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[OM] Elitechrome, Kodachrome and Provia [was] OM Pix for Your Weekend V

Subject: [OM] Elitechrome, Kodachrome and Provia [was] OM Pix for Your Weekend Viewing Pleasure
From: "John A. Lind" <jlind@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sat, 08 Dec 2001 15:43:38 +0000
At 12:17 12/8/01, Damo wrote:

Some really nice pics there John,

my favourites have to be

Chin Turret, Lonely Tulip and Spring Mill in Summer.

Thanks . . .
I wish the weather had been better for the B-17 and B-24 shots. The planes were here for 3 days during high heat and humidity with "heat haze" the entire time; no clear blue sky. :-( Same is applicable to the "Spring Mill" shot and need to go there again next year, well before sunrise about mid-Spring with cooler "clear sky" weather.

As Ive visited your website John, I notice you give the Kodak Elite CHROME (Standard and Extracolour) a bit of a wrap. So do I, I think it is great stuff and extremely well priced. Picked up some in oz today actually at Kmart for AUD$8.89!!!!!!!!! BARGAIN.

I've used Elitechrome 100 in the past, and two rolls (maybe three) of Elitechrome 100 Extra Color. I haven't used either in some time. Film is very much a personal preference. The two ISO 100 Elitechrome's are very fine grained with Kodak's "tabular grain" technology. Kodachrome and Fuji Provia 100F have greater color accuracy. Saturation is about the same among the three, but Elitechrome (100/200/400) colors are brighter compared to some of the deeper colors I get from Kodachrome (which also has slightly higher contrast).

After a few rolls of Elitechrome Extra Color I quit using it. It had far more saturation than I wanted, at great expense to color accuracy. Don't have people in the foreground with it! The clincher was a shot of a red barn. The red color was nowhere near the actual color of the barn, and the super heavy saturation "blew out" some of the detail level in the barn siding. Some want the saturation and color accuracy isn't as important to them. Most high saturation landscape shooters still seem to prefer Fuji's Velvia for its green response though.

Ive also heard a lot about Fuji Provia's 'F' range. I noticed it on your picture Loney Tulip. Looks great.

What are your's and anyone elses thoughts on Provia F? From what I see, it's a pretty high performer. Though I still think Kodak's Elite CHROME Select Series is great too.

Provia 100F is the closest E-6 I've found to Kdoachrome with color accuracy, saturation, contrast and detail level. Even so, Kodachrome still has a unique appearance with edge definition. This affects acuity of the image and helps close the gap with Provia's slightly finer grain. Much like using an "unsharp mask" does when processing digital scans for web (or other) use.

*** What film you use depends on what you want for the image(s) ***

Some technobabble about E-6 versus K-14 film emulsions:
The reason Kodachrome has greater edge definition is a fundamental difference between E-6 and K-14 emulsions. E-6 ("Ektachrome") films have the dye linkers in the emulsion; K-14 ("Kodachrome") does not. They must be added during the K-14 processing. The lack of dye linkers makes the Kodachrome emulsion much thinner. This doesn't affect ray paths of light perpendicular to the film plane, but it does the oblique ones that travel through the emulsion at an angle. The thicker the emulsion, and the more oblique the ray path, the more it cuts across the emulsion and the more edge definition is lost. One must have excellent camera optics with high resolution, and carefully focus the camera to see the effect:

C-41, E-6 and K-14 films have three emulsions (Fuji has added a fourth to some of its films):

(Use a "fixed pitch" font to see this "ASCII art" properly)

  Thick Emulsion          Thin Emulsion
  Oblique Ray Path:       Oblique Ray Path:
  \                      \
   \                      \
  --*----------------    --*----------------
     \  Layer 1             \  Layer 1
      \                  ----\--------------
  -----\-------------         \  Layer 2
        \  Layer 2       ------\------------
         \                      \  Layer 3
  --------\----------    --*-----*----------
           \  Layer 3      |     |
            \              |     |
  --*--------*-------      |     |
    |        |             |     |
    ^^^^^^^^^^             ^^^^^^^
  Horizontal distances traversed through
  the emulsions by an oblique ray path

Want the highest possible edge definition? Use a *slow* single-layer B/W film with the thinnest possible emulsion. Of course, other characteristics of the film will likely be important, possibly more so. The decision is very often a tradeoff about what's more important. The reasons for using Sensia 400 for the night street shots was film speed and it's finer grained than Elitechrome 400. I would have preferred Provia 400, but couldn't get a pro film in time, so I settled for Fuji's consumer equivalent.

-- John


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