A Celebration of E6

[HHPhoto]

Yep, this is what we E6 shooters all should do - not just buy but also SHOOT more.

Margus

Hi Margus,

don't worry, I am not only buying more from year to year, but also shooting more from year to year.
This year I will have another E6 shooting record 🙂.
And it feels so good!! So much joy!!

Margus, your shots are breathtaking! Please keep on showing it here. At least one picture every 2-3 days :angel:. Thanks!

Cheers, Jan

 

[Paulbe]

Jan--wow!
Thanks SO MUCH for the info!
I've got lots of slides--and projectors--so the info is greatly appreciated.
The home development kits look interesting.
Thanks again...
Paul

 

[HHPhoto]

Jan--wow!
Thanks SO MUCH for the info!
I've got lots of slides--and projectors--so the info is greatly appreciated.
The home development kits look interesting.
Thanks again...
Paul

Paul, you are welcome!
I am glad my information is helpful for you.
Enjoy your slides and keep on shooting.

Cheers, Jan

 

[kiss-o-matic]

Yoga with Umbrella 5 by gaijin_punch, on Flickr


Fun by the Toilet Bowl (2) by gaijin_punch, on Flickr

 

[tsiklonaut]

Some excellent shots guys, keep it goin'

Cambodian boatsman by tsiklonaut, on Flickr​

 

[Photo_Smith]

Leaves by Photo Utopia, on Flickr

 

[ornate_wrasse]

This image was taken underwater with a Nikonos V, using Velvia 50 while scuba diving in Curacao.

 

[Brad Bireley]

Fuji Velvia 50 Canon A-1 50mm f/1.4

Minolta Autocord Fuji Velvia 50

 

[tsiklonaut]

Color negative film is so good these days it's hard to justify shooting E6. Unless of course you shoot for slide shows...

I shoot both and no C41 comes near E6. It's apples and oranges and C41 doesn't replace E6 nor E6 replaces C41 for the purposes they're designed for.

Try to shoot this with any C41 for a proof you'll have to literally abuse your C41 film silly in post-processing to get anything even remotely close to the simple "E6-looks" from a simple E6 scan. I.e.:

Planet Hiiumaa (iv) by tsiklonaut, on Flickr











Floating by tsiklonaut, on Flickr​

 

[2WK]

^Wow I really like the stern shot!

 

[Photo_Smith]

Color negative film is so good these days it's hard to justify shooting E6.

Colour neg is very good, especially if your final goal is a C type wet print or you have extreme contrast in the scene.

Its a fact that slides have more visual dynamic range than any other medium, no colour negative has the visual range of colours or density present in E6.
I mainly shoot B&W and C41 but that is mostly because of cost and convenience. To get the translucent brilliance of a well exposed E6 is pretty much impossible with C41.
Try shooting them side by side, scanning and matching–you'll soon see.

5 year out of date Agfa RSX, Rolleiflex T

 

[MarinB]

My humble contribution.

Hand-developed at home and drum-scanned at home.

 

[Tijmendal]

Wow. Such beautiful work. I'm very hesitant to shoot E6 because it has so little lattitude. I'm going to New York next week though and I'm also making a trip to look at the beautiful autumn foliage. I really want to shoot some medium format E6, but am afraid I'll mess up my exposures. I've recently gotten a lightmeter. Any tips?
This thread truly is inspiring. If only E6 weren't so darn expensive!

 

[edge100]

I've got four rolls of Provia 400X waiting to be scanned. Here are two from the first roll (shot on my 500c/m).


Thought by Michael Fraser Photography, on Flickr


Do Not Pass Open Doors by Michael Fraser Photography, on Flickr

 

[Photo_Smith]

Wow. Such beautiful work. I'm very hesitant to shoot E6 because it has so little lattitude. I'm going to New York next week though and I'm also making a trip to look at the beautiful autumn foliage. I really want to shoot some medium format E6, but am afraid I'll mess up my exposures. I've recently gotten a lightmeter. Any tips?
This thread truly is inspiring. If only E6 weren't so darn expensive!

