1990's Kodak Marketing Material - E6 Image Examples

[ethanfg]

I reached out to a fellow forum member who had some binders of Kodak marketing material from the 90's, hoping to have them scanned and posted as a reference of what is possible with E6 film. These images are from an era when it had to be done properly first sheet of film and lots of work went into prep getting everything proper. There have been many discussions on LFF over what is possible and what simply does not happen with color transparencies. The intent with posting these is to provide a reference for what is possible with transparency film, as these are representative of the kind of commercial work once done decades ago. I will be linking full resolution files in the near future after I find somewhere to host the large files. I will be posting the smaller format images as well in the appropriate section.

All images were scanned on a Howtek 4500. The only post-processing made was setting black and white point.

Click on the images to see 25% of the full resolution images.

[Martin Aislabie]

Gosh, these are impressive.
All done the hard way by mastering your materials and working systematically through your lighting set-ups.
No post shoot PS to pull everything together.
Martin

[AeroTechnika]

Nice.
What size were the original transparencies?

[ethanfg]

Nice.
What size were the original transparencies?

These were all 4x5 except for the portrait which was done on 8x10.

[Mark Sampson]

Until the decline of print media turned the advertising world upside down, a lot of photographers made good livings doing just this kind of work.
Lots of emulsion testing, color correction filters, Polaroid test shots, and "rush" clip-tests at the lab... "push this one 1/4 stop!"
There was a lot of money to be made, plenty of competition, and not a few very demanding art directors to pick things apart. So technical perfection was the ideal, often enough achieved. Of course in those days your deliverable was the large-format color transparency, so you had to get it right in the camera.
These are quite beautiful to look at now, the esthetic is a bit "hyper-real" to 21st century tastes perhaps, but Kodak chose the images to show off their Ektachrome film. They had made big improvements in their emulsions from the mid-70s onwards, and had competition from Fuji to boot. A moment in time!

[Alan Klein]

Wonderful shots and great scanning. I'd love to see what an Epson V850 scanner could do with them?

[ASA1000]

Me? I was a Fuji guy, but either way, somehow, with fresh E-6 chemicals, an image always looked best. Then print one on Cibachrome .....

[sharktooth]

In the good ol' days, when print media ruled (magazines, brochures) for advertising, the cost of making plates and doing production runs, far outweighed the comparatively piddly cost of making the photograph. It made sense to spend some effort in getting high quality originals to work from, since that would make the rest of the process that much easier, and would reduce the overall cost.

Nowadays, the plates are laser etched from computer software, so it's now much easier to work from digital files. Film can still produce great results, but it's going to have to be scanned and digitized now. In earlier times you had to make 4 color plates through a photo lith process, so having a large, and high quality film original, was vital. The photo graphical expertise of these printing operations is mind boggling, compared to the much simpler expertise required for taking a photograph.