Update (September 2017): There are new thoughts and photos about Kodak Vision3 250D here.

The Kodak Vision3 is a negative film originally made for motion pictures. The Taiwanese company Bokkeh repacks the original film rolls into 35mm film cartridges, which then can be used in photographic cameras. Besides a variety of Kodak cinema films, they also offer films from Fujifilm. Here is a link (in Chinese) to some of their products. You can also find some of these films on ebay.

Photograph of the roof of terminal 1 Taoyouan International Airport Taiwan. Taken with Olympus 35DC camera using Kodak Vision 3 film.
Roof of Terminal 1 of Taoyuan International Airport [Olympus 35DC]

About a year ago I tested the Fujicolor Reala 500D. But the results were not overwhelming. Probably the film was already expired. This time I did better research and found that Kodak is still manufacturing the Vision3 films. So I decided to give it a try, and I hoped that there was a fresh film in the cartridge.

Image of trees in Daan Park in Taipei City, Taiwan. Photo was taken with Olympus 35DC camera and Kodak Vision 3 film.
Daan Park in Taipei [Olympus 35DC]

Costs of Kodak Vision3 in Taiwan

Luckily the Vision3 is really cheap in Taiwan. One roll costs only 100 NT$ (about 3 €), which is much cheaper than a regular color negative film. The downside is, that the film needs to be sent to a special lab, where the rem jet layer can be removed. For me it took one week to get the negatives back, which is quite long compared to one hour for regular photographic film. Also the costs for developing are double as for regular film. However, the total costs are still lower than buying and processing a regular film. This makes the Kodak Vision3 a quite interesting alternative to regular film.

Photo of a street in Taipei City. Photo taken with Minolta Dynax 505si super and Kodak Vision 3 Film.
Liuzhangli area in Taipei / Photo was taken against the sun light [Minolta Dynax 505si super]

The table below shows an example of the costs I encountered.

Kodak Vision3 250DKodak Ektar 100
Price in Taiwan*100 NT$ (~3.00 €)250 NT$ (~7.40 €)
Developing (no scanning)130 NT$ (~3.80 €)60 NT$ (~1.80 €)
Total costs230 NT$ (~6.80 €)310 NT$ (~9.20 €)
*If the film is ordered from overseas, shipping costs will probably consume all the price benefit.

I used two rolls of film in two different cameras (Olympus 35DC and Minolta Dynax 505si super) for this test. I took the photos mostly on sunny days, but some of them were taken on cloudy and rainy days.

Small temple next to a busy road in Taipei City.
Small temple on Keelung Road in Taipei [Olympus 35DC]
Modern office building in Taipei City. Photo taken with Olympus 35DC and Kodak Vision3.
Office building at Keelung Road and Xinyi Road intersection in Taipei [Olympus 35DC]
Scooter in a lane near a nigh market in Taipei. Photo taken with Olympus 35DC and Kodak Vision3.
Small lane in Taipei [Olympus 35DC]
Lane with fancy shops in Taipei City.
Shopping in Taipei Dunhua [Olympus 35DC]
Railway yard with historic roundhouse in Changhua, Taiwan.
Roundhouse in Changhua [Minolta Dynax 505si super]
Fisherman taking out nets from fish pond.
Fishfarm near Tainan [Minolta Dynax 505si super]

I already published some more photos in an earlier post here.

The results are quite nice. The film is very fine grained, and when exposed properly, the grain is hardly visible. But if it is underexposed then the grain is very prominent.

Church in Taipei City.
Not well exposed photo. The area on the right side with the tree is very grainy. [Olympus 35DC]

One thing I like is that the colors are exactly reproduced and well balanced. Colors are neither oversaturated nor muted. For me they are just right. There is also no particular color that pops out. On a day with bright sunshine the colors look really great. However, the downside is, that on a grey and rainy day, the colors also look grey.

Drawbacks of using Kodak Vision3

In my case there were unfortunately some drawbacks using this film. I am not sure what the reasons for some of the failures were.

