It's Official--Ektachrome is back

Alright, so idiot me didn't set the F4 data back correctly and instead of between-frame exposure data, I got in-frame dates...

Also, my Coolscan III needs a cleaning BADLY...it will be a few days before I can do this on the Coolscan V, which generally gives better results. The "glowing" around highlights is purely a scanner artifact and is NOT present on the transparencies.

So, I apologize for all the deficiencies in this, but here is a photo(offered with no comment as to its artistic merit) from my first roll of Kodak E100. More to come tomorrow-it's late...

I still have Velvia (35mm) frozen (at least some rolls) though I'll probably mostly be going digital this trip. I'm a little tempted to bring a film camera too now. The thing I like about Cade's Cove is that loop road means you can operate out of the trunk of your car so carrying capacity isn't an issue. Now I just need somewhere to process the film in Atlanta/Marietta or by mail. I don't know who to go to these days for film processing.

In the past I have had good color along U.S. 441 that goes between Gatlinburg and Cherokee.

Look forward to see more results!

I missed the email from my dealer on Monday night saying E100 was in stock. The dealer restricted everybody to ONE ROLL per customer, and they sold out by Thursday! Their next shipment won't be in until 2019.... Arg!

Here's another not so great scan...

One of the things that I've noticed in my first batch is that reds and blues are nice and bright, but greens seem a bit dull. My EARLY conclusion is that if you need strong greens, you need to stick with Fuji products.

With that said, these are have no filtration whatsoever. My next roll will include some with different 81-series filters, and I'll throw polarizers(both regular and warming) into the mix. I used two different lenses for these-any I post with a date stamp were shot with a 14-24 f/2.8, and any with a date stamp were shot with an AF-Nikkor 50mm f/1.4(first gen "thin focus ring"). I used an F4 and matrix metering at its default value(no EC) for every shot, although I did do some lock and recompose on a few. Shots with the 50mm f/1.4 were done in aperture priority, while I used shutter priority with the 14-24(G lenses will only work on an F4 in P and S modes, as there's no way for the user to directly control the aperture).

Look forward to see more results!

 

I missed the email from my dealer on Monday night saying E100 was in stock. The dealer restricted everybody to ONE ROLL per customer, and they sold out by Thursday! Their next shipment won't be in until 2019.... Arg!

Curious - are you in the USA?

Here's another not so great scan...

I hit Auto Levels and gave it a little extra sharpening. I'm impressed by this film, I like it's fine grain and true to life colors. The two 35mm color films I'll be using the most are this new Ektachrome and Pro-Image 100 neg film

I'll be posting more scans either later this evening or tomorrow morning...cleaning the mirror and lens in the Coolscan made things a lot sharper and got rid of the highlight "glow". I'm not surprised, but I'm a lot less embarassed to show the results from it.

Fortunately, the new E100 doesn't look to have the crazy 4.0 Dmax of Velvia. From the datasheet, it looks like ~3.8 the blue channel and ~3.2 in the red channel(green looks to be ~3.6, and all curves have about the same response up to the Dmax-that surprises me since the green does look a bit "dull" to me). In any case, the Coolscan III tops out at 3.0, while the V goes to 4.2...so I'm just waiting until I can use my V again. Even with the cleaning "improvements" the III is still showing its deficiencies in the shadows.

In any case, as I said more coming.

Here are a few more attempts with the "clean" scanner...

Nice!

The blue and red is striking.

The trees are starting to turn in Southwest Missouri so I hope to run a roll through the F3.

The Find just sent an update on my order from them and said Kodak did not anticipate demand to be as high as it was.

They are filling orders as fast as possible.

So that is great news.

I was about to put in an order for another 10 rolls from The Find Lab, but I see that they're basically out.

I loaded my second roll this past weekend, but only shot a few frames on it. The colors ARE starting to come out here, which means that I'm probably going to be shooting a lot of Velvia along side the E100. Of course, Velvia is made in sizes up to 8x10 and I have it up to 4x5. I still have 8 more of E100 in the freezer, so I should be good to go. It may stay put until the spring...I always remember E100G being a nice "spring" film with good yellow rendition-hopefully the really strong reds of E100 are indicative of yellow performance also.

In all honesty, the red is REALLY surprising to me-I didn't remember E100G handling reds like that. On the slide, it almost seems to have "blocked up" like I Kodachrome would do-perhaps that's Kodak's little salute to it in this film.

It's certainly an interesting film-one roll tells me that it's not the carbon copy of E100G that I thought we might get.

My E100 was a few days too late. The leaves are now all on the ground. Hmm, can I find something else to shoot?

Has anyone outside of the USA gotten any?

I was late ordering and missed out buying any Ektachrome the first time around. Looking more like next year before I get my 10 rolls.:eek:

Here are a few more attempts with the "clean" scanner...

 

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The colors are better now than your last post, but still seem to have a slight blue cast to it, which could be messing with the greens. I have found acceptable results scanning slide film with Vuescan software, but I almost always needed to adjust the RGB sliders to correct color myself. The scanner/software hardly did a flawless job. Here is a gallery of sample images from the new Ektachrome shot by a professional photographer. Notice how the greens look so natural.

