Kodak Brings Back a Classic with EKTACHROME Film

[slclick]

Some folks enjoy the journey more or as much as the destination. YMMV

 

[LDS]

Film processing for negative film is far more forgiving than E-6 process.
Home processing of C-41 films will easily yield negatives that will print well.

True

Home processing of E-6 film is a dog's dinner of variability starting with the chemistry available at retail.
I cannot tell you how many people would come into the lab and ask what was happening with their home slide processing. Their color varied wildly despite their pride in temperature control and processing technique.

You got a filter effect here. Of course those who couldn't process E-6 properly asked for advice. Those who could, didn't. Not everybody has the same DIY skills and knowledge (despite what they tell). Frankly, knowing myself, I wouldn't attempt to develop it without a processor.

Do you mean Kodak, Fuji and others were selling bad chemicals? And "retail shop" means little - there are large retail shop from which many pros buy from too, and others who have just non-pro customers. You got very different results from labs too, and some labs were inconsistent too (especially for consumer processing), probably depending on what side of the bed the technicians got up that morning... or if you were lucky your films were processed when chemicals were still good enough.

As a student I was convinced of the superiority of transparency over negative film. However, once I learned to print Type-R, Cibachrome and Type-C prints I saw the inhernet superiority of negative film over transparency in its ability to render contrasty scenes well.

If one was truly superior, the other would have had no market. Both had their inherent advantages and disadvantages. For example negatives were harder to scan, so the press industry preferred transparencies until digital. Some photographers too for their own reasons.

For all the praise of transparency film for its "accuracy" those same people then enthuse about its deep saturation that has only a passing acquaintance with accuracy.

Not everybody was looking for "scientific accuracy" - and after all negatives didn't had that either, just the print stage allows for changes. For many "accuracy" meant you got consistent results from the same batch of film. Thereby you could test and know what you would have got.

Anyway Franco Fontana used to duplicate his Kodachromes directly onto another Kodachrome to reach the saturation his photographic style required. If you are a commercial photographer in other sectors, you have different requirements.

In the end, when talk about using film today we are talking about paying a lot of money to achieve a result that emulates a random JPG file with color, contrast and crossover issues created by the process that is largely uncontrollable by the photographer.

Oh well, Lomography build a whole business around it. But it is not true the process is "largely uncontrollable".

 

[Pookie]

If that is important to you I could also recommend that other process: Instax.

I wonder if the success of Instax is the driver here. When you look at Amazon's most popular camera items, it is dominated by Instax. https://www.amazon.com/best-sellers-camera-photo/zgbs/photo

And that's been the case for at least the last three years.

And it is the same everywhere. Locally, all the department stores, camera shops and supermarkets move a lot of Instax products and film. And reading Fuji media releases, you get the impression it is a real global phenomenon with no signs of slowing. People love it. If you go to an 18th or 21st birthday party, it is the only camera you'll likely see.

I can imagine Kodak wanting just a small piece of the sales pie. But like I think you are alluding to, the sort of people who enjoy and shoot instax aren't going to start buying Kodachrome.

Let's hope this is true... I shoot Instax Wide on a converted Polaroid 600SE. Full exposure control and MF quality images with great DOF. It is a instant money maker at wedding receptions. I've felt a little guilty charging 5$ per shot but always sell out. Even when people have a Instax camera the Polaroid produces much better images. Leica's Sofort may finally give you a bit more latitude over the exposure that Fuji cams don't have and that might change the game. It unfortunate that it's an f/12.7 lens so maybe the Polaroid still kicks any instant camera offerings for now.

My true hope is this resurgence of film and instant film will bring back Fujifilm 100C and 3000B, dearly miss that film. Only have 1 much coveted case of 100C left and it's expiring this year Impossible and the New55 just are not comparable but they are commendable in their efforts.

 

[Pookie]

In the end, when talk about using film today we are talking about paying a lot of money to achieve a result that emulates a random JPG file with color, contrast and crossover issues created by the process that is largely uncontrollable by the photographer.

Oh well, Lomography build a whole business around it. But it is not true the process is "largely uncontrollable".

It's funny how many people I run across that say they did this and that with film, ran a development lab or worked years in a dark room but then come up with utter nonsense like that statement. No wonder why this guy "ran" a lab and doesn't anymore... with that statement you could figure out the quality of his work. Like film was/is a complete mystery producing wide ranges of results. When just not that many years ago it was used at the highest level in commerce and daily use. It's not like analog photography has been around for many years as we all know now that it was just a prelude to digital :

Any real developer, professional developer would scoff at that statement... check out Richard Photo Lab or The Find Lab. It's not a uncontrollable process or at least it shouldn't be when you know what you're doing.

Lomography ?!?!?! What? Ilford... Fujifilm... Kodak... all of them are just uncontrollable messes and products.

 

[Berowne]

I shot transparency and negative film professionally for many years.
I also owned a commercial processing lab for 20+years.

Film processing for negative film is far more forgiving than E-6 process.
Home processing of C-41 films will easily yield negatives that will print well.

Home processing of E-6 film is a dog's dinner of variability starting with the chemistry available at retail.
I cannot tell you how many people would come into the lab and ask what was happening with their home slide processing. Their color varied wildly despite their pride in temperature control and processing technique.

