The Excellent Kodak Ultramax 400 Is an Unfortunate Victim of Bad Branding

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A grid of nine photos showing various 35mm film cameras with their backs open, each accompanied by a box of Kodak UltraMax 400 film.

For this Film Friday review, we are featuring one of the sneakiest best and least expensive color films available to 35mm photographers: Kodak Ultramax 400.

Perhaps the first thing to have in your mind when it comes to Ultramax 400 is that it is a victim of its branding. What we mean by this is that Ultramax is really a part of the Kodak Gold family, but since it no longer shares the Gold name, it has not enjoyed the same cult following that the other Kodak Gold films have.

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Also, because it is considered a “consumer” film, we automatically think that it is going to be of lower quality alongside its cheaper price. Then there is the fact that Kodak Ultramax 400 comes packaged in a rather unassuming box and film can. We may like to say that we don’t judge books by their covers, but in reality first impressions matter a lot and if you hold a can of Kodak Ektar and a can of Kodak Ultramax 400 in each hand, you’ll agree that one of them just looks more enticing (Update 2026: now that Eastman Kodak has begun distributing films direct, all their films come in remarkably similar film can designs). Having said all that now, let us tell you that there is definitely wisdom in not judging this Ultramax book by its cover, as there is a lot to love about film.

The film now known as Ultramax 400 wasn’t always called such. It has gone by many names over the decades: Kodak Ultra Gold, Gold Max, Max, and Max Versatility to name just a few. Its simplest name is probably just Kodak GC. The “G” signifies that it is part of the Gold family, with the “C” being a reference to its speed.

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Kodak Gold 100 was “GA”, Gold 200 is “GB” and Gold 400, aka Ultramax 400, is “GC”. Kodak GC first came to the world in the late 1980s along with the other Gold films. At that time, it was known as Kodacolor Gold 400. Revisions to both the emulsion and its branding relabeled the film as Kodak Gold 400 in 1997. It adopted the moniker Kodak Ultramax 400 in 2007. Since its inception, there have been at least nine revisions to the emulsion that we could confirm, and possibly more than that.

There are a couple of conclusions to draw from this history. The first is that Kodak Ultramax 400 is a long-running film that has been tweaked multiple times over the years and, despite its current name, still has strong ties to the Gold family. Second, because of its long history and continued evolution, the Kodak Ultramax of today is not the same as the Gold 400 of yesterday. There are similarities, but if you grew up with Kodacolor Gold 400, expect that there will be differences between that film and today’s Ultramax 400. Why Kodak chose to rebrand the film and not continue to overtly associate it with the Kodak Gold films is unknown to us.

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What is known, though, is how wonderfully this film performs. The best thing about Ultramax 400 is its colors. This film has bright, clean, poppy colors across the spectrum. Blue skies are rich and bold. Reds and oranges jump out. Greens are lush. It handles all vibrant colors seemingly equally well; there are no biases here that we see.

But Ultramax 400 handles subtle colors nicely too. It actually does a pretty decent job with skin tones, unless you overexpose the film, in which case skin tones pick up a bit of a yellow tint. Neutral colors likewise come across quite well with little to no color cast. Given that it is a consumer film, we’d be happy if it did an average job reproducing colors, but Ultramax 400 goes significantly farther than that with its colors.

Shot on Nikon FM2n | Photo by Zeb Andrews

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Perhaps we have piqued your interest with our praise for Ultramax’s colors, but the savvy photographer in you probably next wants to know about this film’s grain.

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Ultramax’s grain is where the film is fairly pedestrian. Yes, it is grainy. There is no getting around that. It is not overly grainy, and we certainly wouldn’t list its graininess as a weakness, but neither is it a strength. This is not Kodak Portra 400, though Ultramax does incorporate the same T-Grain technology as that film. Portra 400 has a Print Grain Index of 37 compared to Ultramax’s 44. Heck, that is almost on par with Portra 800, which has a Print Grain Index of 46. So yeah, this film is almost as grainy as shooting Portra 800. Then again, Portra 800 is considered “fine-grained” for its speed.

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Ultimately, film grain is an aesthetic, and some photographers love it. Other photographers love to avoid it. We would say that Ultramax’s grain has never stood out to us in a bad way. We notice it when we make prints and scans from the film, but have never been turned off by it either. Maybe we are just used to seeing film grain. It is worth adding here that grain in finished images is impacted by several factors, starting with exposure. If you underexpose this film, you will definitely see noticeable grain in your shadows that can take on a green cast and not look so great. So try not to underexpose. Likewise, overexposing by too much will also start to exaggerate grain. Then there is developing, printing, and scanning. Many modern photo lab film scanners work to repress the grain of film images and often replace it with digital noise, so be aware of that factor, too.

To round out Ultramax’s other visual qualities, let us mention that its contrast is also pleasantly punchy. This film has more contrast than Portra does, which helps give it those nicely vivacious colors. It is not as contrasty, nor as saturated, as Kodak Ektar. It sits somewhere nicely between those films.

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As you might expect, it looks pretty similar to Kodak Gold 200 in this department. Also, as you might expect, it has a lot of latitude and tolerance for mis-exposure. Kodak states it will forgive up to two stops of overexposure, but we bet you could go as far as three before you see noticeable effects on image quality. As with most color negative films, the recommended limit on underexposure is one stop. But we’ll share a couple of images one of our staff shot while pushing the film to ISO 1600 in our sample images below.

A person with long dark hair plays a light-colored bass guitar on a stage illuminated by blue spotlights against a patterned backdrop.

A band performs on a dimly lit stage with blue and orange lighting, featuring a drummer, a guitarist, and a bassist.

As if ISO 400 wasn’t a versatile enough film speed, right? Shoot this stuff anywhere between ISO 100 and ISO 800 without having to worry about compensating development and even go as high as ISO 1600 with the appropriate pushing done by your lab.

Despite its rather nondescript packaging and consumer, rather than professional, label, Kodak Ultramax 400 has quite a bit going for it. And this brings us to its last perk: its price. Kodak Ultramax 400 is cheaper. It is not ColorPlus cheap, but it is a far cry less expensive than Portra or Ektar. And this is welcome news to pretty much every film photographer, as film prices have been steadily inching up over the years.

Ultramax is inexpensive enough to be a guilt-free film to throw in that cheap point-and-shoot you just bought at Goodwill. Or it is a great budget film for that European trip where you want to be able to take several rolls without spending tons of money buying film but also don’t want to compromise the quality of those images. It is a great beginner’s film, but it is also a great film for the experienced photographer as well.

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Now the litmus test: would we shoot a wedding with Kodak Ultramax 400? That’s a tough one. The short answer is probably not, especially since Portra is such a great film in that context. But the longer, more nuanced answer is that if we had to, if we somehow ended up in the middle of photographing a wedding with no other film in our bags, we bet that the Ultramax would do just fine. It would produce a bit more punch and with a bit more grit than the smoothness and softness of Portra, but we could see it working just fine even so. Aside from that, though, for everything else, we would have no problems burning through a roll of Ultramax 400.

Care to try a roll for yourself? Hit up our website or stop by our shop today and we will have Ultramax on sale per our usual Film Friday routine!

This story is brought to you by Blue Moon Camera and Machine in Portland, OR. Blue Moon offers film, development services, printing, and even an ever-rotating line of film cameras and lenses. PetaPixel Members receive 10% off all lab services with Blue Moon: Join today!

Image creditsPhotos by Zeb Andrews, Renee Heister, and Bret Van Horn, provided courtesy of Blue Moon Camera and Machine.

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