It had to be tried!

Mr Badger

Mr Badger

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I've been wanting to try some of the new Kodak Ektachrome now summer is here, but it was out of stock at 7dayshop (who had it for sale it at the best price I could find including postage). I've been re-checking their website on a regular basis and found it's back in stock today, so pressed the buy button on a twin-pack. https://www.7dayshop.com/products/k...ansparency-slide-film-value-2-pack-1884576-x2

I hope it's a nice as I remember it; I've not shot a roll of slide film for almost 20 years! Time to test that 35 zone metering system on my EOS 30v. :)
 
niko said:
look forward to seeing your results mate.
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So do I... unfortunately it seems it takes a bit longer to get E6 film developed, hi-res scanned and the slides mounted than it does to get a simple dev and scan of 35mm print film. I'm hoping I might get the slides and scan CD back this week, but it might be early next week before I find out how the film, me and the camera have gone on! :tumbleweed: Wish me luck. :)
 
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Almost afraid to mention it, but I've just had an email from Analogue Wonderland saying they are selling Ektacrome for £10 a roll until 11 August, and have worked out a processing deal at a fiver from Silverpan. I haven't dealt with them and don't know any more details. EDIT: Same price as 7dayshop for 2 rolls once you add postage. :eggface:
Part 2 - A cracking deal on Ektachrome 35mm. Just £10 per roll! This is a short-term discount to help you experiment and have fun with Ektachrome, must end 11th August.

Part 3 - A special processing deal from our wonderful friends at SilverPan Film Lab! We know that many larger labs (including our own partner Digitalab) are unable to process E6 regularly - but SilverPan can.
So in every order from Analogue Wonderland that contains any Ektachrome across the duration of the competition, we will also place a special discount card from SilverPan for Ektachrome processing for just £5 per roll. Full details for how to claim will be on the card.
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Peter B said:
Almost afraid to mention it, but I've just had an email from Analogue Wonderland saying they are selling Ektacrome for £10 a roll until 11 August, and have worked out a processing deal at a fiver from Silverpan. I haven't dealt with them and don't know any more details. EDIT: Same price as 7dayshop for 2 rolls once you add postage. :eggface:
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Easily done... people tend to forget the cost of postage (both to, and from, the lab) and it's the end cost that counts. As for the processing cost (when I add the optional high-resolution scan with colour balancing, etc., mounted slides and return postage), it seems to be about the equivalent of what I've just paid. How the service compares between the two labs I don't know.

So there you have it, to receive a roll of the new Ektachrome E6 slide film it's going to cost you about £11.50 per roll from the cheapest suppliers we know of. Then there's the film development/processing costs; and if you want a high-res scan of your photos on a DVD, and mounted slides to project (probably the whole point of slide film for most amateur film photographers) then it's going to cost you around the £24 mark to get your film developed and sent back in those two forms.

So, all in, it seems that it's currently around £1 per photo to enjoy (hopefully) your 36 photos on DVD (at a resolution where the quality should hopefully be apparent) and to be able to project them on a screen (providing you have the necessary slide projector, screen, and a large enough darkened room required to enjoy your projected slides).

Is this cost worth it? I'll let you know when I finally get my slides and DVD back (probably best to allow a 2 week turn-around if going for process, scan and mounted slides). Will shooting the new Ektachrome E6 be a regular occurrence for me? I'll let you know when I finally get my slides and DVD back, and see how my flatbed scanner copes with the slides in comparison to the high-res scans on the DVD (to see if I can reasonably keep the cost down by home scanning). As I said, I'll keep you posted. :whistle:
 
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That puts Ektachrome at the same price (near enough) as Kodachrome was in the 1960s when I first used it, when inflation is allowed for. Possibly a little cheaper.
 
StephenM said:
That puts Ektachrome at the same price (near enough) as Kodachrome was in the 1960s when I first used it, when inflation is allowed for. Possibly a little cheaper.
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That's what I was thinking; probably the reason why most 35mm SLR owning amateur photographers probably only took 1 or 2 rolls of Kodachrome (more likely 24 exp than 36) over a whole fortnight's holiday abroad in the late 60s/early 70s!
 
