8 years in the making
Kodak has been quiet on any pursuits of their r&d department. And that is not a bad thing. We have plenty of companies overpromising or hyping products too early only to disappoint when they are released. I was never a fan of this approach. I have infinitely more appreciation and respect to companies who promise nothing and then one day boom, you have an amazing new product in front of you. It hasn’t always been the case with Kodak of course (think of their Super 8 camera) but this time they got it right. And as I am writing these lines they also made a move on the still photography department and started selling films under the Eastman Kodak belt straight from the US.
Near the end of August, Kodak officially announced the release of their updated line of Vision3 Motion Picture film stocks. I will add links to the full announcement and FAQ in the resources chapter at the end of this blog post but the condensed version is that they managed to remove the remjet layer from the films and add an Anti-Halation Undercoat as a replacement (hence the designation AHU on the new products).
A quick recap for anyone new to cinema films, the remjet layer (stands for Removed by Jet) is a carbon based coating applied to the base side of cinema films to protect them against halation, static electricity, dirt and scratches. The layer is then removed during the ECN-2 development process. Along with all the positive traits that I mentioned above, remjet came with a few nuisances, the main one being the dirt that left behind. By eliminating the remjet layer and replacing it with a more sophisticated structure Kodak leaves us with cleaner negatives while reducing water and energy usage in the labs since there is no more need for extensive pre-bath wash processes.
Emulsion breakdown with the remjet version shown on the left and the AHU on the right.
©2025 Eastman Kodak Company
In order to be able to discard the carbon layer but retain its’ positive attributes Kodak had to restructure the films and come up with a few solutions. They added a new layer in the base side of the emulsion that gives scratch resistant and anti-static properties to the film and they also incorporated the aforementioned anti-halation undercoat this time within the emulsion itself. The base layer remains after development while the AHU is washed away. The new structure also keeps the same acetate base as the previous version and Kodak mentions that if spliced, it will perform the same.
As for the performance of the film Kodak has done extensive internal testing along with customer trials over the past several years and gives us some very positive feedback. They state that “–the product performs equally to the current VISION3 products, yet with cleaner results.” They also add in the FAQ that “Yes, the sensitometry and handling of the new film structure is identical to the current VISION3 product.”
All in all it sounds like a win-win in every way. It’s not a major update, otherwise we would be talking about a Vision4 film, I would say you should think of it more like V3.1. Kodak Is giving us cleaner results in terms of handling, along with with an easier and more eco minded development process while maintaining the same high performance.
Everything sounds great so far and assuming you are thinking what I am thinking then we haven’t addressed the elephant in the room so far. A big benefactor of this update aside from production houses and motion picture labs are photographers and respoolers shooting low volumes of film. Yes, I know that Kodak has kind of banned the sale of Vision3 to photographers but one way or another it seems like respoolers are still getting their hands on it. And with the removal of the remjet layer it further simplifies processing wether you prefer to develop in ECN-2 or C41. You will now have one less step to think about. It also opens up the possibility of developing other color negatives together in the same batch in a more streamlined fashion. There are plenty of photographers who like developing all color negatives in ECN-2 (all the usual Portra, Gold, ProImage etc.) and there are also many who like to develop everything in C41. Whichever your workflow, things will roll smoother from now on, both on the processing side of things and the logistics. But enough with the theoretical part let’s dive in to some examples and see how the films actually perform.
Acquiring the film & Testing Framework
Kodak officially rolled out the new films in August and 35mmDealer was the first respooler to bring the films over in Europe. I was kindly offered to have a look at the new films and I jumped at this opportunity as I love the Vision3 lineup and was really curious to try the new updates. So I want to start with a massive thank you to Fabio for making this happen. But more on that towards the end of the post.
While I was waiting for the films to arrive from Germany I noted down a few things that I was going to look when testing the films.
- Colours & Overall Look
I wanted to see how the films look overall when compared to the previous iterations. I decided that the best way to do that would be to shoot two rolls of a certain film stock from each version side by side and then develop both in ECN-2 as they are meant to be developed. I went with 250D as it has a nice medium speed, accurate colours, low grain and is daylight balanced making it easier to scan and compare.