Then we would get people in who would test a photo setup on chrome and process with us (a Kodak certified Q-lab) and then shoot a big job and process it with retail chems from the camera shop. Needless to say the images were wildly different from their tests.

As a student I was convinced of the superiority of transparency over negative film. However, once I learned to print Type-R, Cibachrome and Type-C prints I saw the inhernet superiority of negative film over transparency in its ability to render contrasty scenes well.

For all the praise of transparency film for its "accuracy" those same people then enthuse about its deep saturation that has only a passing acquaintance with accuracy.

In the end, when talk about using film today we are talking about paying a lot of money to achieve a result that emulates a random JPG file with color, contrast and crossover issues created by the process that is largely uncontrollable by the photographer.

If that is important to you I could also recommend that other process: Instax.

Most of it true. I never ever considered to process slides at home, too expensive, too critical. But with appropriate equipment (automatic Processors like that from Jobo), original chemicals (especially in the case of Fuji-Films) and enough experience nothing should go wrong.

Of Course, slides are demanding. But this is the very reason to use these films. You have to master it and if you can, the results are most satisfying, at least for me. In contrast, the reason, why I did not use color-negative-film was the usually bad Quality of the prints. If only Kodak will bring back the Kodakchrome!

 

[Hillsilly]

It's funny how many people I run across that say they did this and that with film, ran a development lab or worked years in a dark room....

Throughout most of the 80's and 90's, my understanding of photographic techniques was fairly limited. When I took film in to be developed, I accepted that the way they came back was the way it was meant to be. I just didn't know any better. One of the reasons I shot slide film was because the photos came out the way they I wanted them to. With negative film, the photos came out the way the processing machine wanted them to - with widely varying exposures, which typically weren't what I wanted.

Skip to now, where there is a lot more information available, and I'm in full control of the process from developing, digitizing and printing, I really enjoy shooting colour negative film. And when you consider colour negative films' exposure latitude, and the fact that it is almost impossible to blow highlights or get a bad exposure, I agree with what you are saying - it is the opposite of "uncontrollable".

 

[LDS]

With negative film, the photos came out the way the processing machine wanted them to - with widely varying exposures, which typically weren't what I wanted.

Printing has never been a "one step" process, despite Kodak wanting people to believe so, with its "you press the button, we do the rest" motto. It made sense for the larger consumer market (and eventually doomed Kodak when the button became digital), but good prints require conscious decisions by the photographer (and the technician), based on each image aim, and proofs.

A technician alone with thousand of prints to make, or, worse, an automated machine, could only produce average results based on some standard average parameters. The mass production of prints for the consumer market worked that way. Of course any image that deviated enough from those parameters could have been "ruined" by "corrections" to exposure, filtering, etc. - even when the process was well within the parameters (which not always happened).

More demanding users (professionals, very advanced amateurs, arts students, etc.) needed and need to take advantage of labs that offers tailored printing, which means making proofs and then decide what to print and how, but is more expensive and not available at every print shop - and after that's how often prints from digital images are made too. Very high quality labs like Grieger in Düsseldorf became an important part in the success of photographers like Gursky (albeit they filed for insolvency last November too...)

 

[3kramd5]

With no way to use it in a mirrorless ILC camera? Stupid kodak.

 

[LDS]

With no way to use it in a mirrorless ILC camera? Stupid kodak.

You can surely use it in any mirrorless film camera - like rangefinders. and even those without a rangefinder.

 

[3kramd5]

With no way to use it in a mirrorless ILC camera? Stupid kodak.

You can surely use it in any mirrorless film camera - like rangefinders. and even those without a rangefinder.

Yah, bad joke.

 

[privatebydesign]

With no way to use it in a mirrorless ILC camera? Stupid kodak.

You can surely use it in any mirrorless film camera - like rangefinders. and even those without a rangefinder.

Yes but how many of them offer dual film slots? You know, the must have feature demanded in even a 6D MkII nowadays.

And when and why did dual card slots become an 'essential' basic feature for anybody to take a body seriously?

Stupid old film cameras.

 

[LDS]

Yah, bad joke.

We also can't complain about lack of 4K. AFAIK "La La Land" has been shot on film...

 

[LDS]

Yes but how many of them offer dual film slots? You know, the must have feature demanded in even a 6D MkII nowadays.

Well, film has less inclination to die in the middle of a shooting... especially since you can't really reuse it - just in some situations you needed to learn to change film quickly - the worst were very noisy rewinder engines when it was automated. Some older camera used a take-up spool which didn't need rewinding.

But someone patented the "dual film camera" in 1951: https://www.google.com/patents/US2546540

May that's because Canon never made a dual film camera

 

[privatebydesign]

Yes but how many of them offer dual film slots? You know, the must have feature demanded in even a 6D MkII nowadays.

Well, film has less inclination to die in the middle of a shooting... especially since you can't really reuse it - just in some situations you needed to learn to change film quickly - the worst were very noisy rewinder engines when it was automated. Some older camera used a take-up spool which didn't need rewinding.

But someone patented the "dual film camera" in 1951: https://www.google.com/patents/US2546540

May that's because Canon never made a dual film camera

I had a lot more film 'issues' than I have ever had with digital, even on;y using one slot in a two card slot camera.

I well remember doing the film dance of sending rolls from the same shoot in different batches so they never all went through the machines together in case there was a roller causing scratches.