films did not use T-Grain technology. They used K-Grain supersensitized, and had relatively high grain.

 

For very complex technical reasons, early T-Grain films could not be supplied in 120 roll film sizes. The problem was solved a few years after introduction of the first T-Grain 35mm film. Therefore, it is unlikely that Royal X pan and some other Royal films, which I still have in the freezer in 120 size were T-Grain, but I don't remember when the cutoff date was in the first introduction of T-Grain as a 120 size film.

 

In fact, I used Agfa XRS 1000 in 120 sizes until Kodak came out with PMZ 1000, which was a fair T-Grain film and really among the first in 120 size.

 

Ektar 25 used several new technologies. T-grain at that low speed, may not have been necessary. IDK, because I'm short on details of the emulsions in the Ektar family. I do know that the other items incorporated in the 25 speed film were rather new and very interesting. That is what made the 25 speed film so sharp and fine grained, among other things, as well as what made it hard to manufacture.

 

Ron Mowrey

[scott_eaton]

<I>By TMAX technology, what are you referring to?</i><P>Kodak Ektar 125 borrowed a very similair sensitized layer from TMAX 100, including even the annoying pink iodine restrainer mask (and extended blue sensitivity which crushed skin tones) if you bother looking at Ektar 125's base on a light table and note the pink tone. If you aren't aware of it, color C-41 films are basically B/W films with dye coupler layers strapped onto them, and Ektar borrowed heavily from the new B/W Tmax technology vs Kodak's crappy existing C-41 technology. There was no Ektar 400 film to be associated with Gold 400, the later being among the worst films ever made that was rendered obsolete with NHG 400. Gold 400 also had little to do with newer generations of Gold 100, with the Gold 400 emulsion evolving to share the same dye-set family as equally nasty PPF and PMC.<P>The Gold films and Ektar films had little crossover technology in them, and the reproduction characteristics of VR-G 100 and then Gold Plus were totally different than Ektar. For pictorial applications Gold 100/plus was far superior than Ektar 125, and unlike Ektar 125, Gold 100 didn't go through several stealth emulsion revisions which caused me nightmares trying to get channels set up for it correctly on pro lines. Kodak coulnd't make up their mind if Ektar was a consumer or pro-sumer film, even though their field reps insisted 'off the record' it was an amatuer film. Considering Gold 100's production consistency and dye-set uniformity was 1000x better than the initial two variants of Ektar 125/100, it was no wonder.<P>Ektar was a concept film really, but never should have been released to the consumer market. It was much sharper than any 100 speed film prior and had good control of color saturation, but it's lousy rendition of skin tones and rather strong midtone contrast made it a bad consumer film because it reproduce skin tones that looked like a Canadian getting his/her first sun burn of the summer. No offense to our neighbor to the north, but I have no other idea how to describe Ektar 125's lousy skin tones and weak color saturation.<P>Ektar 125 was tweaked and finally evolved into the Royal line, and in some respects Royal was a worthwhile film if you knew it's advantages. Royal scanned better than Gold 100 and had better high density seperation. Gold 100 still had better sking tones and color saturation, so it was still a lost cause, and Kodak's retarded marketing dept labeled it Royal Gold when it fact the Royal film had little in common with Gold 100 except a cooler looking box. The introduction of RG25 and subsequent removal of it from the market was among the cruelest things Kodak's ever done to their user base. Also note that Ektar 25 and Ektar 125's close cousin Pro 100 *were* released in 120 format with the Ektar 25 film having some strange emulsion designation like 'PQ' or something in 120 format. I only saw a few rolls of it, and depending on who you talked to at Kodak, you get a different story.<P> I have no idea why Ektar/Royal 100/125 was never relased in 120 format, nor care, considering Kodak tortured us enough with VPH, PPF, then PMC which concluded the legendary three stooges of print film. In any respect, Ektar 125/Royal was losy for portraits considerations, and contrary to Pop Photo's absurd recommendations, no professional wedding photographer would be caught dead using them. Pro 100 wasn't much of a portrait film either, but it's screaming color saturation and yet amazing detail and resistence to color blocking made up for it and showed what the Ektar technology was capable of.<P>Which brings me to the third letter I sent to Pop Photo's staff after they recommended Ektar/Royal for portraits and weddings. This at the same time we were notifying any amatuer accounts coming into our lab that we would sell them Gold 100 or VPS *at cost* if they simply wouldn't use the Ektar/Royal films if a human being was in the shot.<P>As I said previously, the Ektar technology ultimatley ended up in Portra UC, and I'm pretty sure it might exist in E100G. Gold 100 never made it to 120 format, and PPF/VPH/PMC were key in creating many dedicated Fuji users.

[rowland_mowrey]

Scott;

 

There is no such thing as a pink iodine restrainer mask. If there is a pink 'stain' in a film at all, it may be due to the sensitizing dye for the green portion of the spectrum, but it would be rare indeed for color and B&W films to use the same spectral sensitizing dye.

