I’ll confess that in general, I’m a box speed guy, meaning that I customarily shoot films at the speed they’re rated at on the product packaging, whether that’s an ISO test result (where a film is expressly labeled as something like “ISO 100”), or whether it’s an EI — an exposure index — which is basically the film manufacturer’s recommended shooting speed, but which has not been subjected to the actual ISO testing procedure to establish its speed. But pushing film, which is intentionally underexposing it and then adjusting development times to compensate, is a popular thing to do. Kodak’s Vision3 motion picture films, which are an increasingly popular choice for still photography use, are rumored to handle pushing quite well, and I decided to see for myself just how well.
I’ve never really totally understood the logic in pushing films, preferring personally to just use a faster film to begin with when I need one. But for many reasons, some folks do like to push. I had a particular motive for this test, however.
Before I dig in, I should note that Eastman 5203 is my preferred name for what most people call Kodak Vision3 50D, and what I’ll use going forward in this article. I use Eastman 5203 because it’s a little shorter, easier to type and say, and most importantly, it’s precisely the naming you’ll find on the film rebate (the edge of the film itself) when you examine at after development. But both names refer to the same film, a motion picture color negative film with a remjet coating that has an EI (again, that stands for exposure index) of 50, meaning that Kodak recommends that it be exposed at a camera speed speeding of ISO/ASA 50.
I wanted to understand its push performance specifically because I recently invested in 400 feet of the stuff, which I expect will take me years to get through. And with so much of it here, I might prefer to use what I’ve already bought, rather than go out and buy faster films for the times I may want or need them.
Development Adjustment Required
When you push films, the development step of processing must be extended to compensate for the inherent underexposure. With more time in the developer, there’s more time for the otherwise more weakly exposed silver halides in the film to respond chemically and develop (literally) an image. If you process your films at home, I talk more about the adjustment of development times at the end of this article.
Most labs will not touch Eastman 5203, or any films with a remjet coating, because they’re not set-up to remove it, and running the film as-is through standard C-41 equipment will foul the chemistry. If by chance you do send your Kodak Vision3 stocks to a lab set-up to process them correctly, be sure to note that you’ve pushed the film, and by how many stops. You will most likely be assessed a surcharge. For more on the topic of processing these films, refer to this article.
Pushing +1 (One Stop)
Pushing a film +1 (one stop), or in the case of Eastman 5203 at ISO/ASA 100, is pretty de rigueur, so I decided not to bother testing that myself. All examples of +1 push of 5203 that I saw elsewhere showed excellent results. You can use a web search to unearth countless examples of it.
Pushing +2 (Two Stops)
Pushing a film +2 (two stops), or in the case of Eastman 5203 at ISO/ASA 200, is where I really started my testing, compensating by extending development times by 1.5x from the times I normally use.
While I did not perform side-by-side testing against properly exposed 5203, in my +2 testing, my perception is that there’s little difference in either color palette or grain. Colors were still vibrant and aligned with what I expect from the film, and it remained exceptionally fine grained. There is a slight increase in contrast, which is to be expected; development of highlights and shadows begins to diverge as you push, creating a visible contrast increase. That being said, I don’t find it excessive.
Below are examples from this +2 test, all of which were processed using the CineStill Simplified C-41 kit, using my customary times, increased by the 1.5x factor. (I’ll explain my times at the end of this article.)
Pushing +3 (Three Stops)
Pushing a film +3 (three stops), or in the case of Eastman 5203 at ISO/ASA 400, is almost never done. Development times start to get quite long, and quality can begin to suffer greatly. But once again, I wanted to see for myself.
I didn’t perform a side-by-side test against properly exposed 5203, but I don’t think I needed to in order to see a few things pretty clearly.
First, contrast did increase more noticeably — this is something that goes hand-in-hand with pushing, as I described in the previous section. But the level of contrast was artistically interesting to me, giving the resulting images a more vintage appearance. (It’s notable that to my eyes, anyway, Eastman 5203, and indeed the entire Vision3 film line, has a somewhat vintage palette to start with.)