I was the exception then; I used about 10 36 exp Kodachromes in a week.

But in those days I wasn't unemployed as I am now:(. And I can't get Kodachrome in 5x4.
 
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Snip:
StephenM said:
And I can't get Kodachrome in 5x4.
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We can't get Kodachrome in any format, and thereby hangs the problem! :( That's why I'm hoping the new Ektachrome might be something of a herald; however, I suspect the cost of shooting it might limit sales, in which case that would probably put the tin lid on any plans they may have had to introduce a Kodachrome replacement.
 
I was never a big Kodak user for slides, originally buying the cheaper Agfa CT18 and CT21 before changing to Fuji. I seem to recall Heather Angel saying that Ektachrome was the only film to accurately represent bluebells, so perhaps its accuracy was a big factor in its success back then?
 
I always found Ektachrome a little too pastel and washed out for my tastes - rather as if someone had pulled back the saturation slider in PhotoShop. I used Kodachrome exclusively. And I found I still have some in 35mm, which lay hidden in the bottom of a freezer. I'd be open to offers, but would expect a ridiculous amount to part with it, although I might swap a roll for a Rolleiflex...

Anyway, apart from any other considerations, that makes me personally uninterested in Ektachrome.
 
StephenM said:
I used Kodachrome exclusively. And I found I still have some in 35mm, which lay hidden in the bottom of a freezer. I'd be open to offers, but would expect a ridiculous amount to part with it, although I might swap a roll for a Rolleiflex...
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Other than to a collector of unopened film boxes, it's virtually worthless as there's nowhere that develops Kodachrome as colour slide film these days. The last lab closed its development plant and that was it. It was a complex process using special machines and chemicals, neither of which are available anymore. Some labs can develop Kc as black and white, and one or two people have had some partial colour results from it, but no one has been able to consistently replicate 'factory spec' results from it. So I wouldn't even bid you £2 for a roll.
 
Can you still get Kodachrome?
Moreover, could a roll even be processed today?
 
Free delivery from Analogue Wonderland for orders over £50. I went for 6 rolls and got a 5% discount code for being a first time customer and subscribing to their newsletter. Worked out to £57 total, or £9.50 a roll, delivered. One to play with, five in the freezer.
 
Nomad Z said:
Free delivery from Analogue Wonderland for orders over £50. I went for 6 rolls and got a 5% discount code for being a first time customer and subscribing to their newsletter. Worked out to £57 total, or £9.50 a roll, delivered. One to play with, five in the freezer.
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Let me get this straight.
You're buying Kodachrome 64 including processing for £9.50 a roll?

I did not know anywhere still developed the stuff let alone sold it.
 
soupdragon said:
Let me get this straight.
You're buying Kodachrome 64 including processing for £9.50 a roll?

I did not know anywhere still developed the stuff let alone sold it.
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Not Kodachrome, Ektachrome. Kodak have just reintroduced it.(y)
 
To avoid any further confusion, Kodachrome is extinct, it is no more, bereft of life it rests in peace, it has shuffled off this mortal coil and gone to join the choir invisible... it is a dead film.

soupdragon said:
I did not know anywhere still developed the stuff let alone sold it.
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They don't, at least not as colour slides to factory spec with all those nicely saturated colours and distinctive black shadow areas... all we have left are the memories of how nice Kodachrome used to be.

Kodachrome 64 taken August 1983 with a Canon A1 and 50mm f1.8 lens.
 
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In my life of constant excitement, I have been leafing through old copies of Black and White Photography magazine before they are recycled. In the August 2008 edition, Kodachrome 64 was priced at £9.45 for a 36 exposure process paid. Almost unbelievably, Fuji Sensia 200 - 36 was the same price process paid.
 
I think Kodachrome is the only slide film that would draw me in if it were ever re-released. I have tried Provia and a little Velvia but I still favour colour negative.

I am watching this thread to see how your Ektachrome shots turn out. The examples I have seen online do look amazing, but I am still not up for really investing in it myself just yet. I was tempted for slide for Vietnam but chose to go colour neg and little B&W.
 