-Sensitivity
The infamous Cinestill claims. Once the remjet is removed and (especially) when processed in C41 the films become more sensitive to light. Supposedly this is the reason they are marketing 500T as 800T, 250D as 400D etc. Now, I haven’t seen enough compelling evidence and I don’t have a densitometer myself in order to go that deep into the rabbit hole and see if there is any truth in these claims but what I will be doing is to shoot some scenes in different EI or in some cases just +1 and -1 in order to get a broad feel of how it looks like.
-Halations & Handling
Some people seemed confused with the announcement thinking that since Kodak is removing the remjet layer the films will now perform like (again) Cinestills’ offerings. That’s highly unlikely as Kodak replaced the remjet with the AHU layer that has the same purpose when it comes to halations. But nevertheless that’s easy to test with some night shots and at the same time we’ll get to see if there is any improvement in this department.
These are some of the main things that I will be looking at but I am not going to get extremely technical, I also want to just have some fun, shooting these films in a more casual way as I would normally do.
REMJET vs AHU Developed in ECN-2
Starting with the side by side comparison of the two versions of Vision3, I loaded my Canon EOS 5 with the AHU variant and my EOS 50E with the remjet version of 250D. I used the same lenses on all images swapping them between the two cameras. Most of them were taken with either the Canon 24-105 f/4 L or the Zeiss 50mm f/1.4 Planar with the exception of one image taken on the Canon 100mm f/2.8 USM Macro lens.
All the images you are about to see in this comparison were shot back to back with the above setup and the films were developed in ECN-2. The negatives were scanned (or rather digitised for the ones complaining about the libelar use of the word scan) by myself using my Canon 6D and the 100mm f/2.8 USM Macro. The inversion was done in NLP with the same settings across all images.
I set up a portrait in a controlled environment, lighting the scene with two strobe lights. The one on the right had Profoto’s large deep umbrella with a diffusion cloth while the one on the left had a strip softbox with a grid. I asked my partner to hold a colour chart during the shoot to help us visualise any differences. I kept the same aperture and shutter speed for all the images and by changing the light intensity I shot this scene in EI 125, 250 and 400.
I took the measurements with my Sekonic L-308X around her chin, just above the colour chart. While similar they definitely don’t look identical after our first glance. The AHU version looks more consistent when it comes to colour but it has an overall green tint that I found was a recurring thing throughout the roll. The remjet version of the film looks a bit more magenta compared to the AHU but overall a bit more accurate. When underexposed, in the EI400 frame, the colours look quite shifted to magenta and the AHU looks much better in comparison.
Honestly after seeing these images I have some mixed feelings about them and I’m not sure I can draw many conclusions yet. I know the files are flat and that they hold an immense amount of information that you can edit in any way you feel like but in their “raw” stage they don’t look the same as Kodak claims. I triple checked with every step of my process and even contacted my lab to learn more about theirs in order to exclude the possibility of any errors from my side. Both films were fresh in case you wonder and since they were exposed with flash lights there is one less variable in the mix, the shutter speed. Even if the shutter is not 100% calibrated in both cameras, it’s irrelevant in this example since the strobes are doing all the work. Without them the images would be nearly black.
I even did a manual inversion of the main exposure in Photoshop in order to exclude the possibility of Negative Lab Pro tampering with the image. I inverted and colour balanced the image from the new film and then copied all the settings to the other negative. As you can see, the images are not exactly the same. Obviously it’s one small correction away to match the two frames but that is not the point as we are trying to compare the base files. If you have done a similar comparison I’d love to see your results, so feel free to contact me. I’m interested to see your comparisons and tests.
Moving on to the rest of the roll, I shot this scene around sunset time and you can still see the overall tendency of green/magenta between the films. The AHU again looks a bit more consistent between the three images but let’s keep in mind that no matter how quickly I shot these it was a dynamic scene with the sun dropping quickly, so some variation can be attributed to that.
Next up we have the cliché. How could I possibly do a review of Vision3 films without the gas station? I hope this clears up the question about halation, if you are still not sure then the next frame will make it even clearer. The new film performs as good if not better in handling bright lights and the images look very clean overall. The base exposure is great although a little overexposure definitely doesn’t hurt if you want to keep some more information on the dark areas of the scene.
Ignore the colour balance (I know it annoys me as well), and pay attention to the hanging light bulbs to compare the films performance under bright light sources.
Lastly, to finish off this direct comparison I’ll leave you with more photos to look and compare and then we can move on to the other films of the Vision3 lineup. We’ll take a look at 500T, 50D and more of the 250D but this time colour corrected and edited.
