Treatment of Ektachrome E100 ?

[Leszek Vogt]

Is anyone using E100 regularly ? I would like to use 5x7 (start batch) and am not sure if I need any compensating filters ? Sure, it's a daylight emulsion, but does it need a kick outside of Pola or ND's ? Also, what would be the best ASA rating for this film ? More than likely I'll not be able to experiment and fine tune o my liking prior to the next excursion. One of my big concerns is shadows.

My intended use will be mostly daylight, but I may have to do some portraits using LED light/s + reflector.

Thanks in advance for any help.

[Dugan]

If there's no way for you to test beforehand, then pretty much all you can do is take 2 shots of each image at "box speed", process one sheet of each, evaluate, and process (push/pull) 2nd sheet accordingly.
Not the best route...
Better to test first with YOUR technique, meter, etc.

[Leszek Vogt]

If there's no way for you to test beforehand, then pretty much all you can do is take 2 shots of each image at "box speed", process one sheet of each, evaluate, and process (push/pull) 2nd sheet accordingly.
Not the best route...
Better to test first with YOUR technique, meter, etc.

Thanks. I might have to just use 'box speed'.....or maybe use ASA 80.

[Drew Wiley]

The quality control of Ektachrome in recent years is so good that there's no need for corrective CC filters per batch. And E100 is very precisely balanced for official 5500K daylight; so if you want to correct for real world lighting color temp imbalances in that respect, you can do so with appropriate warming or cooling filters, though most folks don't bother in daylight. Its box speed is dead on too, true 100 speed; deviating from that is NOT a good idea. The only reason to alter that is if your meter itself is skewed and reads incorrectly. As far as ND grads and polarizers, I've never personally found a reason for them outdoors, and think they're mainly just an annoying fad; but some shooters obviously like using them. (Don't trust all ND's or polarizers to be actually color neutral.) What can be helpful is a UV filter for distance shots, especially at higher altitudes.

In the studio, good luck finding decent LED panels. They exist, but don't come cheap. Likewise, don't expect any common hardware store or home center LED or CFL bulb to be anywhere near as good in color rendering as what the packaging claims. But you can get far better screw-in LED bulbs from specialty suppliers for around $35 apiece. They won't come in 5500K, however; so you'll need to use an appropriate light balancing filter much like was done with tungsten photofloods. A good color temp meter helps, especially in the case of LED panels, which rarely match their advertised range, even if allegedly adjustable for color temp.

Most modern color films certainly don't push as well as they once did, and pull well even less. That should only be a last resort remedial option if you know the actual amount of your exposure error in the first place. It makes far more sense to stick to real box speed and normal processing unless you have some exceptional reason for doing otherwise.

[PatrickMarq]

I have exposed a box of E100 with very good results, ISO 1OO and no filters.
Alex Burke has a blog about E100 : https://www.alexburkephoto.com/blog/...-of-slide-film

[j enea]

What Drew said. E100 is a great film. the only filtering I use is when shooting up in higher altitudes, like the sierra's or yosemite. In those situations I would use an 81A, B or a skylight 1B depending on the scene. in large format I sometimes feel, with today's pricing, that it is very expensive to shoot the same scene twice unless its a magical one time scene. doing testing today is a lot more expensive that it was even a few years ago.

Shoot it a box speed, although that last few sheets I have shot from a new box and a few from 35mm seem to be slightly underexposed, maybe 1/3 a stop. so my next few sheets will be shot at 80

john

[Bernice Loui]

Color transparency films do not appear to be used in ways they once were. This is how color transparency films were tested back in them days..
https://www.largeformatphotography.i...perfect-quot-)

Add to this scanning of film images and software bending potentially to very vast degrees... Given how color films are used today, brings up the question of why color sheet film instead of color digital camera as the primary image recording device.

Color transparency film like Kodak E100 is going to be very close to "box" film speed and color temperature of the light used to form the image to be recorded on E100 will alter it's color balance.. That said, color transparency films are designed and produced for 5000 to 5500 degrees Kelvin. Deviate from this will shift overall color balance.. a film behavior that appears to be very desirable by some image makers.


Bernice

[tgtaylor]

Box speed - no need to test. This was taken with a Nikon 37-70 AF 2.8D with Hoya UV filter at box speed with an F6:

This was shot in the morning which was not the ideal time for this composition as the Sun's position held the moraine at the far left and the canyon's south wall in shadow.

Thomas

[Drew Wiley]

Is that one of the June Lks, Thomas? I'm not used to seeing the water so low; but it sure looks like Carson Pk in the background. I haven't been up behind that in a long time, when I took a shortcut and ran into a couple of off-trail natural lakes so ridiculously full of brook trout it almost looked like an official State fish hatchery.

I've been shooting color neg for quite awhile now, but have made some careful tests with the new E100. I haven't tried it at high altitude yet; but since it seems very similar to previous E100G, I presume the filtration characteristics are very similar. In that case, if I just wanted to cut the effect on sharpness due to high altitude UV at distance, my "colorless" (actually very pale amber) Hoya HMC no.0 worked best. The Hoya HMC 1B skylight, which is a pale pinkish magenta, would cut through haze a bit more, and very slightly alter the color. These days, I generally only travel with three filters for color film, which are appropriate for either color neg film or Ektachrome : 1) A 1B Hoya skylight (sometimes a Sing-Ray KN instead, but only for color neg film); an 81A or KR 1.5 for bluish overcast; and an 81C or KR3 for deep blue shade, which is frequently encountered at high altitude under deep blue morning skies.

Unlike CN film, Ektachrome can yield esthetically pleasing (if inaccurate) results with excessively blue illumination (above 5500K). That's why old Ektachrome 64 was so popular with landscape pros - it had a very evident blue bias. But failure to correct for such color temp discrepancies can come with a penalty to warm hues in the same scene, so I recommend having along at least some kind of mild warming filter in addition to a skylight filter. Of course, these newer Ektachromes are far better overall spectrally balanced than good ole Ekta 64, and have no predominant hue bias, including toward blue. But excess blue often comes with the territory of high altitude lighting anyway; so having a small selection of correction filters on hand is advisable.

[Leszek Vogt]

Thanks all for the input. Patrick, that blog helped clarify some things. Despite effort, the 5x7 (E100) is rather illusive even after calling various film places all over the country. Don't think I could avoid special order (several months ?) and may have to dust off my reducer and use 4x5 film. Hmmm, reality on the ground.....so much for drooling.