Mr Badger said:
and see how my flatbed scanner copes with the slides in comparison to the high-res scans on the DVD (to see if I can reasonably keep the cost down by home scanning). As I said, I'll keep you posted.
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There are so many variables in this workflow that the pitfalls might be too many. A colour reversal frame can easily have a density range that's challenging for a dedicated film scanner, never mind a flatbed. And if jobbing the scanning out to a lab, whatever they use, I suspect that the process will be automated, and the judgements and adaptabilty of manual control won't be available. It'll be interesting to see your results.

A decent analogy with the last might be automated lab prints from colour (neg or pos) film originals. The apparatus, when stretched by a difficult original in particular, tends to be incapable of knowing what to do, and is in any case unable to know the photographers intention, and the result can be a flop. I largely gave up having lab prints done from (colour) film years ago for this reason.

Where creative variables are involved, I'd do things in-house as much as possible, not for economy but to have control over processes. And this involves preparing the file that is sent to print, whether its origin is film or digital.

But I'd guess that the flatbed route will be a fudge whatever, unless the originals are all low-contrast, and neither will its scans be equal to the resolution of the film in question.
 
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Well, I've had the email from the lab this afternoon to say my order has been dispatched, so with a bit of luck and Royal Mail performance I might have the slides and scan DVD back tomorrow (Saturday). It's not quite got the 'one more sleep' status of Xmas Eve and Birthdays, but I'm rather looking forward to it... and that's an experience you don't get with digital photography. Sometimes I think it does us good to wait. :)

As for colour print film, I think the nearest currently on the market that has something of the look of Kodachrome is Ektar 100. Choose a sunny day and get the exposure spot on and it's got that look, but quite a bit more 'dynamic range' where shadows are concerned.

Having sung the praises of Kodachrome, the 1960s and 70s stuff seems to be a bit of a tricky film to scan with home scanners, whereas the stuff I shot from the early 80s onwards seems to produce much better results from my flatbed scanner (as the example above shows). That's one of the things I want to try with the new Ektachrome; see how my flatbed film scanner compares to a high-res Noritsu scan done by an experienced lab.
 
droj said:
There are so many variables in this workflow that the pitfalls might be too many. A colour reversal frame can easily have a density range that's challenging for a dedicated film scanner, never mind a flatbed. And if jobbing the scanning out to a lab, whatever they use, I suspect that the process will be automated, and the judgements and adaptabilty of manual control won't be available. It'll be interesting to see your results.

A decent analogy with the last might be automated lab prints from colour (neg or pos) film originals. The apparatus, when stretched by a difficult original in particular, tends to be incapable of knowing what to do, and is in any case unable to know the photographers intention, and the result can be a flop. I largely gave up having lab prints done from (colour) film years ago for this reason.

Where creative variables are involved, I'd do things in-house as much as possible, not for economy but to have control over processes. And this involves preparing the file that is sent to print, whether its origin is film or digital.

But I'd guess that the flatbed route will be a fudge whatever, unless the originals are all low-contrast, and neither will its scans be equal to the resolution of the film in question.
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The lab I sent my film to apparently 'balance by eye all images for colour, density and contrast, ensuring consistent results frame to frame, roll to roll'. I'll also have the mounted slides to project and compare. As I said, I'll keep you posted.
 
Nothing like a good slide film for 'snap' and vigour. But too much soot in the shadows in the traction engine result above.

Neg film is more forgiving tonally ...
 
The shadows in my Ektachrome scans have been pretty unforgiving (e.g the shot below). Mine were home scanned on my Plustek using Silverfast and I felt I got somewhat inconsistent results, so I'll be interested to see @Mr Badger's lab scans. None of my scans are what I'd describe as awful, but I was happy with far fewer than I'd have hoped. The roll of HP5+ on the other hand gave me solidly consistent results from the same camera on the same day.


FILM - Engines and caravans by fishyfish_arcade, on Flickr
 
That's the thing with slide film, it can be pretty much be 'on or off' when it comes to highlights and shadows. It can be an unforgivingly cruel mistress if things are a bit out, particularly in contrasty light (as the early morning shot taken at the steam rally above shows).

