Fuji 200 or Kodak Gold 200 Film? ...And Why

I was already planning on writing about why I like using Fuji 200 or Kodak Gold 200 but strange things are happening! I received an Email from Jairy C. Hunter of Charleston, SC this morning asking that exact same question. Here's my reply to the Email:

Hey Jairy,

Odd that you picked that as a question today because I was thinking about writing about that in the blog - which film and why. The recent color stuff has all been on Fuji 200 or Kodacolor Gold 200, bought mostly on sale at K-Mart or Walgreens, hopefully a 4 roll pack of 24's for $5.99 or $6.99.

In the beginning we were doing scans off the 4x6 prints, but more recently I've been getting a disc burned when the film is souped. The local Walgreens is my "custom pro lab"...LOL. My friend Todd Frederick is much better at playing computer jock with Photoshop than I'll ever be so he takes it from there, determining final color balance. I'm half color blind anyway.

Pro color negative films generaly have less contrast and the colors aren't as "punchy". Also they're designed for daylight and electronic flash. The amateur films seem to handle mixed light sources much better. Tungsten, sodium vapor street lights, all kinds of flourescents, daylight, electronic flash, and mixtures of them because most people don't even realize that there's any difference.

So that's the secret - cheap Kodak or Fuji ISO 200 film, which I usually rate at about 125, but sometimes in long scale situations the shadows are borderline underexposed. The color balance that Todd comes up with, whether off a scanned print or Walgreens CD pretty much matches the print that the Fuji machine produces.

Actually, I'm thinking about just running your querry with this letter as the text with the Walgreens picture on the blog. [and I did]

Cheers,

Al