Kodak Ektachrome E100G Colour Slide Film ISO 100 35 mm 36 Exposures Transparent

Product Information

I’ll confess that this perception is likely little more than the fact that you can look at a finished piece of reversal film and see the image in its finished form, whereas a color negative is a bit enigmatic. And in this age of hybrid processes resulting ultimately in a digital image, things like color palettes, color saturation, contrast, etc. can always be easily tweaked in Photoshop or Lightroom (not to mention outright faked), so this matters much less than it once did. But nevertheless, Ektachrome provides rich, perfectly saturated, authentic color reproduction that’s a joy to look at. In fact, it brings me joy simply to sleeve my medium format Ektachrome in PrintFile sheets, lay it on a light table, and admire the vibrant results. The main direct competitor to Ektachrome, Fuji’s Provia, is also quite nice, but I strongly believe Ektachrome provides superior color reproduction.

E-6 was made available to the public in 1975, but only the pro films were available at the time. There were some color stability ("keeping") issues to verify before the amateur films could be released.Some of the shots below are lab processed, while others were done in my own darkroom. In both cases, they were scanned on my Epson V800, using only the scanner’s native auto-exposure settings. No color adjustments or other enhancements were applied, either during or after scanning. It is also worth noting how well the films scanned. These images were developed and scanned at home, but the files needed very little adjustment post-scanning – which is really a testament to the quality of the film. Fujichrome Velvia 50 film has been a favorite of landscape photographers since it was first introduced in the 1990’s, and was one of the death knells for Kodak’s long standing and more difficult to process Kodachrome.

Other than resolution, dynamic range, and accurate colour rendition, Ektachrome E100 has a few modern features no other film can claim. One that stood out to me immediately after reading the spec sheet is its 80+ year storage stability in a fridge. Before Process AR-5 there was EA-5 for aero film. This is a hot version of E-4 and similar to ME-4 for Ektachrome motion picture film. My first time shooting and self-processing Ektachrome was a whopping four decades ago. Things have changed since my days trying to temper a water bath for the chemistry in the family bath tub; these days, I use an immersion circulator — sometime erroneously referred to as a “sous vide machine” — to temper the water bath in which my color chemistry sits while processing rolls.

1992

The film also has fantastic reciprocity failure stats: according to the spec sheet, E100 can be safely exposed at shutter speeds anywhere between 1/10,000 to 10 seconds with no changes to exposure times.