I was working on an article of ektachrome with flash. At first what I liked was the additional element of protection for the camera – against bumps and shocks, setting it down on a wet surface, etc. My 2 cents: try using a green difussion filter for the flash and try processing in a 6 bath E6 kit.
You can even shoot indoors next to a window, using the light from the moon or street lamps as lighting.V.L.GIL – Staring at the moon photobelmondo – Shooting at midnight Wendelin Jacober – Night Shooting Julian Bueckert – Cold Darren Moorhouse – -44 Celsius Nonetheless, its finally done!…I set out this Spring and Summer to do a comparative test of Kodak EKTACHROME E100 and Fujifilm Fujichrome Velvia 50 (RVP50).
With the room found empty, the next challenge was trying to compose shots that didn’t include the few, random interior lights that I couldn’t find switches to turn off. Night sky photography might call for a longer shutter speed of 10 seconds or more, while for urban night photography you can probably use a 2-10-second shutter speed. Just use a good meter and bracket if in doubt. Nice to have more ideas on how to use up my slide film stash!For the Canon flash, I set it to “-1”, although recently I leave it on full but use a diffuser. There will be a blog post about this in the near future. The new Ektachrome is just right. Now, these 5 frames…The Mju I only works for close portraits as the flash is not strong enough for larger scenes and 100 ISO film, but the not-that-strong flash makes it also balanced for reversal film photography. My oh my expired, brittle and a pain in the major to develop and scan. Grain is super fine – for all practical purposes, if you want to process the photograph so it’s grain free it doesn’t take much.And if you’re going to shoot in a city at night and reflections are a problem – pack a big, black table cloth in your tripod bag next to your cable release. )To develop a few rolls of Ektachrome at home takes about an hour.Excellent.
Essentially, a very beautiful color palette with deep blacks and no need to do any grading. It all depends on the amount of available light, and the effect you’re going for.
So outfitting the F6 with an L-bracket straight away was a natural thing to do. There was minor barrel distortion/pincushioning with these frames, but (very) minor and easily corrected using Photoshop’s Lens Correction filter and dialing in manual settings in the 2-4 realm. Remembering you can always punch contrast up in Photoshop – it’s nice to have a more ‘normal’ baseline starting point. At the time I didn’t think, “now that I have an L-bracket I’ll shoot a lot more verticals.” But that is in fact what has happened.These images were made with the famed Nikkor 35mm f/1.4 AI-S manual focus lens, shot from the Penthouse of the Wyndham Grand Chicago River Hotel.
Reciprocity Failure: honestly, I didn’t do a whole lot of math here – I just bracketed. I don’t know exactly why, but E100 has much warmer and true to life colors in a 6 bath kit. With a background in filmmaking, there are of course many examples of exciting compositions in the wide format. I experimented with expired Kodak Ektachrome before the relaunch of E100 and recently started using the newly re-released film for one specific job; shooting portraits during a Saturday night event in … You’ll be glad you did.
And get an L-bracket for your camera to make shooting verticals easier. In my lifetime experience with film (going back…A month ago my trip unfortunately cut short thanks to our current pandemic situation. So not much at all.If you’re looking at possibly shooting some of Kodak Alaris’ new Ektachrome, you’ll be pleased. Using a DSLR to scan film is faster and the sharper option in my experience.The one issue where it gets complicated is the limited dynamic range of slide film in general, so your metering needs to be precise. Once you learn the basics, you’ll find out that night photography is really fun.