A few months ago I used the cinefilm Kodak Vision3 250D as photographic film. It was the first time for me to take photos with this film. About my experience and first opinion you can read here. At that time I was left with mixed feelings. On the one hand I liked the results (nice colors, sharp, very fine grain), but on the other hand I was disappointed by the quality of some negatives. Many of them had white speckles and a few were damaged. I was also not happy how the film rolls were bulk loaded, leaving less usable frames (about 32) than actually stated (36 frames).

However, I decided to give it a second try and bought two new rolls of the film. This time I took the photos with the Minolta Dynax 7 and the Minolta XD-7. Latter one I haven’t used for a long time and it was great joy to take photos with it again.

After scanning the negatives and minor post-processing of the images I was pleasantly surprised by the results. Due to the higher light intensity during the Taiwanese summer, the colors are nicer compared to the photos taken in winter. Also no negatives were damaged, but still a few of them had white speckles. I still wonder where these speckles come from. Was the film already damaged? Or did it happen when the film was developed? Currently I have no choice of the lab, otherwise I would try another lab to see if there are different results.

Overall I think, that the Kodak Vision3 250D is still a great film with nice and realistic colors, good sharpness, and exceptionally fine grain. But the quality is still a gamble, and the last pre-exposed frames are annoying, at least for the rolls made by Bokkeh.

The following photos were taken with the Minolta Dynax 7

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reflection of Taipei 101 in a traffic mirror

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food stalls near a night market

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Bao’an Temple (保安宮) in Taipei

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yes, there is graffiti in Taipei

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Beimen city gate after refurbishment  

And these photos were taken with the Minolta XD-7

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old house – not nice, but to me it’s like a bad car accident, it hurts to look, but you just can’t turn away

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Taipei 101

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just some abandoned place

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I have an obsession with traffic mirrors 😉

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Wuxing Street (吳興街) in Taipei

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2 Comments

  1. well, white speckles appear, in my experience, when the labs use old chemistry in the processing machines.
    this old chemistry contains these things that stick to film.
    may be it is the same with the manual processing lab – may be they use old chemistry. i never got white speckles from the manual processing lab around, but always – from the regular c41 labs, that use machinery. as i understand it is too costy to buy new chemistry when you don’t have enough ordres to develop film.
    however for the manual labs that is not a problem.

    1. My guess would be that the white specks are actually where the remjet hasn’t cleaned off completely.

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