In more even lighting the results were more even, the following is a home flatbed film scanner rendition of a shot from the same roll of Kodachrome 64 film as the traction engine. However, the shadows were still as black as pitch... but that was part of the classic look Kodachrome gave, plus pretty amazing sharpness and detail:

 
The slides and scans arrived back this morning and I've been busy pixel peeping, holding slides up to the light to look at them and scanning. My first impressions are that the colours seem quite accurate without being too saturated, so certainly more the look of traditional Ektachrome rather than the well saturated colours of Kodachrome (seen above).

It seems very low grain, with good sharpness; however, there's still the issue of dark looking shadows that goes with the territory of slide film. I was glad of the 35 zone metering system on the Canon EOS 30v I used to try the film.

I've not played about to see how much shadow detail can be recovered in Photoshop, so that will have to be for another day. Anyway, without further ado, here's some results from a high-res (80mb) Noritsu lab scan, resized in Photoshop Elements to 30cm max width or height at 300dpi and saved at 11, to give file size of just under 5mb. Click on the photo to view in Flickr at full size.

Nice detail, colour and sharpness:
12230008a by J White, on Flickr

But watch those shadow areas in contrasty light
12230013a by J White, on Flickr

The detail is still there in the shadowy areas if you look for it
12230016a by J White, on Flickr

Overall it seems to give very nice looking results and the fine grain preserves good levels of detail, skin tones look realistic too.
12230025a by J White, on Flickr

12230010a by J White, on Flickr

12230023a by J White, on Flickr
 
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So how does it scan, would a home flatbed film scanner make a reasonable job of scanning this film? The following two photos were produced straight from an Epson V600 Photo flatbed, scanned at 3200 dpi with standard settings (including unsharp mask) but no ICE on, or Photoshop tweaking (other than resizing as above), etc. I don't think they've come out too bad at all really.

img496 by J White, on Flickr

img497 by J White, on Flickr

So rather similar to comparing the results between a home scan and a Noritsu high res scan of an easily scannable print film such as Kodak Gold 200, with no apparent difficulties, such as those encountered when trying to scan vintage Kodachrome slides.

I'll see how the slides look when projected on a screen, but I'll have to wait till it goes dark tonight before I try that, so I'll report back later.

I hope the above has been informative; let me know your thoughts, and your own experiences if you try the new Ektachrome. (y)
 
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I'll add a few more of mine which were scanned on my Plustek 8100 with Silverfast for comparison. Like you, I found that the lack of grain and sharpness are excellent, but the shadws are muddy and lacking in detail/ The shots below have been tweaked in Lightroom and all have had their shadows boosted somewhat. Some of them look pretty nice, bt others look a little strange (to my eyes, at least) where colours are concerned. I've done some manual correcting but some of them still look off.

The ones below are all not too bad, I don't think, #1 being the best, and #5 looksing bit dodgy.

These are all from my Nikon F80.

1

FILM - Fire Engine Red by fishyfish_arcade, on Flickr

2

FILM - Picnic set by fishyfish_arcade, on Flickr

3

FILM - Flying the flag by fishyfish_arcade, on Flickr

4

FILM - Popular by fishyfish_arcade, on Flickr

5

FILM - Steam Rally 2019 Ektachrome scans-12 by fishyfish_arcade, on Flickr

6

FILM - Steam Rally 2019 Ektachrome scans-13 by fishyfish_arcade, on Flickr

7

FILM - Steam Rally 2019 Ektachrome scans-11 by fishyfish_arcade, on Flickr

8

FILM - Steam Rally 2019 Ektachrome scans-8 by fishyfish_arcade, on Flickr
 
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I see what you mean about the shadows, especially no. 13 with the dark green(?) van. Possibly a film for specific days and subjects, rather than an all-rounder?
 
