The Market History

Long before Kodak realized the demand for vibrant and saturated colours, Fuji released the now-legandary Fujichrome Velvia Professional (ISO 50). With its ultra-fine grain and ultra-saturated colours, Velvia ruled the roost of slow speed E-6 slide film. For nearly a decade, no other films have been able to challenge its dominance.
 

Kodak has awoken to the fact that many photographers today have acquired a taste for such saturated colour films. Some years ago, Kodak launched the Ektachrome E100S and E100SW, claiming some market share for being the most saturated ISO 100 films. Although moderately successful, the two films never did become serious contenders to the colour king Velvia. This new Kodak Ektachrome E100VS is an all-new emulsion, designed to capture a high saturation palette, without sacrificing film speed like Velvia.
 

Saturation of colours in an emulsion has often been achieved at the expense of film speed. In general, slow films usually are able to capture saturated colours, while fast films are more grainy and pastel in the colour palette. The trick that Kodak wants to pull off, is to create a fine balance between saturated colours and reasonably fast film speed, without sacrificing the grain size. To achieve this fine balance, Kodak has incorporated new proprietary Color Amplifying Technology with its T-grain technology, to produce a fine-grained saturated ISO100 film. Not only will the E100VS challange Fuji Velvia in film speed, it also aims to capture the skin tones accurately, something will Velvia is unable to accomplish. Skin tones from Velvia images have a distinct red hue, which may be unpleasant in portraiture. If the E100VS can record saturated colours while reproducing accurate skintones, it will be a major plus point for many portrait photographers.
 

Since I was touring Japan recently, I took the opportunity to test out this exciting new film. Japan is a gorgeous country for photography, combining both the traditional and the modern in the cities of Kyoto and Tokyo respectively.  The wide variety of photographic subjects made it possible to test out many attributes of the film.  Check out the rest of the review to see how the new E100VS performs!
 
 

Say Hello to Technicolor

Lovers of Walt Disney cartoons will know Technicolor. Pioneered by Walt Disney, Technicolor was responsible for bringing saturated colours to the screen in the early days of colour television. Today, some photographers call saturated and gaudy colour palettes as "technicolors" or "Walt Disney colours".

Love it or hate it, there is a huge market for saturated colour films. The sales of Velvia is testament to this fact. Many photographers use Velvia, coupled with a polarizer to achieve ultra saturated images, screaming with all the colours in the spectrum. Instead of going out of fashion, the trend towards such saturated images is becoming stronger. The E100VS aims to ride on this colour wave...
 
 

Vivid Colours Vivid saturated colours is the selling point of the new Kodak E100VS. When this colourful billboard of Japanese anime presented itself, I can't help but to take a picture of it to check out how the colours are rendered on film. Click on image to see enlarged version of the image. The colour socks you right in the eye.

United Colours of FlowerBed The colours are reproduced pretty much accurately in terms of the hue, although the saturation is pumped up. It is important that the hues are recorded accurately, because a change in hue leads to a different colour. The saturation of the colour will not affect the colour itself, and thus the E100VS has proven to be a good choice. The image of the flowerbed below is taken to judge how well the E100VS can record difficult colours like violet and purple. My verdict is that the E100VS records colour accurately, although the extra saturation might not be too helpful when colour accuracy is very important.

 
 "You can still discern the texture of the black robe and hat ..."
  

Colour Galore Decked in Japanese wedding costume, this young couple has just left the temple after receiving their blessings. Check out the colour rendition of the red cloth, the skin tones, the white gown, the blue vest and the groom's black vest and the black hat. The reds are vibrant and vivid, while the white is clean and crisp. You can still discern the texture of the black robe and hat.  The final surprise? This image has been cropped from a larger image!

Skin Tones One of the most objectionable qualities of saturated films like Velvia is their ability to record skin tones accurately. The E100VS does very well in this aspect, rendering the skin tones more accurately than other saturated films, while maintaining colour saturation. Although specialized portraiture films are still better in skin tones, the E100VS represents a good balance between saturated colours and skin tones. Click on image to see enlarged version.

The slightly warm hues and high saturation makes it less necessary to use a polarizer or warm-up 81A filters, which you might have been tempted to use with other less-saturated films. This means you do not need to compensate for the filters, which might otherwise take up 1/3 stop (81A) to 2 stops (polarizer). This results in significantly greater film speed, which gives you more creativity over the aperture and shutter speed. This allows you to utilize the full ISO 100 speed from the film.
 
 

Grain and Resolving Power
 

This is the full image, with the enlarged portion being highlighted by the yellow square.

Check out the resolution and grain of the enlarged portion. The grain and the resolving power are pretty good, although not the best amongst ISO 100 slide films.