 

Color films are not B&W films with couplers strapped on. The chemical consituents of these two types of films are vastly different. Just for example, a B&W emulsion is designed to get edge effects or sharpness via the emulsion itself and the interaction with the developer, but a color film does this via chemical additives. So much for what you know about B&W and color chemistry.

 

T-Max technology does not exist. T-Grain technology is a particular type of technology relating to the crystal habit of the silver halide grain itself. It could be shared between any given set of products. There are 9 emulsions in an average color film and between 1 and 3 in a B&W film. Balancing the color emulsions to each other is an art that goes beyond throwing in coupler.

 

There are two things that amaze me. You seem to present yourself as a film engineer of sorts. I admit that you have a lot of facts and history correct, but your knowledge of the actual film itself is sparse to say the least. Second, your dislike of Kodak film comes through clearly, but you continue to use them. This truly amazes me.

 

Do you like to bang your head against the wall too? I mean really, Scott, if EK films are so truly bad, then stop using them. And please don't talk about film building. Remember, I spent 15 years in film building, including that Gold 400 you hate, and I spend another 15 years in the emulsion area.

 

I don't keep track of film introduction dates or discontiunuance dates. I do know the ingredients in most of the color films and the technologies involved, and I know that you are quite far afield in much of what you say.

 

Stick to taking pictures Scott. Use Fuji or Agfa. Write a history of color and B&W films. Or, maybe, take a good course on Photographic System Engineering. I suggest Chiba University in Tokyo. That should be far enough away, and keep you busy for a while.

 

Peace.

 

Ron Mowrey

[reuben_c]

<i>Gold 100 never made it to 120 format</i>

<p>

This comes as news to me, seeing as how I have in my possession several 120 bricks of Gold 100.

<p>

It's a beautiful film, and it's sad that they discontinued it.

[bill_tuthill]

Scott presents himself as a "lab rat" not a film engineer. I find

his advice almost always on-target. Scott's cynicism about Kodak was

caused by real historical events, such as the demise of Ektar/RG 25

and PRN in favor of inferior emulsions like Portra VC and now 100UC.

It would be immature to boycott Kodak just because they screwed up

many business decisions.

[rowland_mowrey]

Bill, Scott;

 

The demise of Ektar 25 was related to two factors. Few people wanted to buy a slow speed film regardless of grain or sharpness. Secondly, as I said, the film was the hardest of any Kodak product to manufacture. There was virtually no profit margin at all, if any.

 

Making comments about the contents or formulations of films is implying knowledge of film building. When those comments are incorrect, then you mislead readers and/or perpetuate myths on this forum. You know there are enough of those already.

 

There may be a pink cast to a B&W film and a color film. It may even be due to the same reason. IDK for a fact, but I doubt that there is an exact similarity in cause, but to say that color film is just B&W film with couplers is a gross misstatement and misleading to the readership here.

 

I really don't mind Scott critizing EK. I have my complaints as well. I have complaints about other companies too. I don't go off into bitterness and bile about it constantly.

 

Scott has a great knowledge of the history of many EK products. This is well and good, but his history is not infallible as you see implied in the post by Reuben. I can stand behind the statement that early T-Grain films from EK were not supplied in 120 format and I know the reason why. The film mentioned in Reubens post was not an early T-Grain film if in 120, or it was a later version. During the time from about 1990 to the appearance of PMZ in 120, fast T-grain film was not supplied in 120 format.

 

There is no T-max technology. It is a trade name for films using T-grain technology applied to B&W films.

 

So, as I said to Scott in another post - stick to being an excellent photographer, and based on what you say Bill he should stick to being a lab rat. But Scott, don't speak to film building or system engineering. Please.

 

Ron Mowrey

[reuben_c]

In anticipation of being "corrected", here is my evidence.<div></div>

[rowland_mowrey]

Scott;

 

Another thing about your pink coloration in the TMax 100 and Ektar 125. Since TMax 100 is B&W, I can see how you can observe a pink stain in the Dmin area, but how can you see that Dmin through the orange mask of the Ektar color negative film?

 

Also, how can an extended blue sensitivity in a B&W film be translated to a color film, or vice versa? What are you comparing?

 

Reuben;

 

You get no argument from me. I agree with you.

 

Ron Mowrey

[reuben_c]

Thanks (my reply wasn't aimed at you, it only looked that way thanks to the vagaries of unthreaded fora-ware).

[madwand]

I remember the hype about Ektar 1000 when it came out and being really disappointed with its results. I do recall being impressed by Ektar 125 -- it's something when you see an apparent sharpness improvement in 4x6 prints. I also remember trying Ektar 25 briefly, but giving it up -- probably because the improvements at 4x6 weren't worth the light loss. But even in those days, I liked the colour balance of Agfa Optima 100 much better (in my processing), and it had decent sharpness, and so gave up on all the Ektars. I suspect that my opinions were not unlike those of the masses -- that the Ektars didn't really give them much advantage over the available alternatives at the time, taken together with their peculiar disadvantages.

