Kodak Vision2 250D 5205

5205 was the daylight workhorse of the Vision2 lineup. The can a focus puller pulled out when the sun was up and the production needed a stock that would hold shadow detail on a bright sidewalk and not blow out a sun-bleached wall in the same frame. ISO 250 at 5500K daylight balance. Introduced in 2004 and discontinued in 2009 when Vision3 displaced the line.

The credits are heavyweight. Oliver Wood shot The Bourne Ultimatum on Vision2 including 5205. Donald McAlpine used it for The Chronicles of Narnia. Hagen Bogdanski shot The Lives of Others partly on this emulsion, and the film's award-winning look traces back in part to the way 5205 handled the muted East German daylight palette. Many productions picked it for restraint rather than punch.

The defining trait was how the negative reacted to overexposure. Push a stop of light into the frame on a bright scene and 5205 went into a pastel color palette rather than clipping or saturating. The behavior gave DPs a margin in difficult contrast and translated to a softer look than the daylight Fuji Eterna 250D (8563) at the same speed. The Eterna ran cooler and slightly more saturated; 5205 ran warmer with a longer shoulder.

The two-electron sensitization technology that earned Kodak a scientific Academy Award for the Vision2 family produced visibly finer grain than the first-gen Vision daylight stocks it replaced. For visual effects and digital intermediate work the linearity of the curve also mattered: 5205 mapped cleanly to log encoding without compressing in unexpected places.

Kodak discontinued 5205 and the 16mm 7205 in 2009. The Vision3 250D (5207) replaced it with even cleaner shadow handling. ECN-2 is mandatory and rem-jet has to come off first. 35mm and 16mm only.

Reciprocity exponent is 1.10. Zone Light Meter applies the correction past one second. A metered five-second exposure becomes about six seconds at the negative. For outdoor work in normal shutter ranges the math is irrelevant; for tripod work past a second the gentle correction stays minimal.

How the app handles this stock

Box speed: ISO 250. 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.

Frequently asked questions

What ISO is Kodak Vision2 250D 5205?

Kodak Vision2 250D 5205 is an ISO 250 cinema film from Kodak. You can rate it at box speed or push and pull it; set the speed you actually shot and the meter follows.

Is Kodak Vision2 250D 5205 still in production?

No. Kodak Vision2 250D 5205 is discontinued, so it is freezer stock and the secondhand market now. Expired rolls drift slower over time, so many shooters overexpose a stop.

Does Kodak Vision2 250D 5205 suffer from reciprocity failure?

Yes, on exposures longer than about one second. Its reciprocity exponent is 1.10, so a metered 10 seconds becomes about 13 seconds. Zone Light Meter applies this automatically.

What formats does Kodak Vision2 250D 5205 come in?

Kodak Vision2 250D 5205 was available in motion-picture.