I needed some color film to shoot on Cinco de Mayo, so I dug around in the film drawer of the refrigerator and turned up a roll of Kodak Professional 400UC. There was no box, so no date. I looked it up and found that 400UC was discontinued in 2009! I loaded it in my Vivitar Ultra Wide & Slim, which would mean a shutter speed of 1/100 at f11. There was no officially scheduled event for the day in Old Town, but I was pretty sure some of the old car guys would show up.
Since I didn't know if anything was actually being recorded on the film I decided I might as well shoot the whole roll while walking around Old Town, looking for anything bright and colorful. My Cinestill C-41 had already processed at least sixteen rolls; so I give the 400UC some extra time, eight minutes at 95C. The negatives needed a bit of color and levels adjustment, but I thought the old film wore its age well.
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I came back to film just as Kodak was busy killing a bunch of stocks like this one. I had no idea all the films available in their pro line. I've heard of several now, and have been given some by kind friends here and there, but this one is new to me.
This may be the last time I shoot color film.
1/100 at ƒ/11 worked well for this 400UC. As Jim noted, Kodak discontinued a pile of their pro C-41 films. I could never keep them straight, and they kept changing the names, sometimes in only a few years. For my use, I liked:
1. Ektar 25, which was super high resolution. They renamed it Royal Gold 25 and then discontinued it.
2. Gold 100. It was an "amateur" emulsion but was fine grain and scanned well. it just plain worked everywhere. Then around 2000 it became Bright Sun 100.
I liked the Bright Sun 100 better then the new Gold 200, which to my eye is too grainy. I've recently bought some Bright Sun, which I hope is still viable. The eBay vendors find these film lots in basements or estate sales, so they don't know the storage conditions. But you have to ask, which is a waste of everyone's time. They will never state in their ads where they bought the film.
I think we, at least I know I, took the wide variety of wonderful Kodak films for granted. Seeing great images from well expired film like this reminds us of how good Kodak film was.
Uncertainty about storage conditions are often a factor with expired film. I had no idea about the UC 400's history; my own contribution was several years at the back of a drawer. I was surprised that a fast film had held up well and also that there was quite a lot of recoverable detail in both highlights and shadows. In the end it is likely a good idea to maintain a positive and optimistic attitude as expectations of failure will likely be realized.
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