 

If I was to pine for lost films in the future, it would probably be for Optima, Reala, and probably the UC's, Provia and Astia. I think that learning to use the best available modern materials (well, including digital too I guess), for which circumstances suit them, is where the state of the art is at; and for now, that includes answering digital's challenge.

 

Of course, I also recognize that for those artists and specialists that have built up expertise and a signature with a particular medium, that the loss of a medium can be immense.

[rowland_mowrey]

Mad;

 

This was one of my arguments with EK. The change in 'palette' if you will from film to film. But, that was often necessitated by changes in technology, or non-obvious faults in the previous product. As I stated above, Ektar 25 had a manufacturing fault, and the early high speed T-grain films did as well. There had to be a change, and that change dictated some changes in color rendering.

 

It is very difficult to change one fault and not affect some of the other good things in a film. It is like squeezing a baloon. You squeeze here and it bulges there. Or it is like trying to eat jello with chopsticks. Very difficult. Color film building is very difficult.

 

See here: http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=008YkK

 

for some interesting commentary.

 

Regards.

 

Ron Mowrey

[fast_primes]

Reuben,

 

Where and when did you pick up the 120 Gold? And how do you like it vis-a-vis Reala?

[madwand]

Ron,

 

My comments were in no way intended as criticisms of EK's or your own work. I guess that such an association is hard to avoid on your part, and I'll try to keep that in mind. My comments were strictly from a consumer's standpoint -- the producer offered the consumer a product, and in my case, the balance of factors were not to my liking, and I preferred others, and whether or not those choices were intentional on the producer's part, or accidents, or technical obstacles, is something that I have no need to even speculate upon. My advice is to other consumers -- to go on to the present and future instead of continuing to dwell on products that are no longer available.

 

The reasons for discontinuing Ektar and other products could be myriad. They might even have been "ahead of their time" and better suited to the present or future for some reasons. But they're no more, and I think that our energies are better spent on getting the most out of the present, and perhaps perserving some of the current films for future usage.

 

It is still good to have you here to let us know some more -- sometimes a LOT more :)

 

Regards.

[rowland_mowrey]

Mad;

 

I did not feel any criticism in your remarks whatsoever. Thanks for making your follow up and nice comment.

 

I fully appreciated what you were saying and often felt that way too as both a worker and a customer of my own employer. It was sometimes frustrating to see the company do some of the things they did.

 

The president of EK, Walt Fallon, once said "Running Kodak is like trying to make an elephant dance", and then went on to say that it was then difficult to stay out of the way when you finally got it do do what you wanted. (that latter is a paraphrase - I can't remember exactly what he said but he didn't seem to have that much humor in person. Very brusque and businesslike when I talked to him.) So it was hard from the top down making decisions that affected some very fine people, the customers. We were told to remain ethical and honest in all of our dealings with customers.

 

Many of us at EK were and are, ardent photographers who have to make painful decisions and compromises each day when designing new materials. That is sometimes very difficult when your profession and hobby coincide like it did for me.

 

So, not to worry. I appreciated and sympathized with your comment, and understood it.

 

Regards.

 

Ron Mowrey

[reuben_c]

FP: I picked it up, how shall I put this... "off" ebay (as opposed to "on" ebay) about a year ago. The seller was having a hard time selling it, and I forget who made the offer to whom, but the end result was a large carton filled with bricks of GA120. (We did get the initial brick or two "on" ebay, tried it, were wowed, and when the opportunity presented itself to buy the rest of her stock, we did it.)

<p>

To be honest, I haven't tried Reala. I can say that the Gold a very nice film. Nice strong saturation, but not overpowering -- not "disneyland" style color rendition. It captures subtleties as nicely as it handles strong color. It just plain looks good; comes close to what I call the "projected slide look."

<p>

At the same time, it does <i>not</i> appear <i>contrasty</i>. I realize that saturation and contrast are to some extent linked, but it's not absolute, and this film in my opinion handles it very gracefully. I wouldn't want to shoot a wedding with it, but it's not <i>that</I> bad as a people film; it's just that there's a certain set of characteristics that are suited to things like portraits and weddings, which are mutually exclusive with the kind of vibrant, saturated results GA delivers.

<p>

On the other hand, I'd probably consider it for a color equivalent to the "strong" portraiture done with ortho film: character studies of men.

<p>

I've heard that Kodak is still rolling an emulsion similar (or identical?) to GA120 in the UK, as a low-end portrait/general purpose film. The name escapes me at the moment, perhaps it will ring a bell with someone else. I don't know how identical it is (I recall hearing "very"), nor do I know if it's still being produced. You might want to see if you could wrangle some from a UK dealer or acquaintence, and see if you like it, presuming it's still available.