These are the first portfolio images captured on Kodak's revived Ektachrome E100 film

Blanks this film just came out so how would those sites be relevant? I'm well aware of what can be shot on film. My point being is this site extensively tests and compares digital cameras. That forms the basis for some of our purchasing choices. It also educates us about various features that can expand our approaches to photography.

But when it comes to virtually everything about film on this site all we have are a wide range of opinions about random personal aspects of film photography. For example the discussion here has little to do with Ektachrome film. And it has virtually nothing at all about any technical aspects of this film.

FWIW Kodak made "the big error" of trying to stick with analog.

"Our nature is organic, and imperfect in an organic way. Despite our efforts to please the alien world, our home will always be special and particularly affine."

Organic in the photography context simply means natural looking. Since digicams produce far more detail than film, letting us see much more of the natural world, then they are arguably much more organic looking than film.

You can't simply say our life is organic. It is, but not limited to it. Analog is not equal to organic either. Analog photography only works because of chemical reactions. These chemical reactions are bound to the kinetics dictated by physics. Similarly, digital photography is functioning through physics. Without understanding physics, digital photography may be an unexplainable process, but both analog and digital photography are grounded in the same principles.

Practically, analog and digital photography are approached in similar ways nowadays: we just looked at these analogically created images via our digital displays. Hence the digital universe has been transited.
Pure analog images can only exist on paper, not on a display. Our current society functions through widespread use of a multitude of digital displays.

Criticism about digital photography relative to analog is in essence criticism on the way our society is functioning today, based on dependence on advanced technology.

If you find film photography to be toxic, stay away from digital because all technology associated with digital is also very toxic. Electronic waste is an issue far beyond film photography.

Better how?

"I think better looking."

Again, better how?

"Why would many wedding photographers choose to shoot with say for e.g. a Contax 645 (prices are right up there with the most expensive digital cameras) with the aforementioned film stocks when they can obviously afford to shoot with any camera, and many have a digital kits too for when the light is all but gone, but even they and their clients are adorned by the quality of traditional film photography."

It's a marketing gimmick.

"Also if you get your workflow down with a good lab, you can save a lot of time away from the computer."

A small amount of time at the computer will yield superior digital camera images.

Maybe - have you tried it? As the new batch is very new, i wouldn't come with statements like that. I'd buy instead of that, a few rolls of Ilford Pan F 50 Plus. But someday next year, i do try the new Ektachrome. ;-)

Good Light!

Only some Ektachromes (albeit quite a lot) had a hard red shift. My own parents slides from the 1960s still look great. People see them and say "nice Kodachromes" and I say, "No...simply nice vintage color". I put the red shift down to a few bad emulsion numbers combined with non-Kodak company's skipping the proper stabilizer for the final rinse to save a few dollars. This Ektachrome is likely to be quite good so far as standing up over time.

Thanks 4 Info, Rob.

E100G has dark storage image stability rated at 80 years.

E-6 process could only be considered "easy" if you don't require predictable and repeatable results. It's one thing to do the process with one shot chemicals in a decent tempering bath but a completely different animal using a drip replenishment system. If you're an "art by chance" person and are simply pleasantly surprised that you got something halfway decent from your film then yeah...easy peasy but if you're running a pro lab and need a controlled process then not easy...not easy at all.

Ahmet has this right here.

As a guy who had a custom color printing business, I totally agree. Spot on always repeatable results are not easy for any lab. And if you don't have a consistent volume of film for each run, it will be even harder to stay within an acceptable standard deviation.

You are over exposing the neon lights. However film and digital are made to record light from continuous spectrum sources by breaking down the red, green and blue components. They simulate the color of a scene and do not o acvurately reproduce it. So if the color is made from a very narrow part of the spectrum as with a neon light or other discharge lamp, film and digital may not be able to simulate the color. Spectral charts for film and digital are available.

I agree with lost color but it is not the fault of silicon.
Foeveon started with a prism based three sensor system for high quality digital color.
CCD sensors are also a bit better than CMOS sensors for color, in my opinion. Most experts tell that they should not have a difference.

If you believe that I have a bridge to sell you. ISO 6400 on a 24MP APS soze sensor will out resolve 35mm 400 ISO film.

Just look at the comparison on my gallery hete.

Don't worry. Rumor has it that Kodak will reintroduce the Ektar 35 system if Ektachrome sales do well. Maybe Carousel projectors too. Where is that Super 8 camera they promised?

Buzz, read more carefully what I wrote.

By the way, that's a romantic, not an romantic.