As you can see from the magnified image above, the resolving power and grain of the E100VS is quite impressive. The Kodak T-grain technology has been incorporated into the E100VS, resulting in fine grain and higher resolving power. The details of the signboards are clearly visible even at high magnification.Using a 8X magnifying loupe, the grain is visible but not distracting. Overall, the results of the E100VS is pretty impressive.
 
 

ISO rating, pushing and reciprocity

The Ektachrome E100VS is rated at ISO 100 by Kodak, and I've started off following this recommended setting. At EI 100, the film performs very well and provided accurate exposures. It is a true ISO 100 film, and you will not need to compensate to achieve saturated colours and accurate exposures. It is my opinion that underexposing the E100VS by 1/3 stop at E.I 125 is not going to boost your colours much, and may in fact block up your shadow details. I'd recommend using the E100VS strictly at E.I 100 unless you have very good reasons not to do so.

How does it push? I pushed a roll of E100VS at E.I 200 (1 stop) just for the sake of testing, and found that it pushes well up to 1 stop. Contrast increases slightly, and so fine details in the highlights and shadows are lost. Generally, it does okay up to E.I 200, but that's about the limit I'd go. The grain is definitely going to become objectionable with more pushing, and the blacks might become muddied up.

P.S: The technical specs sheet from Kodak which I checked also recommended 1-stop push as the limit.

I did not test the reciprocal law failure time of the E100VS, but according to the Kodak film literature, "no filter correction or exposure compensation is required for exposures from 1/10,000 to 10 seconds. For critical applications, make tests under your conditions."
 
 

Contrast
 

This statue of a god situated just outside the temple door provided an excellent opportunity to test out the film. As far as my eyes can tell, the blues recorded accurately, although the red was slightly more hyped than what I saw. No polarizer was used in this shot, since the film is already saturated enough. The film has quite a reasonable contrast, allowing highlight and shadow details to be recorded, unlike the more contrasty Velvia. The slightly lower contrast of the E100VS will prove to be an advantage when details in the highlights and shadows are crucial in your image.

 "the Kodak E100VS is a unique film in its own right..."
 

Versus Velvia

Many people see the E100VS as a Velvia challanger, presumably for the throne of the king of saturated colour slides. In fact, both films are quite different in various aspects, and so such a conflict might not be the case.
 

Thus, the Kodak E100VS is a unique film in its own right. Rather than aiming to outdo Velvia or emulate Velvia's niche market, Kodak has decided to incorporate the Velvia saturation into a general ISO 100 film, which gives it more flexibility and verstaility for a greater range of assignments. Not only will the higher film speed allow photographers to use it in more situations, the more accurate skin tones and slightly lower contrast of the E100VS will prove to be a boon for portrait photographers.

However, because both E100VS and Velvia are reknowned for the ability to produce saturated colours, it is inevitable that sales will be affected by the presence of each other. Most photographers choose Velvia for the ultra fine grain and incredible colours, but when faster speeds and lower contrast are needed, there is simply no better film than the Kodak E100VS. With such a winner, it is no wonder that Kodak is sparing no efforts to push and promote this film to photographers.
 
 

Scanning

The Kodak E100VS scans very well indeed. Using a Nikon Coolscan, the scanned images required only very minimal touch-up to match the original images. Most of the images did not require any changes in saturation, only a little sharpening to make up for the loss of sharpness during the scanning process.

According to Kodak, the E100VS is part of the Ektachrome family, which "is characterized by sets of image dyes which perform very similarly when scanned. The scanner operator can setup a basic tone scale and color correction channel for EKTACHROME Films, and then optimize the tone scale and gray balance for the requirements of individual images." This translates to greater efficiency for high volume scans.
 
 

Packaging

It took years for Kodak to be convinced that photographers prefer the convenience of clear plastic canisters over the safety of totally black canisters, The Yellow Giant has finally adopted the frosted film plastic canisters for some of the films, such as the Portra series and E100VS. The translucent film cans made it easy to identify the films, even when you're in a hurry. In fact, I packed my frosted film canisters into ziplock bags, and it helped to clear the customs area at the airport when I requested for hand inspection. The guards just looked at them, and waved me through.

Other convenient touches include a larger magazine notes area on the metal film cartridge, allowing you to record assignment notes or exposure/process conditions. Kodak claims that the writeable magazine surface has improved texture for easier writing.
 
 

Sizes available

The Kodak E100VS is available in 35mm, 120 and 220 roll sizes, as well as in sheet film format. Sizes and catalog numbers may differ from country to country. See your dealer who supplies KODAK PROFESSIONAL Products. The following table is lifted from the Kodak website:
 

Roll film

Sheet Film

For more technical information, visit Kodak's website at  Http://www.Kodak.com

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