Kodak Kodacolor 200 – Stop and smell the roses. But not the dandelions. You’ll get itchy stuff up yer nose.

Some more flower photos on Kodacolor 200 using my Pentax K-1000 and 100mm macro lens.

Side note: Apparently Kodacolor 200 is in short supply. Despite some reservations, the gloomier lighting of winter led me to ask for a roll when I dropped some film off for processing this week. They’re out! I had to settle for Kodacolor 100 and ColorPlus 200 (which I actually like).

Since the Missus and Kiddos don’t like to be photographed (unless they’re photobombing something I don’t want them in), and Doggo won’t stay still long enough for me to get the focus dialed in, this round is still plant-heavy.

Now a parked car will stay still long enough to focus on. As did the Mexican sage (and not heather) reflected in the glass. f5.6, 1/125 sec

These last few flora photos are from the backyard.

This dandelion caught my eye. I like the framing and the way it pops. Even if I do hate the weeds these spawn from. f6.8, 1/125 sec

Then I attempted what probably isn’t my most well-thought out experiment. How can I make a backyard plant feel like it’s part of a more exotic local?

Why, by putting a hardback book cover behind it and then playing with aperture until both are in focus.

I wanted to see how much difference the aperture made, but I also really wanted to end with a photo suggesting a flower on a mountain, a distant fortress behind it.

I think I got a flower in a pot, with a not-so-distant book cover behind it.

f5.6, 1/125 sec, no extension tubes and clearly not going to work the way I intended, so I added all three extension tubes

Well, there’s clearly something there behind this ginormous flower. f8, 1/15 sec, 100mm lens and all three tubes

Oh, it’s some Middle Earth-esque mountain fortress. Or a book cover. f22, 1/2 sec

If I had to do this again, I’d use some sort of scale model or doll house in the background. The lighting of the image on the book cover doesn’t match the foreground lighting and it just looks like a flower in front of a flat image. But I tried.

Coming up: some decidedly less ‘artistic’ and more point-and-shooty pictures of wild and dangerous urban fauna. I barely escaped with my life.

 

Kodak Kodacolor 200 – Walk-About Part 2: Not so yellow as we were led to believe. So much the better!

More neighborhood flora photos from my first roll of Kodacolor 200, all shot on my Pentax K-1000 with 100mm macro lens.

The walk continues, now with some flowers that are distinctly less yellow. Will they feel as flat as the photos in yesterday’s post, which were predominately yellow?

This flower was vibrantly red in real live, so this near oversaturation isn’t an exaggeration. f5.6, 1/250 sec.

At the end of the last post, I postulated that the images there underwhelmed me not because I’m a sub-par photographer but because maybe, just maybe, Kodacolor 200 has problems with yellow. Well, this photo does not feel flat to me. A tad overexposed, yes, but not wishy-washy flat.

So far, one point Photographer, zero points Kodacolor 200 when it comes to yellow.

Pink and orange flowers with good color reproduction, though maybe a bit overexposed. f5.6, 1/250 sec.

Colors are vibrant, contrast is definitely present. We also get decent detail in the shadows. This photo is not flat, and the Photographer now has two points.

Suck it, Kodacolor 200!

Bright colors again, with detail in the shadows. f8, 1/125 sec.

I like this photo. I was focused on the shadow of the stamen on the petal when framing it, but also drawn by the red at the heart of the flower fading to a yellow-orange. No details are washed out, but I do think the meter misled me here (and in the previous images), resulting in slight overexposure. But it absolutely pops.

The day before, I saw a flower like this one fully in bloom. On this day, however, they had all started to curl. f5.6, 1/125 sec.

Believe it or not, this flower was in shade when I took this photo. It is definitely overexposed, to the point that the flower, instead of attracting the eye, feels like a distraction, like the white background of the photographic paper has ripped through the image. This isn’t entirely Kodacolor 200’s fault, though it does suggest that there is less latitude in the highlights, which is a bummer. If the film was more forgiving of overexposure, this photo could have been OK.

At this point, I think I prefer Kodacolor 100 over 200. I had really high hopes when I went on this photo shoot based on the Kodacolor 100 results I’d gotten, but the results haven’t lived up to my expectations.

It’s possible deliberately underexposing slightly would help this emulsion, and my eye for composition might be handicapping it, but overall I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed so far.

Coming up: some more flora and fauna. And if those are insufficient to sell you (and me) on Kodacolor 200, I might have another use case for this film. I just haven’t decided if I like the photos that exhibit that case enough to post them.