Mama did take our Kodachrome away, and our Ektachrome 64
The demise of Kodachrome colour transparency film in 2009 attracted considerable media attention. Less well publicised has been the gradual withdrawal by the Kodak corporation of its Ektachrome transparency film range which was aimed firmly at the professional market when introduced as a sheet film in 1947.
Ektachrome did not require the complex processing that Kodachrome demanded, and the film boasted, in a number of products, a high enough ASA (or ISO) rating to alert photographers shooting in the mid-C20th to the possibilities of low light colour photography for the first time. High Speed Ektachrome, the earliest Ektachrome manufactured in 35 mm format, was, at 160 ASA, the fastest colour film available in 1959. Ektachrome 400, introduced in 1978, was the fastest transparency film of its day.
At the Telegraph Sunday Magazine in London in the mid-1970s, freelancers shooting colour stories could chose from four transparency films: Kodachrome 25, Kodachrome 64, High Speed Ektachrome and Ektachrome X. The exposed Kodachrome was dispatched to Kodak and had a 24 hour turn-around. More urgent stories were shot on Ektachrome X which was processed in the Telegraph’s own lab.
Manufactured between 1963 and 1984, Ektachrome X could produce quite magical results given optimum lighting conditions but inclined towards a green cast when conditions were less favourable. Kodachrome may have given Paul Simon ‘the greens of summers,’ but Ektachrome X, in the experience of some professionals, produced the greens all year round.
One solution to the green problem was employed by Philip Jones Griffiths when he lived in Vietnam. Until this day, professionals have stored their colour transparency stock in a refrigerator to retard a natural aging process which can reduce saturation and shift the film’s colour balance. Contrary to received wisdom Griffiths warmed his film in what he called his ‘incubator,’ a black box which he placed in the tropical sunshine on a flat roof next to his hotel room in Saigon. The heat speeded the film’s aging process and counteracted the prevailing green cast with one of magenta.
Oblivious of Griffiths’ ingenuity, and shooting portraits and feature stories in Britain, I resorted to taping two gelatin filters, usually a CC10R (red) and a CC10M (magenta), to the lens hood of my Olympus OM1. The gels would drop off at inopportune moments and they attracted enough dust and fingerprints between them to give a noticeable soft-focus effect. However, the red and magenta combination did counteract the green cast which was especially apparent in photographs taken indoors using natural light. Natural lighting was the prevailing style for indoor portraiture for the Sunday supplements in the 1970s.
Salvation came in 1977 when Kodak introduced Ektachrome 64 (EPR), a film which evolved into an altogether more meaty product than Ektachrome X, and, for me at least, produced better ‘nice bright colours’ than any of the preceding Ektachromes; or Kodachromes for that matter.
One of the original E-6 films, Ektachrome 64 did not incline towards green but towards blue, particularly when exposed in the shade on a day of blue skies. The blue cast could be corrected, to some degree, with an 81A or 81B warming filter, but a more satisfying solution was to shoot EPR in the early morning or late evening when the colour temperature of daylight was at its warmest. Or, if you felt so inclined, you could just let the blue do its own thing, because the blue of EPR was a wonderful blue.
Probably by mistake, I also discovered that push-processing EPR to 120 ASA produced a punchier and slightly warmer transparency. The main benefit though, was the extra stop which meant just one film became versatile enough to use in a wide variety of situations and lighting levels. Any increase in grain did not prove to be an issue with publishers.
Ektachrome 64 pushed one stop became my stock film for two decades. Bags of cassettes of EPR travelled the world with me, and my processing instruction earned me the nickname ‘Push One’ from fat Jack, chief technician in the Telegraph magazine darkroom, perhaps because push-processing meant a minute or two of unpaid overtime at the E6 tanks for Jack and his colleagues.
The slideshow 10 Photographs, is dedicated to Ektachrome 64 pushed one stop. However, it does not consist entirely of images exposed on EPR. The 1975 image of the London Festival Ballet was shot on High Speed Ektachrome, as was Edna O’Brien in 1979. And then there’s the Charles and Diana wedding photo taken for the Telegraph Sunday Magazine on 29 July 1981. That was shot on Ektachrome 64, but because there was a strict deadline that day, with hundreds of rolls of film being couriered in to the Telegraph lab from 30 photographers along the wedding route, I was firmly instructed not to push-process, but to rate all my films at the standard 64 ASA.
The weather was overcast but bright enough to shoot at 64 ASA without difficulty, and this picture made the centre spread of the Telegraph magazine royal wedding special edition. I even received that rarest of things, a note of thanks from a picture editor, in this instance Mike Hardy.
More in keeping with Fleet Street tradition, the spread elicited an earthy response from the Telegraph darkroom. “There you are, Push One,” said fat Jack, when I called in to restock on EPR a few days after the royal wedding. “You shoot a **** of a lot better when you don’t push-process your film.”
Ektachrome 64 (EPR), colour transparency film of rich natural colour and soft highlight contrast, introduced 1977, discontinued 2007. Predeceased by its cousin Kodachrome, EPR is survived by a brother, the tungsten-balanced Ektachrome 64T.
With thanks to Robert Shanebrook, author of Making Kodak Film.
I, too, have become a huge fan of digital photography. I think the biggest draw for me is the technology and ability to manipulate the photos, and quickly access them when needed. I like being able to make videos and slide shows and using all the new tech toys to play with the photos. On the other hand, I was saddened this past semester. I was taking a photography class and found they did nothing except digital. I wanted to learn about film, how to develop, etc. I ended up dropping the class, but was really shocked that they didn’t still teach basic photography skills.