Kodak · ISO 200 Cinema
Kodak Vision2 200T 7217
5217 and its 16mm cousin 7217 occupied the most useful slot in the Vision2 family. Fast enough to handle most interior tungsten work without lighting a room to oblivion, slow enough to hold finer grain than the 320T or 500T it shared shelves with. ISO 200 at 3200K. From 2004 through 2010 this was the can you grabbed when you wanted versatility from one stock for a whole shoot day.
Guillermo Navarro put it in his bag for Pan's Labyrinth, and the night-creature sequences in the labyrinth trace back partly to this stock's tonal handling. Robert Elswit shot portions of There Will Be Blood on Vision2 including 5217. The credit list also runs through Quantum of Solace, Shutter Island, The Expendables, and Doubt. None of those were single-stock shoots, but 5217 carried specific sequences where the lighting favored it.
The two-electron sensitization that defined Vision2 produced measurably finer grain than the first-gen Vision 200T (5274) it replaced. The improvement was visible in the print, not just the spec sheet. Compared with Fuji Eterna 250T (8563), the closest commercial peer at speed and balance, 5217 ran slightly warmer in skin and held tighter grain in midtone density. Compared with the Vision3 200T (5213) that succeeded it, the older stock had marginally less highlight latitude but the difference rarely cost a print.
The sweet spot was night exterior with practical street lighting. Scenes lit partly by sodium-vapor lamps and partly by tungsten interiors looked particularly good on 5217. The grain held together rather than breaking into salt-and-pepper texture.
Kodak discontinued 5217 and 7217 in 2010 alongside the rest of the Vision2 line. 35mm and 16mm only. ECN-2 processing is mandatory and the rem-jet has to come off first.
Reciprocity exponent is 1.10. Zone Light Meter applies the correction past one second. A metered eight-second exposure becomes about ten seconds at the negative. For still photographers loading short ends in 35mm cameras for long tripod work, the gentle curve is a real advantage.
How the app handles this stock
- Box speed: ISO 200. Picker exposes pull/push chips so you can shoot it at any speed you want and the meter follows.
- Reciprocity: Above one second the app raises metered time to the power of 1.10.
- Expired film: if you load an old roll, set the expiry year and storage in the app and the ISO scales for you. Cinema decay rates are baked in.