Apparently this one got lost in cyberspace the first post attempt...
Seth Neumann wrote: >has anyone had any experience with Kodak E100-S. A >(supposedly)knowlefable source contentds it has the best saturation of >any E6 film. I shot a few bricks of the E100S and E100SW films. Between the two, there is not much difference. More on that in a moment. What did I think of E100? Not bad, I think a few of us decided about a year ago on this list that we thought that the E100S looks more like Kodachrome 25 than any other Ektachrome yet as far as color balance in sunlight. That doesn't mean that it looks like Kodachrome though. I liked the slightly warmer E100SW in hazy weather and bright overcast. The E100 films do exceptionally well with yellows and greens. Reds aren't too bad either. I especially liked it in that nice end of the day golden light (that we rarely get!). Looks sharp, but the grain is so fine that it can look a little soft if you are used to looking at Kodachrome 64 with a loupe which is actually fairly grainy looking like that. I think the daylight color balance of the E100S has pleasing saturation, but when you say 'best' that can mean several things. Velvia is by no doubt the most saturated E-6, but that is not always 'best' for every situation, (although I make it work in most!). Saturation and color balance are two different things. I don't care for the E100S color balance with 5500K studio lights as much as Fuji film either. Not bad, but it has a slightly funny looking color 'shift' to it that I am not used to looking at. The E100SW is too warm for me for just about anything in the studio, but it does well in mixed color temperature light sources (it ain't gonna make HMI look like daylight though!). I liked the E100 films, but I'll stick with Fuji. It's a combination of personal preference and I wasn't crazy about some slight color variations within the same batches of E100 of both types which I have to attribute to either film inconsistancy or to processing result consistency. I don't buy that processing 'inconsistancy' argument with this film as much as its processing 'instability' because my local labs do perfectly consistant Fuji processing. It wasn't that bad of a fluxuation though, but I guess I was expecting perfect color 'performance' like Kodak claims on this Kodak E100 data sheet that I am looking at here. I can fax you a copy of it if you want it. The processing was in some cases far enough off that you couldn't tell the difference between the E100S and the E100SW on a 5000K table. I can't have that crap for color printing work on the same pages where little differences stick out like a sore thumb, but it was fine for trains. The best looking results I have found with E100 film processing came from Kodak in Dallas or Fair Lawn. Looked mighty nice for trains, but now a couple of people are showing me Kodak Elete slides that look very similar. If you push slide film, E100 films push one stop very well. To sum it up, E100S and E100SW are in my opinion, from my experience with them, the best E-6 films that Kodak has been able to produce to date. Great for shooting trains. Very pleasing color balance. Not too much punch to look unnatural, but they still make Kodachrome 64 look flat (and a little greenish) next to them. You'll still get blown out headlights like all E-6 films, but hey, sometimes you'll have that (right James?!). Unfortunatly I don't have time to screw around with the Kodak processing 'lottery' anymore unless the rolls are expendable, so the boxes in my fridge are predomanently green again. All of these little subtle color choices that we have these days with all of these newer E-6 films are meaningless if we use crappy processing and never actually see what the film is supposed to look like anyway. And since everyone sees color differently, what do you think it looks like? BTW, I just looked through my latest RR shots on Fujichrome Astia and tried to compare the color to Provia. I like Astia a lot so far. Great but not too heavy contrast, and the sky is blue! Regards, Dave Cohen Photographer [EMAIL PROTECTED] --> SPORRS: Serious Photographers of Railroad Related Subjects X-Mozilla-Status: 0001 Content-Length: 1415