As with most slide films, exposure is far more critical than with print film. Like Ektar 100, I think it's probably going to be a film that shows its best on sunny days, with good light also helping to avoid the effects of camera shake and motion blur. However, I imagine with careful exposure and a non-moving subject, the more subtle and muted colours could be used to good enough effect in flatter lighting conditions to achieve that certain cooler and pastel 'look'.

Having had a quick look at some of the photos (the HP5 ones as well as the Ektachromes), do you think your F80 is front focussing a bit, Nige? I have a couple of slightly 'soft' looking shots too, but I've put that down to camera shake.
 
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Mr Badger said:
Having had a quick look at some of the photos (the HP5 ones as well as the Ektachromes), do you think your F80 is front focussing a bit, Nige? I have a couple of slightly 'soft' looking shots too, but I've put that down to camera shake.
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Not that I've noticed. Do you have any specific examples of where you can see it please?

I've used a wide aperture on quite a lot of the shots in order to throw the background out of focus, but I think they're all sharp where I wanted them to be.
 
FishyFish said:
Not that I've noticed. Do you have any specific examples of where you can see it please?
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The B&W of the 3 garden tractors in a horizontal row, the grass looks in sharper focus before you get to the font wheels, the Ektachrome photo of the little dog, once again, the grass looks in sharper focus before the front paws. (reference to Nigel's Flickr photostream here, just in case someone's wondering where those two photos are!).
 
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Mr Badger said:
The B&W of the 3 garden tractors in a horizontal row, the grass looks in sharper focus before you get to the font wheels, the Ektachrome photo of the little dog, once again, the grass looks in sharper focus before the front paws. (reference to Nigel's Flickr photostream here, just in case someone's wondering where those two photos are!).
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I suspect those are "user error" rather than the camera front-focussing. The shot of the dog was taken while I was squatted down to get a low angle and it kept looking away, so I was wobbling a bit while I waited for it to look in my direction. The tractors were photographed one-handed while I held some tape out of shot. :)
 
I got time to view the slides using a projector and screen on Saturday night (nothing worth watching on TV so the ideal opportunity!) and they projected very nicely. It's always nice to view photos a few feet wide on a screen, even if it is a bit of a faff getting the projector and screen out of the cupboard and loading the slides into the magazine, etc... there's always one that ends up upside down or on its side!

All in all, I'll be using the new Ektachrome 100 again, but probably only on high days and holidays owing to the cost of both the film and the developing and mounting of the slides. They don't seem to scan too badly with my Epson V600, but to appreciate the fine grain and subtle colours I think it really requires a high-res scan by a film lab that knows what it is doing; and that all adds up to a combined cost of around £1 per photo at current prices.

Perhaps not too unaffordable if you're on holiday somewhere sunny where a 100 ISO film can be used to good effect most days, and there are plenty of photogenic scenes to choose from. If not, then it could sit for quite a time in your camera if you're being '£1 a shot' careful and waiting for bright enough light in the UK. Will such constraints result in sufficient sales for Kodak to keep making the stuff? I really do hope so, as I think it's a very nice looking film. (y)

 
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Peter B said:
There's a guy on Photorio who has been scanning Ektachrome with a V550, and he also seeems to have been having some colour issues. This isn't a solution for you of course, merely some comfort that you are not alone. (y)https://www.photrio.com/forum/media/power-wagopn.60647/
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I'm really not having issues scanning my slides, I've just run these two off now to check. I deliberately chose two with quite a bit of shadow on them to check how my V600 coped with them. It's a 'standard' type scan with 'unsharp mask' ticked, no ICE or dust removal (could this be important?) at 3200 dpi.

The scanned images were then opened in Photoshop Elements 15, 'auto smartfix' was clicked, the brightness tweaked a little (to my taste), then resized to 30cm at 300 dpi and saved at 11 to give a file size of just over 3mb per image. Pretty basic stuff; I'm sure I could have done better if I'd taken a bit of time and/or used Lightroom. See what you think and compare them to the lab-scanned images in my post above.

img512 by J White, on Flickr

img511 by J White, on Flickr

I'm wondering if it's been something to do with the developing of the others' film, or if perhaps underexposed images are the cause of their apparent scanning difficulties?
 
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