Secondly, as for color, what I could be seeing here is the increased contrast and my choice of subject matter and lighting, but still, the colors were vibrant but still “read” as quite vintage overall; I’d even say that it’s “cinematic,” but perhaps the fact that these films are made for cinematography, I’m biased.
Third, there is a very slight grain increase, also not uncommon with pushed films, but it wasn’t egregious. In fact, while these reduced-resolution images won’t show it clearly, when I compare them at full scan resolution to images shot with Kodak Ultramax 400 (a natively ISO 400 film), I think the pushed 5203 actually is finer grained.
Quite frankly, I loved the look and the results, although clearly it’s more suitable for some subjects than others. Additionally, because of weather, my schedule, and other factors, I mostly shot this roll indoors, and 5203 is daylight balanced (that’s the “D” in “50D”). Sunlight coming in from windows and the use of an electronic flash in some photos mostly delivered the light whiteness that the film is designed for, but it wasn’t perfect.
In the future, I’d love to do a side-by-side comparison of Eastman 5203 shot properly exposed (ISO/ASA 50) and shot +3 (ISO/ASA 400) just to see exactly how the contrast, color, and grain shift.
Conclusions
Given how much of this film now sits in my film fridge, it’s nice to know that it works and responds well to pushing, even under the extremes of a +3 push. I might at some point be tempted to try a +4 push, just to see how far I can take it, but I wouldn’t hold out high hopes for good results. That said, I wasn’t expecting much out of the +3 push, but clearly, it works — and works rather well. Well enough, in fact, that I fully anticipate doing more of it as I work my way through a few hundred feet of this film stock.
Development Times Methodology
For virtually the entire time that I’ve been processing color film C-41, I’ve used chemistry kits that are ostensibly manufactured by Unicolor, including kits branded as Unicolor, FPP, Arista, and CineStill. In point of fact, I don’t actually know who manufactures the kits, but I’m concluding that they’re basically identical based on the fact that the instructions insert included with all of them is nearly identical in every way, as if created from the same underlying template, but with customized branding — and I know that neither FPP nor Arista (Freestyle) actually mix or package their own chemistry, and I doubt that CineStill does either. Those instructions have evolved somewhat over the years that I’ve been processing C-41, but brand-to-brand, they remain very consistent.
The dry powder versions of these kits have all been (in my experience anyway) two-step kits with a developer, and a blix (combined bleach and fix), further reinforcing my perception that they’re the same underlying kits. And the instructions for them all say basically the same thing, which is that a 1 liter kit is designed to process up to eight (8) rolls of color film using the included instructions and times. They also all note that you can process more by increasing the development times by a given factor.
Since the start, I’ve actually only ever developed the first roll at the recommended time (3 minutes, 30 seconds, at 102°F). Each subsequent roll is developed at a time that is 2% longer than the one prior. So, the second roll is 3 minutes, 34 seconds; the third is 3 minutes, 38 seconds, and so forth. I generally continuing using the chemicals until I’ve processed a total of 16 rolls, occasionally more — double (or more) the intended service life of the kit. (A 16th roll develops for 4 minutes, 42 seconds, by the way.) My results have been consistently good using this method, up to about 18 rolls, which is as far as I’ve pushed its limits. I also expel the oxygen from the chemical bottles using difluoroethane, the ingredient used in “canned air” dusting aerosols, which in my experience is effective at helping prevent the chemicals from oxidizing.
As I mentioned earlier, pushes require more time, and I used the rules of thumb I’ve found repeatedly online, which are a 1.25x time increase for a +1 push; a 1.50x time increase for a +2 push; and a 1.75x increase for a +3 push. You can see the pattern; if I do try a +4 push at any point, I’d be doubling the development time (2.00x). In any case, these extensions are added to the already increased base time of a non-pushed roll, as described previously.
In Closing
As of this writing (December 2023), I’ve not push processed any more than the two rolls discussed in this article, but both have provided negative densities that I expect from normal processing, and my time increases appear to have been successful. Your results may vary, of course, and I will update this article in the future should I discover that the math involved needs adjustment.
Happy picture taking, and good luck with your own pushed film results.
