After months of deliberation, analysis, thinking, and planning, and despite recently purchasing a new high-end digital camera and using it extensively, I recently made a modest investment that I view as a demonstration of my commitment to film photography: I bought a 400-foot (122m) roll of 35mm Kodak Vision3 50D, or what I prefer to call by the name exposed onto the film rebate itself: Eastman 5203. The equivalent of 74 rolls of 36-exposure film, it means I’m going to have a lot of 35mm color photography ahead of me for months, certainly, but likely years to come.
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Side-by-Side: ECN-2 vs. C-41 Processing for Kodak Vision3 Film
In the past several years, as film prices rise and film choices diminish, it’s become quite common to tap into 35mm film stocks that are ordinarily sold for motion picture use, and adapt them for still photography. Nudging us all down that path are dozens of companies (and even individuals) who are buying the motion picture stocks in bulk, cutting them down, loading them into 135 roll film cassettes, and selling them at retail, or via online marketplaces. While Eastman 5222, also known as Kodak Double-X, is a common black-and-white motion picture film that’s long been packaged and used for still photography, the practice is increasingly popular in the past few years for color films, namely Kodak’s Vision3 stocks. These films, however, have some unique attributes that make them unsuitable for most lab development, and challenging for home processing as well. Among them is the fact that technically speaking, they’re designed for the ECN-2 process (and chemicals), not the more common C-41 process of developing standard color negative films for still photography. In this article, we dive into the differences, and what you need to know to get great results from these films.
Continue reading…Review: Kodak Ektachrome E100 Color Reversal Film (135/120)
Many film photographers were crestfallen when — after declining sales resulting from the rise of digital — Kodak discontinued the last remaining variety of its Ektachrome color reversal film back in 2013, leaving Fujifilm as the only major producer of color reversal films. (I have always preferred the term “reversal film,” but many call it transparency film or slide film.) Some predicted that reversal films would eventually go away, labs that process E-6 (a chemical process identifier for Ektachrome and all other modern reversal films) would stop doing so, the very few remaining labs that specialize in E-6 would close, and that would be that.
Alas, that wasn’t the case, at least not for now. Film slowly began to rebound to a seemingly sustainable level; enough so, apparently, that Kodak made waves when it announced in late 2017 that the Ektachrome production line was to be restarted. Ektachrome E100 finally began reaching store shelves in 135 format in October 2018, followed by 120 and sheet formats, which began to trickle to stores just a few months before the COVID-19 pandemic hit.
Continue reading…The Curious Case of the Non-Fitting Lens: Kodak Retina Aux Lenses
One of the challenging aspects of collecting and maintaining vintage cameras is the sheer lack of detailed historical technical information available for the vast majority of them. Many of the companies who made all this camera gear are long since gone, and virtually all of them who are still around have shifted their business models, often quite dramatically. That can make it a big challenge to figure-out how to solve weird problems that just shouldn’t be happening to start with. And such as it was for me recently.
Continue reading…Side-by-Side • Kodak HC-110: Dilution B vs. Dilution H
In this first of a new series of articles, we take a look at how, and to what extent, using two different common dilutions of Kodak’s HC-110 black and white developer impacts the resulting film images. Our novel approach to this series hopefully will make it extremely easy to see and identify the differences — an approach we intend to bring to a number of comparisons in the months ahead.
Continue reading…Review: Kodak Retina (Nr. 117) 135 (35mm) Film Camera
My collection of film cameras now exceeds 60 different models, and a narrow majority of them use 135 (or “35mm”) film. Each and every one of those cameras owes part of its existence to one man: August Nagel. While the use of 35mm film stocks in still photography was not new, it was Dr. Nagel who saw the value of a daylight-loading film cassette that came factory-loaded with 35mm film, so that photographers wouldn’t have to load their own film into proprietary containers in a darkroom. Nagel’s approach became known as 135 roll film, and to align with the introduction of the film in 1934, Dr. Nagel designed a camera to use it: the Kodak Retina. It would eventually become a long and popular line of cameras that continued well past Dr. Nagel’s death, but the very first of them was the Kodak Retina Nr. 117 — “Nr.” (rather than “No.”) owing to its German origins.
Continue reading…Type A, Type B, and the Basics of Color Balance in Films
If you’re a user of vintage cameras, and you happen to read vintage camera manuals, you’ve likely encountered Kodak’s “film types” — nomenclature like “Type A” or “Type G” or similar indicators. If you look at today’s film stocks, however, you don’t see these film types noted. What do they mean, exactly? And do you need to care?
Continue reading…Rediscovering Home Movies: A Brownie Camera, and the FPP
“Load it! Shoot it! Flip it!” I’d heard those words so many times from Michael Raso and the Film Photography Project (FPP) gang on their regular podcast since August 2019, that a year later it had become engrained in my psyche. Raso was referring to his new Double 8 (I prefer to use the term Regular 8, but Standard 8 is also used) film offerings and scanning services, and while it piqued my interest a bit at first, it wasn’t until after a chance notice of a beautiful Regular 8mm Brownie Movie Camera on eBay that I finally decided to bite. What follows is a summary of what my experience was like, including mini-reviews of the 1951 version of the Brownie Movie Camera, and of the FPP’s processing and scanning service for movie film.
Continue reading…Time Capsules: The Voyeuristic Joy of Found Film
I like shopping for classic cameras, I suppose — I must, given how many web sites I frequent, just seeing what I can find, and at what price point. So it was a few weeks back when I was on shopgoodwill.com, the online auction site for numerous Goodwill Industries chapters through the US and Canada. The site has myriad camera listings, but most of the merchandise is, candidly, not that desirable to me. Still, I look from time-to-time, which is how I found an interesting listing, for a not-so-interesting camera.
Continue reading…Review: Kodak Retina IIc (Type 020) 135 (35mm) Film Camera
While I consider myself to be primarily a “medium format guy,” I own a great many 135 cameras as well, and really enjoy their myriad forms and feature sets — from dirt simple to sophisticated, from fully manual to fully automatic. And while there are exceptions (e.g., Rolleiflex, Duaflex, etc.), I don’t often dip into mid-century gear of any kind, since it can often be problematic (and expensive) to keep it all operational. That hasn’t kept me from lusting after some of the more revered cameras of that period, however, and in fact, I was hunting for a Zeiss Ikon of some sort when I instead took home another camera that had been on my mind: a Kodak Retina.
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