It may be a bit on the costly side, but this is a film well worth picking up in large batches when you can - especially if you're a fan of cross-processing.
After spending most of the year shooting Velvia and Provia variants almost exclusively, I felt like a change, and having heard good things about E100VS, I took the plunge and bought a pack.
First things first: despite the “vivid saturation” implied in the VS, I’m not entirely sure that I’d take E100VS over Velvia for nature photography (or any other time when I want ridiculously saturated slides). It’s a pretty close call, though, so you be the judge.
And here, a comparable shot from a roll of Velvia 50.
While I didn’t dislike the shots I got from that first roll, I wasn’t overly struck; why pay through the nose when the results don’t seem too dissimilar to the cheaper Provia? However, Kodak film is often rated quite highly when cross-processed, and E100VS is no exception!
Under daylight, you get a slight color-shift towards blue and good, rich contrast. It’s probably better to rate the film at 200ISO instead of the 100ISO I went for, though, to avoid the washed-out highlights I got on some of these shots (In fact, that’s a good tip when you’re cross-processing a lot of slide films).
But cross-processed night shots look totally different; much richer, with barely any noticeable color-shift at all, no matter how you shoot.
Personally, this isn’t going to replace Provia and Velvia for my daylight shots. But for cross-processing – particularly at night – I can’t think of a widely-available film that could do much better!
4 comments
lighttomysoul
sadly, I'm more interested in what camera you're using :)
coldkennels
Hahaha, sorry about that! I normally put it underneath the galleries - I must have forgotten. Anyway, all the daylight photos were taken with a Yashica Mat 124G, and the night time ones were from a Holga 120N with the occasional use of close-up filters.
I'd completely forgotten about this review - I wrote it ages and ages ago! There must be one hell of a backlog.
dirklancer
This is one of my all time favorite films - thanks for the review :)
niko_fuzzy
the power of E100VS