My photography has shown a lot of improvement in 2022 and I put that down to my Goodman Zone Z1 slowing me right down. Yes Mr Bartosek, it truly has. I have said previously, and no doubt will say again in future, that my Goodman Zone Z1 has made me think a lot more about my photography. t's not the lack of automation that is slowing me down, it's the hybrid aspect of this wonderful camera that is doing it for me.
It's a medium format camera and uses 120 medium format film, but I have to treat it like a large format system right down to having a dark cloth and focus screen. I have had a lot of fun learning to use the camera over the course of the year. With my progress in mind I recently took a leap of faith and shot my very first roll of Ektachrome 100 with my Goodman Zone Z1.
As my skills have improved I needed a challenge to help drive that progress further and I felt that it was time to try something new. First I shot Infrared, which I shared with you all here on my blog. The success of that experiment gave me confidence I was heading in the right direction. However, I had only shot B&W film with my Z1 and felt a move to colour film would be fun to try whilst the sun shone brightly here in the UK.
Analogue Wonderland, an excellent film retailer here in the UK, announced a summer contest based around Kodak Ektachrome. The premise being to shoot Ektachrome and show what Summer means to you. I thought about it for a while, well at least 3 minutes, and bought one roll of Ektachrome to pop my Slide/Colour Reversal Film cherry.
The summer of 2022 has been a long and dry one which gave plenty of opportunities to get out and enjoy some colour film photography. My love of black and white photography and the lack of Kodak ColorPlus has seen my interest in colour film very much reduced, but the contest sparked my interest and I shot my roll of Ektachrome during one of my leisurely walks around the local nature trails and farm roads.
I chose a few compositions I was comfortable with and also a couple that I wasn't really sure would be suited to Ektachrome. There's not a lot of colour out in the sticks during summer, the wheat crop had been harvested early and the wheat field had begun to turn green again. I also found a large patch of brambles that was festooned with Blackberries. I really wasn't sure I had succeeded with this challenge, but my fears where allayed when I received my film back from Analogue Wonderlab a couple of weeks later.
The colour saturation of Ektachrome is as life-like as it gets for me. The juxtaposition of the greenery and the blue skies of summer complimented each other perfectly in my humble opinion and I could see why people enjoy using it. This film was brought back by Kodak after a public outcry amongst the film community concerned about the lack of colour reversal film when Kodak pulled the previous iteration from the market.
Have I nailed every shot? Nope. I ever so slightly missed focus on a few frames and there's a couple of risks I took that turned out not to be the best idea I had on the day. I did learn a lot though. I learned that metering is crucial when using Ektachrome, or any other colour reversal film for that matter, especially in medium format. Taking the time to meter each scene paid off with decently exposed images.
I almost nailed the focus, there are a few soft focus shots on this set, but that's ok. My eyesight isn't great anyway and I do need to improve my focusing with my Goodman Zone. Should I choose to shoot more colour film with it, which is probably going to happen, I will continue to work on it and take as much time as I need.
Overall I am pretty happy with my first roll of Kodak Ektachrome. Slowing myself right down and taking the time to try to get it right paid off I think. Here's a few of my shots and, as always, I have placed them and more in an album on Flickr you can visit using the link below. The only thing stopping me from using it again at this time is the price. It's not a cheap film to buy, nor is it cheap to have developed, but it does look absolutely stunnin' and I probably will use it again in the future. I hope you enjoy them.
Kodak Ektachrome
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