In this film review, I’ll share my findings, including tips for getting the best results. But first, the basics: a brief history and technical characteristics of Kodak Ektar 100. A brief history of Kodak’s Ektar brand. Kodak Ektar 100 is a pretty beautiful film. It’s best used in the old school way of doing photography: with a camera on a tripod, a special light meter used to judge the highlights and shadows, and then a single very care and calculated exposure being made. It delivers very saturated colors that I’m sure many digital photographers will really like–especially if you’re a Sony shooter.

Kodak EKTAR 100 | Ag Photographic+Photolab Kodak EKTAR 100 | Ag Photographic+Photolab

There is an official Pro Image 100 datasheet that you can see right here. Some choice highlights from that include the promise that this film can be stored at room temperature, even in hot and humid climates, and that it has good underexposure latitude.Ektar is a name that fans of Kodak and vintage cameras may recognize from days long passed. Originally seen on a variety of exceptional Kodak lenses from the 1930s, the name was an acronym of Eastman Kodak TessAR. These lenses could be found on some of that brand’s best machines right up until the 1960s, and they offered terrific performance for the era.

Kodak Ektar 100 review, by Lewis Collard! Kodak Ektar 100 review, by Lewis Collard!

So with all said and done, this Kodak Ektar 100 is a relatively young film with a historic name. As well as the aforementioned finest, smoothest grain of any color negative film available today, it also promises to bring ultra-vivid color and exceptional sharpness. For a really long time, if you wanted very vivid colors in your film photos you needed to go to a slide film–but when Kodak introduced Kodak Ektar 100 things changed. Photographers were able to get punchy, vibrant, saturated colors with the ease of use that negative film provides. To this day, Kodak Ektar 100 is used to a variety of applications with one of the most common ones being landscapes. However it is also in use for portraiture as its low ISO value allows for incredibly sharp photos.Kodak Ektar is an ISO 100 colour negative film that, as you might expect following that claim about its grain, sits firmly in the company’s Professional range. For the best care, store the film in the freezer. When you’re ready to shoot it, take it out hours beforehand and let it thaw. Then when it’s ready go ahead and shoot. Figure 1. On the left (1), a scene with a slight underexposure, scanned without colour correction. Middle (2), is a colour-corrected (1) via Photoshop’s Color Balance sliders. Right (3) is the same scene exposed with two extra stops of light with no colour correction. Ektar’s colours. If you are confident in your scanner software and your post-production skills, this film should give you no trouble.

Ektar - Wikipedia

As a color-negative film it’s one of the closest contenders to the punchiness of old slide film. The benefit of Ektar over these being the natural circumvention of the inconvenient and costly processing that slide film requires. Take Ektar to your local lab and they’ll have your prints ready in no time, as it uses C-41 process chemicals (the standard stuff used in every lab these days).

Reciprocity failure

But this is all a bit fiddly and beside the point. If shot at box-speed in adequate light with a properly metered machine, Ektar will make consistently perfect shots with exceptional color. The only further thing to note here for the image quality and qualities is that the six shots below were taken in the Yashica Electro 35 GSN rangefinder. The only thing to add here is how different the below shots, taken in a cheap Canon point ‘n’ shoot, look compared to those above taken in a Yashica Electro rangefinder.