Note: The last set of images below (the one with the hummus) is shot with strobe lights. I inverted both frames in NLP as with all the other images but then edited the AHU version in photoshop and copied all the edits over to the remjet file. Again to showcase that I wasn’t able to get exactly the same results even under controlled lighting conditions and identical lenses.
Vision3 500t/5219
After finishing this direct comparison I loaded a roll of 500T AHU on my Leica M2 and tried to shoot it more casually over the course of a week. While shooting the roll I also had my FE with me, loaded with the remjet version of the same film stock and I ended up shooting doubles of many images. Problem is that comparing films on different lenses is not the best idea, plus that my last few rolls of 500T from that 400ft roll I purchased a few years ago has starting to show some signs of aging even if it was stored in the freezer. Nothing really bad just not comparison worthy.
I finished the roll and developed it myself in C41 in order to see how the new variant performs when cross processed. I also threw in the tank a roll of Portra 160 since now there is no need to develop them separately. All the images below are from that roll of 500T, developed in C41, scanned with the usual setup and inverted with NLP. I then edited the images in Photoshop. You will also find a few familiar scenes from the previous rolls, though these were shot a couple of weeks later.
There is not a lot to be said that haven’t already been said about these films. The colours are great, the grain is lower than most if not from all available colour negative films at that sensitivity, the dynamic range and the ability to withstand over and underexposures is unmatched and finally the information packed scans that you get at the end give you endless flexibility in post production. It’s no wonder why so many production companies love this stuff, Kodak is really treating the movie industry with the best they can.
Vision3 250D/5207 & Vision3 50D/5203
The only one I haven’t shot yet is the 200T, though I do have a roll waiting for me. When I do shoot it I will make sure to update the blog and add a few images from that as well. In the course of this past month I also shot another roll of 250D during a trip to Paris and one roll of 50D here in London. I developed both of them at home in C41. The following images are from these rolls.
CLOSING Thoughts
At a time when rumours were spreading about financial instabilities within Kodak and a possibility of ceasing operations, the company not only made a public statement to refute these allegations but also made several announcements that bring a positive aura. First they gave us the updated Vision3 lineup and several weeks later they started selling two photography films straight from Eastman Kodak in the US after more than a decade. Even though there is endless speculation from the film community regarding Kodak and its’ stability as a company, I believe these are good news, and until we have a good reason to believe otherwise I think we should enjoy what is available to us and make the most out of it. After all, would you ever believe that film would still be a thing back in 2008?
As for the Vision3 update, it’s something that most of us didn’t expect or ask for but it’s definitely most welcome. It makes everyone’s life a little easier, it’s better for water consumption and it retains everything we love about in these emulsions. And to put the cherry on top, it even simplifies C41 development, giving you the opportunity to batch process them together with your Portra, Gold or any other colour negative. As long as we can get our hands on them from various respoolers, these are some of the best film stocks we have available today.
Resources
Note: Some of the following are affiliate links. Using them comes at no extra cost to you, but it helps support me with a small commission on qualifying purchases. The films were kindly provided by 35mmDealer for me to try out without any obligation to promote or create content about them.
Vision3 AHU Films in Single Rolls & 30m Spools
35mmDealer - https://35mmdealer.de/en/kategorie/film/
Kodak Announcement & FAQ
Announcement - https://www.kodak.com/en/motion/page/ahu-announcement/
FAQ - https://www.kodak.com/content/pdfs/AHU-talking-points.pdf
American Cinematographer Article - https://theasc.com/articles/kodak-enhances-vision3
My Scanning Equipment
EFH - Essential Film Holder - https://clifforth.co.uk/
Viltrox 116T - https://amzn.to/4bXz7oK
Manfrotto Super Clamp - https://amzn.to/458OrfW
Manfrotto Stud/Spigot - https://amzn.to/3KrH35U
Manfrotto Tripod Head - https://amzn.to/3yJG26G
Cutting Mat - https://amzn.to/3Xa6bWA
Tethering Cable (USB—C to 2.0 Mini) - https://amzn.to/3VsK8cd
Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 Macro USM Lens - https://amzn.to/4c6MbYX
Negative Conversion:
Negative Lab Pro - https://www.negativelabpro.com
How To Build your own Copy Stand for ~$100 - https://alexandermatragos.com/blog/2023/1/15/building-a-copy-stand-to-scan-film-for-100