Here Are Photos Shot on the Rebooted Kodak Ektachrome Film

The colors are better now than your last post, but still seem to have a slight blue cast to it, which could be messing with the greens. I have found acceptable results scanning slide film with Vuescan software, but I almost always needed to adjust the RGB sliders to correct color myself. The scanner/software hardly did a flawless job. Here is a gallery of sample images from the new Ektachrome shot by a professional photographer. Notice how the greens look so natural.

 

Here Are Photos Shot on the Rebooted Kodak Ektachrome Film

These were scanned in Nikon Scan(not Vuescan), and I couldn't do much to get the green to "pop." I feel like these scans are fairly representative of what I see on the light table with my film...

Of course, there's ALWAYS the possibility that the chemistry was off at the lab, but I'd like to think that wasn't the case. Still, the next roll or two I shoot will likely get sent to Dwayne's.

These were scanned in Nikon Scan(not Vuescan), and I couldn't do much to get the green to "pop." I feel like these scans are fairly representative of what I see on the light table with my film...

 

Of course, there's ALWAYS the possibility that the chemistry was off at the lab, but I'd like to think that wasn't the case. Still, the next roll or two I shoot will likely get sent to Dwayne's.

Not to step on your toes, but I was curious about the color balance in your image. So I played with it and I think I corrected the blue cast to some extent in Photoshop by adjusting the mid slider in the levels for only the blue channel, followed by a slight mid boost in curves. However, if the slide looks like your scan on a light table, you should definitely take note.

Curious - are you in the USA?

Toronto Canada.

I've found some at another dealer, but they will be charging me 23 bucks instead of 13 bucks -- I guess that's why they still have stock ;-)

Not to step on your toes, but I was curious about the color balance in your image. So I played with it and I think I corrected the blue cast to some extent in Photoshop by adjusting the mid slider in the levels for only the blue channel, followed by a slight mid boost in curves. However, if the slide looks like your scan on a light table, you should definitely take note.

That does look a lot better...and trust me you're not stepping on my toes.

I don't have one of those fancy DSLR slide scanners, but I'll try to photograph the slides on the light table.

BTW, I'll add that my scanning was done in Mac OS 9(the computer the scanner is hooked to now only has OS 9 and OS X Leopard installed, and getting SCSI peripherals working in Leopard isn't something I'm up to now) and I don't know of any way to calibrate displays in OS 9 other than using an Apple CRT with built-in calibration. I have a few of those, but there again I don't know how good that is nearly 20 years later.

Still, before posting I reviewed them on my laptop with a calibrated LED display and they were at least reasonably representative of the slides.

There again, I wonder if I can fix this in-camera using an 81-series filter to knock out or at least knock down the blue cast...time for some tests side-by-side.

Toronto Canada.

 

I've found some at another dealer, but they will be charging me 23 bucks instead of 13 bucks -- I guess that's why they still have stock ;-)

Not surprised that some would take advantage of the short supply. Jerks (I'd use a stronger word if I could)

Not surprised that some would take advantage of the short supply. Jerks (I'd use a stronger word if I could)

Hmm... the "jerks" should be

hunted down and killed...

http://bayouline.com/o2.gif

Not surprised that some would take advantage of the short supply. Jerks (I'd use a stronger word if I could)

Chuck, for David the Canadian dollar exchange rate is US 0.76c. For me it's worse, the Aussie dollar is US 0.708c. I also pay 10% goods and services tax. I don't know what the tax is for Canadians.

So Canadians pay C$1.30 to US$1.00, and I pay AU$1.414 to US$1.00

I paid AU$26.50 for my first new Ektachrome - a breakdown of that 26.50 would go something like this: Wholesale Purchase Price according to the exchange rate + Markup + Import Duty (?) + 10% GST + Postage

The Retail price in the eBay Australia listing was AU$20 plus AU$6.50 postage. I bought a roll but I found another listing selling them at AU$19 + Free Postage and I bought another two rolls, however that listing is now down, for what reason I have no idea but they sold 15 out of the 20 available and then stopped selling. I hope that listing comes back up again, I can only hope, but I don't think it will

Not surprised that some would take advantage of the short supply. Jerks (I'd use a stronger word if I could)

It's also a function of who is selling.

The 13 CDN$ place is a locally owned big city camera dealer with a busy lab servicing pros, students and enthusiasts. They were one of the "last man standing" places for film, and in the last five years went from dismissive ("you still shooting that film stuff you dinosaur?") to embracing it, expanding their film lines, adding promotions like stamp cards to collect free processing, starting an analog film newsletter and membership list that gets discounts on Kodak product, etc, etc.

The 23 CDN$ place is a more typical "high street chain" as the Brits would say. More akin to a store like Ritz Camera used to be in the USA. They have a stock of film, and a bit of chemistry, but they aren't promoting it, and as a specialty item they will always charge full list price (and maybe a bit extra.)

Chuck, for David the Canadian dollar exchange rate is US 0.76c. For me it's worse, the Aussie dollar is US 0.708c. I also pay 10% goods and services tax. I don't know what the tax is for Canadians.

We pay a lovely 13% Goods and Services Tax (GST.)

We pay a lovely 13% Goods and Services Tax (GST.)

I sympathise

Our low dollars David, are due to Mr Trump's prosperous economy and we'd better catch up soon or else the new Ektachrome will reach $30 per roll as the $C and $A keep plunging. The woes of socialist Commonwealth countries, will we ever learn?