Finished scanning and processing two more rolls of film — one roll of Portra 800, and one roll of Elite Chrome Extra Color (“EBX”), both shot with the little Contax T.
I originally loaded the Portra 800 to take some low light pictures during theatre rehearsals, but ended up finishing the roll in daylight, which worked pretty well except for having to stop down to f/16 most of the time. I find Portra 800 has very pleasing colours and very nice (read: unobtrusive) grain for such a fast film. Click the image below to see my stuff tagged “kodak portra 800” on flickr.
Contax T + Kodak Portra 800
Kodak Elite Chrome Extra Colour, which is available for 4 € per roll at German “Müller” drugstores, is absolutely lovely in sunlight, but almost unusable in all other conditions. It has very vivid and saturated colours, very low grain and is rather sharp (as far as I can tell from my scans), with very warm colour rendition in sunlight. However, once you get into the shade, the pictures tend to get a strong blue tint, in the worst case makeing then unusable. I gave my best at salvaging those pictures, here is an example that had a very strong blue tint originally:
Contax T + Kodak Elite Chrome Extra Color
It has still got a slight blue tint to it, but it’s far better than the original scan. However, I couldn’t get the colour any better in Lightroom.
On the other hand, when the light is right, you get results like this:
Contax T + Kodak Elite Chrome Extra Color
Click the image above to see my stuff tagged “kodak elite chrome extra color” on flickr.
While I really like the results I get from EBX in sunlight, I don’t find it’s a good allround film. I might use it again if I know I’m going to shoot in warm lighting conditions only, because then it has very nice colour rendering. But for an allround film, I prefer EB3 (the standard Elite Chrome) by far.
Next up: Kodak BW400CN (second try), Fujicolor Pro 400H, Kodak Elite Color 400UC and Fujichrome Velvia 100.
Velvia 100F, short RVPF, is a Fujichrome slide film emulsion with very warm and saturated colours, ideally suited for landscape photography during the golden hour. It has a very strong red tint that limits its use to suitable scenes.
I have recently shot a roll of this film with my Contax T. Click the image below to see all my stuff on flickr tagged “fujichrome velvia 100f”.
Sunset over Cappel, Marburg, Germany | Contax T + Fujichrome Velvia 100F
A couple weeks ago I tried Fujichrome Sensia 100 in my Yashica Electro 35 GT, after I found its tonality rather pleasing in the Color Efex emulation. Well, it turned out I didn’t like it so much in reality. But this might also have been due to the fact that the Yashica’s lens isn’t colour corrected, and I was using the Epson V330 scanner which isn’t up to the task of scanning slide film.
Anyway, here’s my flickr stuff tagged “fujichrome sensia 100”, in case you’re interested. It’s only a couple of frames, though.
My favourite shot from the roll, even though it shows a light leak.
Wowzers! It’s already September? Well, fitting the rather gray and dull early autumn weather we’re currently experiencing, here’s a recent shot taken on Lucky 100 b&w film.
"Piece o' cake" | Yashica Electro 35 GT + Lucky 100 SHD
My current stock of film and film cameras. This’ll keep me busy for a couple months, I guess
Top left: Black-and-white negative emulsions. Lucky 100, Delta 400, Tri-X 400, T-MAX 400.
Bottom left: Colour negative emulsions. Fuji Reala 100, Fuji Pro 160C, Ektar 100, Fuji Pro 400H, Portra 400, Portra 160VC, Portra 160, Portra 800.
Right: Colour reversal emulsions. Elite Chrome Extra Color, Ektar E100G, Ektar E100VS, Fuji Pro 400H, Provia 400X, Astia 100F, Velvia 50, Velvia 100, Provia 100F.
To say it with Alan Parsons: “Try anything once.”
The only drawback at the moment is that my Yashica is denying operation, some electronics failure I guess. I will either have to take it apart or have it taken apart. Maybe I can fix it myself, but if not, it’s going to be expensive … So, no shooting b&w film at the moment. (You can’t use a Zeiss lens on b&w film. Seriously. You can’t.)
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