@Buzz There's always California's State Highway 99 if you like driving a straight freeway in blistering summer heat :) I'd recommend hwy 49 in the Sierra foothills though. Beautiful weekend drive, with mountain access along the way.

@filmrescue, I sympathize, I really do, but those of us who don’t have extra cash to spend don’t have a responsibility to sustain you. Rather be mad at the competition, if it’s unfair, not at the potential customers who may just be starving artists. As for the medium, Kodak doesn’t care who they buy from, as long as they buy.

@Olifaunt,
...well, that's why I mentioned that the price is exactly the same in-store as it is online. If you can't afford the sales tax on $13, that's a bad sign, period. Not to mention that some websites will probably charge shipping on such a small order. ;-)

Either way, while I don't expect anybody to spend hundreds of dollars more just to support a local store, I do think it's a personal decision that those who can afford to, should spend a few extra bucks here and there to support a local shop, /IF/ they believe in the importance of their local economy. Which it seems film shooters often are those people, hence me bringing it up in the first place. Film is not a cheap hobby, plus you probably already have a local lab that you go to for film processing, so...

Also, many states in the US are currently trying to find ways to charge sales tax on online stores, plus if you're a working professional you gotta pay tax on stuff anyways come April 15th.

TLDR, a lot of photography stuff costs exactly the same in-store as it does online, a lot more stuff than you'd think. And it's going to be harder and harder to avoid paying sales tax when shopping online, if it hasn't already started being enforced in your state.

Either way, if you "don't have the extra cash" to spend on these kinds of less-expensive supplies, that's a bad sign, especially for anyone who decides they want to shoot film in this day and age.

Olifaunt...I'd disagree. You in fact do have a responsibility to sustain those that are running labs if you expect to have lab services and film into the future. That's like saying patients don't have a responsibility to support doctors. That's a recipe for no health care. Artist aren't the only ones living hand to mouth. I don't know anyone running lab that's getting rich. These people too, do this out of love.

I don’t agree it looks like a Sigma image but with a decent scanner it is easy to get an essentially identical looking scan.

Yeah cost is holding me back. 8x10" E-6 is more like $25-40 a pop. It was okay at $10-15 a decade ago but not anymore. I'll just cherish the ones I have while waiting for the 100MP GFX.

Absquatulate - great screen name, sir (or madame?). It piqued my interest enough to look it up. "To leave suddenly; decamp- e.g., 'Go off and absquatulate, you miserable little creep.' ... A large, stupid word used primarily by liberal arts majors looking to flaunt the size of their dictionary. " Thanks for the laugh.

I do most of my printing to traditional photo paper. I have an Epson inkjet that I use with very inexpensive aftermarket ink, but only for temporary disposable prints, especially larger stitched ones. While my eye can not see individual droplets, I believe the cumulative effect of inkjet not being continuous tone comes through.

The tech that should have been adopted by the industry and market is dye sub. Far better detail (in fact the best detail I've ever seen) and continuous creamy tone like traditional photo paper. Portraits look especially ugly with inkjet. Like you, I gave up on inkjet for serious prints long ago. The cost is also ridiculous for OEM ink and good paper.

@Roland it really depends on the spectrum of the Bayer filter array. some manufacturers like Phase One are trying to get closer to human vision but most are not really there. The same reasoning, of course, applies to color film.

@Lars -- I think that's what Roland said??

The question is though. What is best? Is the work by PhaseOne a success?

Roland, for myself, I feel Capture One is very successful.

That's because of its first results on a (very rapid and transparent) raw develop -- and then due to its depth and smooth ease in abilities to subtly tune to get just what you'd like, out of even a quite problematic original exposure, when that happens as it does...

I'm no professional, in fact just using a quite capable small camera with an excellent back-imaging sensor and an acknowledged fine lens, the too often overlooked Olympus XZ-2. But I think professionals give good evidence that this opinion is well supported with their expertise and the most capable cameras also.

And they can use these abilities well into the territory of color grading as it is understood now deeply applied to cinema films, in their case to give mood, clarity, or matching sense for where their images will be displayed or published.

...more...

,,,I've learned a lot I've put to good use, from viewing these persons at work, through some of the many articles and videos available. Here's a quickly chosen example, with a Swedish studio photographer making some very subtle moves on a portrait shot. You may see better with a tuned monitor:

https://blog.phaseone.com/achieving-perfect-skin-tones-using-capture-one/

Here's the blog section for such photographer accounts -- there are many. I wish the current one for a scenic photographer were braver and better, as many others are. And there is a very long list -- see the bottom for pages...

https://blog.phaseone.com/category/photo_journals/

...more...

