Another one bites the dust…

…actually three.

Kodak has announced the discontinuation of three of it’s slide films: Ektachrome E100G, E100VS and ELITE Chrome Extra Color.

http://www.kodak.com/global/en/professional/products/colorReversalIndex.jhtml?pq-path=1229

As I remember, the whole Kodak line-up consisted of these three films…so no more Kodak slide film 🙁. Stocks are said to last about 6-9 months.

Some might say to stack-up but, in my opinion, it’s something else knowing there’s still more to come for you to shoot. Cheapskates like me will suffer from this.

For my personal photography this is quite a blow because I was intending to shoot almost all of my future color analog photos on E100G because it offered the best combination of natural colors. Fuji is very different in the way that it slightly distorts colors and has very poor skin tones. Sure, Velvia is wild and crazy but does that help you capture the essence of a scene or simply stun a crowd? There’s also Provia. I’ve tried it but I’m not happy with the results; technically it’s very good but it lacks some sort of a humanity, it doesn’t render scenes in a very friendly way, it’s very imposing.

Luckily, I think that slide film has still some years to live thanks to the excitement caused by Velvia. The rest of the line such as Provia 100F and 400X will have to follow, so buying my Nikon F6 with it’s advanced light meter  is still on 🙂.

On the other hand, I might consider taking a closer look at color negative film. Both Portra and Ektar are still produced and Fuji this time comes close to Kodak’s reproduction of light.

I have given some thought to this and came to the conclusion that negative film can be just as good as slides if you print it…which I intend to. After some experimentation in the darkroom with b&w negative film, I came to the conclusion that (using the same contrast grade), you can increase or decrease contrast in a print by giving more or less exposure to both the negative and the print respectively. I’m not sure if I was dreaming or there’s actually something behind this. Underexposed negatives require higher contrast grades so, by tracing back, we could conclude that underexposure means lower contrast and vice-versa.

Of course, there isn’t any need for lower contrast in a color negative with it’s huge dynamic range, you just expose it as rated. But when you overexpose the negative and then add more exposure to the print as well………might be interesting.

Negative materials are cheap and widely available so I might consider giving more attention to this mater.

But in the meantime, where did I put that Kodak?…

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