Two frames were damaged and had this brownish crescent-shaped thing on it.

Photo of Taipei 101 and Nanshan Plaza under construction.
Damaged frame. Not clear if the film was already damaged or if it happend during processing.

Problems with rem jet layer removal

And most of the frames were full with white speckles. They are very noticeable in the blue sky. Luckily in other parts of the frames they are not that obvious. I am sure, that this is no dust from scanning, because all negatives I scanned before and after never had this kind of speckles. Some are probably dust on the negative or glass plate of the scanner. But not all of them. Not sure where they come from. Maybe the removal of the rem jet layer was not well done? With some work it would be possible to remove the white specs in post processing, especially from the sky which is quite uniform.

Bus on the street of Taipei City.
Frame with white speckles in the upper part and damaged part in the upper right corner.
Some old buildings in Taipei City.
Another frame with sky full of white speckles.

Lost frames due to pre-exposure

Another slightly annoying thing is, that the company is a bit stingy and packs just enough film for 36 exposures into the roll. But the problem is, that it is very difficult to get all 36 exposures. Usually the first two or three frames are lost when loading the film.

Strip of color negative film.
Beginning of film with three frames not exposed due to winding.

And the last frames (in this case 2 frames) where already exposed from bulk loading. So that the last two photos on each roll are lost. The last frame was completely lost and from the next-to-last frame about 1/3 was pre-exposed, so that I only got 2/3 of the image.

Negative film strip.
End of the film with pre-exposed last frames and lost image.
Skyline of Taipei City with Taipei 101.
This how the almost last picture from a roll looks like
Taoyuan International Airport roof of terminal 1.
And this is from the second roll of film.

Since it happend on two rolls of film and both patterns look quite similar, I think that this is what to expect from each roll of film. Now I also know that this is not a real 36 exposure film but more a 34 or even less exposure film. To be safe, it would be better not to expose the last two frames.

Pros

  • cheap
  • fine grained
  • very good color reproduction

Cons

  • has to be sent to a special lab to remove the rem jet layer
  • no information about expiration date of the film
  • bulk loading seems to result in less usable frames than actually stated

Conclusions about Kodak Vision3 cinema film

The Kodak Vision3 is an interesting alternative to normal photographic film. I like the color reproduction a lot, especially in bright sunlight. The colors are well balanced, saturated and still look natural. For an ISO 250 film it has very fine grain. But the film also has some drawbacks, which should be kept in mind. If you can live with them, then this is a good film to have some fun. But if you are looking for good and consistent results, better choose a regular photographic film. Despite the drawbacks and ‘quality-lottery’ I ordered two more rolls and wait now for the summer to explore the colors of this film more 🙂

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6 Comments

    1. Hello Khürt, thank you for sharing your thoughts and your images. To me they look okay, but a little bit underexposed. Did you received the scanned negatives like this or did you get them scanned with a flat color profile and you had to adjust the colors by yourself? The color cast in the skin tones could also be a result of post processing of the scanned negatives.

      1. Hi Alex, the film was developed and scanned by Old School Photo Lab. I increased the exposure slightly in Lightroom but left everthing else the way it was scanned.

        https://oldschoolphotolab.com

        That first roll was exposed in May over a few cloudy days but uou may be right. The light-meter in the XD-11 may be off. I plan on shooting my second roll in my Minolta X-700 for comparison.

        I will also try a Boutique Photo Lab.

        https://www.boutiquefilmlab.com/cart/

        I don’t have any local choices for developing this film.

        1. Hi Khürt, finding a lab that is able to properly develop the film is the biggest challenge. This is the reason why I stopped using any cinema film with remjet layer. The labs in my area were not able to develop them properly. I hope you will find a good lab that produces good negatives and scans and you can enjoy using this film.

  1. Hi!
    I wanted to ask about the ISO when using this film. What would you recommend for a beginner?

    1. I used ISO 250. But it has been a long time since I used this film, so I don’t remember if that was an ideal setting or not. You can also play around with different ISO settings and with slight overexposure to see what gives the best results.

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