...This guy has very good articles detailing releases, and includes 10% discount codes, while you can try Capture One always for free:

http://alexonraw.com/

You can click his top-menu 'Film Styles for Capture One' to get a very complete overview with more of the subtle results and abilities, with or without the Styles.

The styles themselves are pro-priced, but I've gotten a lot of mileage out of the considerable number of free ones -- and/or taking chosen precise abilities out of any one of them, which is easy to do.

A big advantage of Styles is that you can rove over whole sets of them with a mouse or track-pad hover in Capture One, and see instantly where each is going to send your image, at whatever size or portion or masking you are looking at, on screen....

Regards,
Clive

What you get is less overlap. This will result in higher saturation. You can then get more colorful images adding less noise.

You do lose sensitivity if saturated images is not your goal.

You also lose some hue separation, e.g. grass might become more monochrome.

I have read somewhere that it means that you get a less exact color space, which might be the same as the more monochrome grass.

Roland, maybe intended for another comment thread?

Those Ektachrome images show one thing clearly - we all want a different kind of result from our color photos. I think the examples here are general horrible, even though the lady among the sunflowers had a kind of old fashioned charm. But - I also find most unmanipulated digital images kind of boring. I tend to apply some enhancing filter to add some oomph to the result. Unfortunately, when looking at those images later I have to admit that a more gentle touch with th oomph had been to recommend.

One such improvement is tone mapping. This is a kind of dangerous tool. Pushing the slider you get a stronger effect and it looks better and better and better ,,, until you see that ... wow ... this is way too much, it looks horrible. And then you go way back until you almost have no effect at all, and then it also look better and better the more you go back. Hard to explain, but it is like it is the change that makes it look better.

I think that's well put, and well observed, about the sensations of putting in effects -- and I've noticed so also.

It may have to do again with the rapid form of adaptation, or/also our ability to focus attention -- and then pull back to again recognize the whole.

Why we want to make these tunings, I suspect does have to do with the difference in how digital photograph recording relates compared to film, against the natural in-situ abilities of our eyes. Since it can't unaided blend the extremes of light or dark (and their colors) response, we want to pull into those, and as consequence, get more detail and richer experience -- zap.

For me, it means accepting that developing is a definite part of digital photography. I see a great deal of resistance to that on DPReview; people want their cameras to make Jpegs for them without intervention.

...>

Ah.
Back to the skill vs gear debate.

i would add scanner and post processing, too. i think they could get little bit more ouf of it..

"my experience of (negative) film is that it has (for me) more subtle color detail that is lacking in (my) digital images."

Film has less detail, period.

Compare large format film to say a single frame of 35mm digital and you'll have better detail and quality in the former. Compare like for like, similar size sensor to film area, and digital kicks the crap out of film. It's a laughable difference. You're living in a film zealot's fantasyland if you believe otherwise.

That's being generous too. The relatively tiny sensor in my Sony RX100 produces better images than my 35mm film images.

Olifaunt. On my gallery I posted an example that shows a 24MP APS sensor at 6400 ISO has records much more detail than 35mm 400 ISO film.

So if you feel film can record more detail than a comparable format hi res digital image then please post some examples.

@Elonlukatski "No it does not."

If you are responding to me then what is the basis of such a response? I scan my 35mm film (all negative and color) on a dedicated film scanner at 4000 dpi producing an image file a bit bigger than the 20 MP images from my little RX100 5. The biggest problem with the film images is the greater level of noise in the form of noticeable grain. With my RX100 5 I get much clearer images and as a result better detail, and especially so as the ISO increases.

Now if you match image capture areas between the two mediums, like 35mm film and digital, the comparison is laughably stark, as I said.

"35 mm film has more than enough resolution for pretty much any purpose already, including large gallery prints."

It can’t even compete with digital for even smaller sized prints. I have film prints I printed myself from well exposed low grain film, sharp camera lenses and printed through the sharpest Fujinon lenses and they look technically drab, less detailed and obviously inferior to my digicam prints, made also to traditional photo paper.

I recall an article that posited the idea that in order to win at photographic contests you need to have lots of eye-catching RED.
These seem to all qualify.

The only problem with 'photography' these days is that everyman and his dog has some sort of a 'camera'. When I started we were still using 6x8 film and glass plates in some press darkrooms... I think the thing that has really 'died' is the print. Todays run of the mill 'amateur' level camera are far more capable than the old 35mm cameras and some 120 format.