Give it a go it's not as hard as you think, I exposed the image below which was metered by a Weston master V (old selenium) bought for £5


Railway Carriage by Photo Utopia, on Flickr

Taken with an old Nikkormat on Agfa film at £4.50 a roll it isn't that expensive either

 

[Prest_400]

I still have got a few rolls of elitechrome in the freezer and I processed at the end of September one of them. It stayed about 16 months in the camera and past expiration for 6 months yet perfect!

I loved transparency so much that It was about all the kind of film I brought to my last big trip a few years ago.

Colour neg is very good, especially if your final goal is a C type wet print or you have extreme contrast in the scene.

Its a fact that slides have more visual dynamic range than any other medium, no colour negative has the visual range of colours or density present in E6.
I mainly shoot B&W and C41 but that is mostly because of cost and convenience. To get the translucent brilliance of a well exposed E6 is pretty much impossible with C41.
Try shooting them side by side, scanning and matching–you'll soon see.

I'm quite a slow shooter and now want to try Kodak's Ektar and Portra for a little while. And when processed it is easy and rather cheap to get them scanned. Also, I've gotten on a Shoot for print mindset.
Had some slides I hadn't printed for 3 years and the Frontier did fairly with E6... But the Kodachromes were too contrasty... Blocked up blacks and a bit of blown whites. Density methinks is a bit of a curse for some scanners.

With some good backing (scanning) the slides should be gotten printed well. I might end sending some Kodachromes to BPD for imacon+fujiflex. On the long run, when feasible, there should come the home scanner.

As of latitude/DR. DR of E6 is lesser than C41, but still quite elegant notwithstanding. Needs some effort (I've done quite well with just the OM-1 centreweighted meter) but obviously no C41 exposure leeway level.

Oh, and sorry... I'm cheating by not uploading an Image!

 

[thegman]

Color negative film is so good these days it's hard to justify shooting E6. Unless of course you shoot for slide shows...

As much as I love modern C-41 and the way it scans, there is just something about getting back medium format slides that takes my breath away.

I would have agreed a couple of months ago, but I shot both Ektar and Velvia on a trip, and there is a quite a big different between them IMHO.

I find slide film is happy to be terribly underexposed, but of course C41 tends to be happy with overexposure (although Ektar seems happy with neither), and the colours you get out of slide film, as Margus says, are hard to get without a lot of post processing. And sure, we could post-process, but one of the reasons I shoot film is that 90% of the time, I only have to straighten a horizon or something, and I'm done.

 

[Tijmendal]

Give it a go it's not as hard as you think, I exposed the image below which was metered by a Weston master V (old selenium) bought for £5

That's good to hear. I'm just scared by blowing out the highlights. Will a normal incident reading without any compensation be good? And better to underexpose by half a stop than overexpose, right (considering my camera doesn't have half stops)

 

[shadowfox]

Yes, slide films has that certain sparkle that C-41 negatives don't.

Fuji Provia 100

 

[tsiklonaut]

I've recently gotten a lightmeter. Any tips?

E6 has those certain microcontrasts, tonal character and vividness the C41 just doesn't. But the payoff is the limited DR of the E6. So you need to take care your subject fits into the DR range of the E6. Ideally you should use graduated ND filters (see my review here).

But if you don't want to mess with ND filters a decent circular polarizer filter is a good start with the E6 landscapes since it'll "tame" the sky a couple of f-stops avoiding overexposure of the skies if you shoot approx 90-degrees from the sight-to-Sun direction where the CPL works the most effective and usually in this direction you have the "nicest" highlight/shadow contrasts as well.

The best is to use spot-metering and note the E6 films have only around 5-fstop of latitude - so you can measure the sky into no more than i.e. 4/5th end from the middle gray you plan to expose on or you'll wash out all the details. With simple averaging metering measure to slightly highlight-bias (while the C41 I've found works the best on shadow-biased metering). Modern matrix metering (some later film cameras have this) usually gets E6 close to spot-on as well.

The Great Central Road - 1126 kilometers of dirtroad in Australia by tsiklonaut, on Flickr​

Margus