Kodak Kodacolor II

Kodacolor II broke Kodak's color negative process in half when it shipped in 1972. Along with the film came an entirely new chemistry: C-41, which ran at 100 F and finished in about half the time C-22 needed at 75 F. The film and the process arrived together, deliberately. Kodak shipped 110 cassettes first to give labs a year to retool, then expanded into 35mm, 126, and 120 in 1973. Kodacolor-X, the C-22 stock it replaced, stayed on shelves another year through the transition.

The 1972 emulsion was rated ASA 80 and tuned around the tiny 13 by 17 millimeter negative of the Pocket Instamatic, Kodak's consumer camera bet of that era. By 1975 the speed climbed to ASA 100 with no chemistry change. That is the rating most photographers remember.

Color is restrained by modern standards. Skin renders pinkish neutral, blues lean toward cyan, greens stay believable. The dye stability of the original coupler set was famously poor; surviving prints from the mid 1970s have shifted heavily toward magenta and yellow, and most snapshot albums from that era look the way they do because of this film. Kodak fixed the dye issue with later emulsions, and Kodacolor VR replaced the line in 1982 with better-keeping couplers.

Grain at ASA 100 is finer than current Gold 100 or any modern C-41 stock would suggest. The film was engineered around the tiny 110 negative, which meant the cubic grain had to be small enough to enlarge from a postage stamp. In 35mm and 120 the grain disappears.

Made in 110, 126, 35mm, and 120 during the production run. No sheet sizes. Anything you find now is freezer stock four decades old, processable in current C-41 but with predictable color shifts toward magenta and a stop or more of speed loss.

Reciprocity exponent is 1.20. Zone Light Meter applies the correction past one second. A metered 30-second exposure becomes about 60 seconds at the negative. For expired Kodacolor II, that correction sits inside an exposure budget that already needs another stop or two of compensation for age. Bracket aggressively.