smh. I don’t know what I was thinking…
It was sometime in early March, 2021, and I got the crazy idea to shoot some slide film. Now, I self-process everything (b/w, c-41, and e6) and chemicals to process slides are sorta expensive and I believe them to be rather short-lived.* So, I reasoned, if I’m going to shoot slide, I need to shoot a bunch of it in relatively short order, then develop it all in a week or two before the chems start to go off.
Now. I planned to shoot almost exclusively slide on a trip to Arkansas in early April, so I figured March would be the perfect time to start putting away some rolls, and so one morning I grabbed a roll of the new Ektachrome (which I had never shot before) and looked around for something to shoot it in.
What did I find? Well… here comes the head-scratcher:
Yes, that’s the Vivitar Ultra Wide and Slim there in the rearview mirror…
smh.
And, well, actually, it performed ok, I think. The slides came out of the tank rather dark, but I think that has to do with the age of my kit. (I bought the kit in 2019, and it sat in a cabinet, unmixed, until mid-April 2021). The 1st Developer had some crystals in it that took a long long time to dissolve, and after a few sessions, I realized that I needed to add about 30 seconds to each developer to get more well-developed images.
I started the roll at the Dallas Arboretum, and took about a dozen pictures. The koi, above, was the only usable result.
It didn’t help that I’ve decided to go all in on the copy stand/light pad/pixl-latr scanning method. I got some new lights that put out far more light (enough to hurt my eyes), but it still wasn’t quite enough to get through to the D7000 at acceptable settings (1/60th, f/5.6, ISO200 with the 55mm f/2.8 Micro-Nikkor).** So the pictures got quite tortured in Capture One before coming here.
Oh well.
After the Arboretum, I took the Vivitar UWS out to Grapevine Lake and on a couple of walks with the Hanabibti, and finished it up on the various trees that were in bloom here at the end of March, 2021.
Sure, they’re dark. Sure, there are some color shifts. Sure, I should’ve used a decent camera… What was I thinking?
I’ll tell you what I was thinking:
I just wanted to have some fun!
And, well, the Vivitar UWS got a bit of a workout and performed as well as, or better, than expected, and, honestly, I had fun!
What more can you ask for?
If you’d like to tell me how wrong I was to shoot Ektachrome in the UWS, there’s a comment box below! Thanks in advance…
*In my one experience with the Unicolor E6 Kit, I remember developing a few rolls and getting completely blank strips of plastic, which I recall someone telling me was the result of exhausted color developer. Looking back at my notes, though, I got 10 rolls out of the kit over 13 months with almost no changes, so…
** In an attempt to remedy that, and to add something to my unboxing videos, I’ve acquired a modern camera… It’s been in my hot little hands for a full day, at time of writing, but I haven’t taken a picture with it yet, so more on that another day.
