I've been reading Bruce Barnbaum's "The Art of Photography", where he says he prefers to use Ektachrome 64T, with an 85B filter, because the contrast range with this film is longer than with normal daylight reversal films. Does anyone else have experience of this? At the end of the day, would I get a better slide from 64T/85B than from, say, Velvia or Astia? If it is true, is it to do with the reciprocity characteristics of this film - i.e. it is not designed for exposures <1/15th/s?

-- fw (finneganswake@altavista.net), August 31, 1999

Answers

Response to 64T

64T has disadvantages the way you suggest using it. 64T is balanced to record additional exposure in the blue spectrum, to compensate for the yellow cast of tungsten lighting. Thus, the speed of its yellow layer is very fast (like 2-3 stops faster than 64 speed), causing it to have fairly large yellow grain. To then filter it back to daylight means you're wasting the biggest feature of the film, which is the additional blue speed.

You're better off with the newer 100 speed slide films, which are advantaged for grain and reciprocity. Choose the one which meets your contrast and color reproduction needs.

-- Dan Sapper (dansapper@aol.com), September 01, 1999.

Response to 64T

I have shot tungsten films mainly for architectural work and normally use tungsten lighting. When shooting it this way I light the interiors and wait for the views through windows, doors and patios, etc., to change a bit after the sun goes down until the exposure by artificial & natural light balances. Then I take advantage of what I believe is the real advantage of tungsten films, its ability to get the great colors of late evening sky intensity while giving a 'correct' indoor exposure by light it was designed to be used in. I haven't used the film with filters outdoors often but when I did my results were less satisfying than using Velvia with longer exposure times with a neutral density filter. I would use Astia or Sensia II, or Kodak EPN or 64 if I need less contrast in the scene rather than filtering tungsten films.

-- Dan Smith (shooter@brigham.net), September 01, 1999.

Response to 64T

Slightly off topic and not an answer but...

Has anyone tried Scotchchrome 640T with an 85B as a substitute for the no longer available Scotchchrome 1000 for daylight use? If you wanted large grain and muted colors, that used to be the way to go. It's not a look I often want, but I only have one roll of frozen Scotchchrome 1000 in my freezer and it's getting very old now. A substitute would be nice to find.

-- Bob Atkins (bobatkins@hotmail.com), September 01, 1999.

Despite what everybody else (expecting Bob) has posted above. I think it is worth a try. Yes you lose speed, but the tonal range seems to be longer. I first tried this "trick" with Kodachrome 40, type A when I was in college and it worked well. i don't do it much these days, but like I said it is worth a try. Up until recently most movies were shot on tungsten balanced film, but that was before the development of practical (stable) HMI sources.

-- Ellis Vener (evphoto@insync.net), September 02, 1999.