So far I have only been talking about color-negative film here, so this Kodak Ektachrome 100 was actually the first slide film I exposed. If you don’t know what the differences between color-negative and slide film are, you can have a look here first.
Processing (E-6) and scanning (Noritsu) was done at urbanfilmlab in Germany. Pictures you see in this article are from one roll of Ektachrome 100 and a sixth of a roll of 5294 E100.
Contents
Ektachrome 100
With Slide film a proper exposure is even more crucial, as its dynamic range is a bit limited compared to color-negative film. Out of the three slide films I tried so far (Ektachrome 100, Velvia 100, Provia 100F), I found Ektachrome to have the best dynamic range though.
The scenes above are all high contrast scenes and I think the film handled those quite well, as we still see details in both, the shadows and the highlights. In terms of colors, this is actually also my favorite Slide film so far, as they look rather neutral to me.
Of course, some people are looking for the opposite of neutral when shooting film these days, but this is definitely a film stock I would buy again.
Slide film is not exactly cheap these days, but here you have an alternative option we will talk about in the next section.
5294 E100
You can also find Kodak E100 5294 film respooled into 35mm canisters. I was wondering if it is exactly the same as Ektachrome 100 so I did some side-by-side comparisons and it does in fact look to me like the filmstocks are identical (in the following example I was apparently not using the same aperture setting, leading to vignetting differences). So if you can find respooled Kodak 5294 E100, you can save some bucks here.
There was one issue however, the roll I tried was in a Portra 400 canister and after a few pictures my F80 picked up on its DX code (it wasn’t fully covered by the sticker), which screwed up all the following exposures. So better be safe and override the ISO setting when using respooled film, otherwise all your pictures may look like this:
At the end of the day, I could only use six pictures from that roll. Ah well…
Further Ektachrome 100 Samples
Further Reading
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Prior to digital, I mainly shot slides, and a large part of those were Ektachrome. I don’t know if it is linked to the lighting conditions, processing, scanning or film age, but I find your Ektachrome colors a bit more muted that what I used to obtain myself. But then your sunny Kodak 5294 pictures look a bit more familiar to me so maybe it’s just a question of light indeed.
I have been wanting to shoot slides again but slide film tends to be very expensive, processing as well and my local photo shop warned me they had mostly bad experiences with their lab due to the low volume and manual handling of slide processing: long delays, varying colors and occasional scratches…
At the end of the day I rationalised that the pictures I used to shoot with slides were better done in digital these days, and that I should stick with b&w film where I can easily do the development myself.
Fair assessment 🙂
Excellent photos, as always, Bastian!
From the 1980s to 2000s, my parents used almost exclusively Ektachrome 64 (plus the version for artificial light, Ektachrome 64T) for all kinds of photography, with full-frame, medium format, and view cameras. It was always a very reliable film which even tolerated difficult working conditions, the heat of the Egyptian desert and the wetness of German winters. In the end it was especially this reliability and the predictability of solid results which distinguished this film for us. We were also very satisfied with the colours and the handling of high-contrast scenes.
Of course correct processing was still crucial; at that time there was an excellent processing laboratory in Stuttgart which (AFAICR) achieved even better results than the official Kodak processing services. Even push processing often resulted in very good results.
The colours of Ektachrome 64 were the colours of my childhood, and for me it’s a happy reunion with childhood memories to browse your photos, Bastian. They actually have a very similar look; if there is a tiny difference then I think Ektachrome 64 showed a tiny little bit more “dynamic range” (as we would say today) and a bit more detail resolution, as to be expected with the lower ISO value.
As a general hint: If somebody considers analogue photography, but is hesitating because of the “low resolution”, then search for a used medium-format camera for use with 120 format film. This gives you a notable boost in resolution and “wow” over full-frame photographs. Printing DIN A4 advertisements from full-frame photos was always tricky/not really satisfying for the trained eye; with medium-format photos the results were noticeably better. So if you are interested in analogue photography mostly because of the feeling, the colours and the mood, a full-frame camera is the correct choice; but if you want to print big, try a used medium-format camera and 120 format film (or, even better, a field camera – but it’s not easy to get sheet film in these days).
Supplement: And yes, after reading the comment by fiatlux, I also wonder whether the colours of Ektachrome 64 were a little bit more vivid and diverse than the ones in your Ektachrome 100 photos, or if I am just deceived by my memories. Of course this could also be a question of the processing and scanning. From our experiences with scanning slide film photos in the 2000s I remember that it is often possible to get out a little bit better colours with finer shades when fine-tuning the scanner settings for individual photos. However this is not that important anymore today, because digital photography offers us much more possibilities for that.