Film News: The triumphant return of Kodak T-Max 3200

After a week of teasing people on Twitter and going for the viral win, Kodak has finally dropped the bombshell, and it is a lovely grainy bombshell in the shape of T-Max 3200. Happy days.

Back when I was a struggling student in the home counties, I used to shoot my friends bands. It seemed like everyone was in a band that was a clone of either Nirvana/Radiohead/Oasis/Pearl Jam and all of them wanted moody shots for the album cover that was almost never actually finished.
Most of the time there was no money in it, but occasionally some bands would spring for the film (and beer), which is when I would splurge on a roll of T-Max 3200.
You see, T-Max 3200 was brilliant as you could make the band look all gothy and moody for the album cover and still have half a roll that could be shot at a gig or in a poorly lit bedroom studio.

Johnny Guitar Watson – by Thomas Halfmann

That was what was cool about T-Max 3200, it was versatile. It was easily shot at 800 and could even be taken as far as 25,000 for those sugar cube sized grain images that were the rage in zines.
And then it stopped. Kodak went through some changes, and T-Max 3200 was discontinued in 2012. The world lamented and the common theme of ‘the death of film’ was pushed along. And there it should have been the end of the story.

It’s alive!

But fast forward to 2018 and Kodak is a different beast altogether. It is pulling out all the stops, with very successful social media campaigns and sneaky peeks at what they are doing.
And in the last week they have been putting that social media savvy to good use. They started dropping little hints on Twitter that something was up with things like “Do you even push?” and “Film is back in the fast lane.”

There were plenty of people who guessed it correctly, but that didn’t dampen spirits in the slightest. Then today the announced that T-Max 3200 is back. Boom! The film world had a collective mindsplode and yay the rejoicing was great and jolly.

This is wonderful news, not just because there is another film to choose from, but for the overall morale of the film community. This is proof that film is not going anywhere.
If Kodak are prepared to pony up T-Max 3200 out of the blue then you can bet your grandmothers teeth they have got some other tricks up their sleeve. Ektachrome is slated for this year, and supposedly the T-max 3200 will be hitting the shelves in summer of this year. I wonder what else they have tucked away in that absolutely massive portfolio of emulsions (please be Aerochrome please be Aerochrome).

What do you think of Kodak’s choice? And what would you like to shout at them to make next?

JCH