Kodak Ektachrome E100

When Kodak announced to the world it was bringing back Ektachrome in 2018, I was very pleased. I used quite a lot in the 80’s, eventually changing over to Kodachrome, which I used for much longer. With the demise of Kodachrome I swapped over to Fuji Sensia. As soon as it was made available I ordered a roll from Amazon, the crumpled box above is how it was delivered. It’s been in my film cupboard waiting for it’s day in the sun ever since.

That day came last month, I came up with the idea of tracing the route of a local small river, and thought that E100 might be the ideal film. I loaded it up into my Canon EOS 30, and set out. I had 3 shots left when I got back home, so used up the roll on some flowers in the back garden.

It’s taken two weeks for the lab to process the roll, I assume the longer lab time is due to waiting for a batch to process. To my eye they all look “cool”, as in blue. If I were ever to use another roll I would certainly use a warming filter. The results shown here have had quite a bit of blue taken out and a little red added. Part of that of course could be due to scanning, but the raw images, still look cool to the eye. I wonder if the emulsion is balanced to be projected, i.e. have a tungsten light shone through it, rather than scanned. At this point in history that would seem a curious thought process.

It’s certainly fine grain as claimed on the box, on my usual scan size I can’t see any. I get pixelization before any grain appears. The final downer is that there is a reasonable amount of scratch on the film. It appears to have not been handled with that much care! I’m throwing no dispersions here, a little could be me, although I’ve been handling film a long time, and even when wet, haven’t suffered scratches. All in all, a bit of a disappointment. Given that the film seems to be about 25% more than say Ektar, the processing costs about 30% higher, and takes longer, I’m not sure I’ll be rushing out to buy any more soon. I remain glad that I tried it, and that Kodak make it, and give us the choice!