Kodak VR 100

Kodacolor VR 100 sits in an odd corner of Kodak history. It was the slow speed in the VR family Kodak rolled out in 1982 to push T-grain technology into 35mm color negative, after the architecture had proven itself on the tiny disc-film frames the year before. Kodak gave the 100 speed only three formats: 35mm, 120, and 110. That is narrower than VR 200, which also came in 126, 127, and 620, because the slow speed was aimed at outdoor enthusiasts on full-size cameras rather than at the broad consumer base.

The T-grain emulsion mattered. Up to that point, ISO 100 consumer color from Kodak meant Kodacolor II, a cubic-grain stock that printed cleanly but visibly textured at 4x6. VR 100 cut the grain at the same speed and added Kodak's new developer-inhibitor-releaser couplers for sharper edge effects. Compared with Fujicolor HR 100 of the same era, VR 100 leaned warmer in midtones and held skin tones with less correction at the lab counter. That is the Kodak signature that carried into Gold 100 a few years later.

VR 100 had a short run. Kodak retired the whole VR line in 1986 in favor of VR-G, which became Kodacolor Gold and then Kodak Gold. Photographers who shot VR 100 at the time mostly remember it as a cleaner Kodacolor II and moved on when VR-G arrived.

If you find a cassette in cold storage from before about 1992, expect a magenta shift, base fog, and roughly a stop of sensitivity lost per decade past the expiry date. Rate it at 50 if you want any shadow detail. C-41 still develops it without trouble. Daylight only.

Reciprocity exponent is 1.2. Zone Light Meter applies the correction past one second. A metered 15-second exposure becomes about 25 seconds at the negative, which matters when the film is already losing speed to age and you are working a tripod at small apertures to squeeze the grain.