Kodak Pro Image 100 Review

Our Kodak Pro Image 100 review combines the community's comments, recommendations, sample images and feedback to give you an excellent overview of Pro Image 100 film's strengths and weaknesses!

Produced for Analogue WonderBox subscribers in February 2021 but helpful for everyone wanting to learn more about the 'affordable professional' emulsion from Kodak 😊

According to Kodak, Pro Image 100 “features high colour saturation, accurate colour and pleasing skin-tone reproduction, and good underexposure latitude. It is intended for portrait and social applications, and can be stored at room temperature—even in hot, humid climates”

They also call it a medium-speed film which suggests to me that the marketing text is slightly dated, as there’s no way that in today's market a colour negative 100 speed film could be called anything other than 'slow'!

Pro Image will give you images not quite as sharp or as saturated as Kodak Ektar, and without the unique pastel look of Portra - and with more noticeable grain than both - but you will get incredible quality of film for the price.

(c) Jamie

Pro Image 100 has actually been around for a while - which you can tell from the artwork 😂 - but for two whole decades was only available in South America and Asia markets.

In 2018 it was finally brought to Europe and North America, and it has quickly found a home with people looking for a step up from Ultramax/Gold/Colorplus but without the speciality needed from Kodak Portra or Ektar.

Its formulation is designed for the conditions and the markets of South America and Asia, which leads to an interesting benefit for film shooters.

Specifically: Pro Image can be stored at room temperature in hot and humid climates! This is a total game-changer versus the usual requirements of colour film. Normally our motto for film storage is keep it ‘cool, dry and dark’ - and this film just doesn’t need that same level of care.

This makes it a wonderful holiday film, and you could also keep a couple in camera bags/coat pockets as long-term emergency back-up rolls without worrying they'll degrade!

(c) Richard

Pro Image 100 definitely needs light, like most low ISO films. This is a film that will shine in bright conditions but will struggle in dim/grey conditions. Kodak talk about it being able to cope with underexposure, which is a good thing for an ISO 100 film - but that doesn’t translate into colour saturation. So you may still get sharp details and reasonable contrast in dim light, but the colours wash out pretty fast.

So take this film out on a sunny day and let loose!

Community reviews mention that Pro Image's colour profile makes it pretty easy to scan - which has been confirmed by our in-house film processing lab. It doesn’t require much tweaking to get the results you'd expect - minimising the time needed at your computer to get a wonderful final image.

Personally I love the photos that I've got from Pro Image over the years since it launched in the UK market. One of the first films to go in any of my holiday bags for sure.

Kodak Pro Image 100 is a film with plenty of 'bang for your buck'. As long as you don't need the extra technical perfection of Portra or Ektar, and you're going to be shooting with lots of light, then Pro Image might just be the best film you could use for the situation.

If you're interested in learning a bit more then Hamish's 'First Roll' review on 35mmc is definitely worth a read!

For full tech specs, more reviews, and community sample photos then head to the product pages as below:

If you enjoyed this Kodak Pro Image 100 review and found it informative then check out our other WonderBox film reviews here: https://analoguewonderland.co.uk/blogs/film-review