Revisiting Kodak Ektar

A bright red fly agaric on an autumnal carpet. You won’t find many better macro subjects for the red tones of Kodak Ektar. Just a pity I couldn’t find a bigger example. 1/4s 110mm F5.6 Bronica SQ-A.

Sometimes in life you realise you made a particular decision some time ago and simply can’t remember why you did it. That’s how I feel about Kodak Ektar. Why did I not use it again after shooting a single roll on 35mm during my early days of using film? Thinking back, Ektar was one of the film stocks I was most excited to shoot and one I thought I would perhaps like the most. My expectations were too high, as was often the case when I first started to shoot film, and I just wasn’t happy enough with the results I got to want to shoot it again (the colours maybe?). A real pity as it’s a favourite amongst landscape photographers.

A very traditional macro shot with this pair of small mushrooms. Shots like this would be very difficult to capture on medium format if it wasn’t for my special 110mm F4.5 macro lens. 1/2s 110mm F8.0 Bronica SQ-A.

One of Kodak’s newest emulsions, this arrived in 2008 which was well into the digital era at this point. It claims to have the finest grain of any colour negative film and was designed with digital scanning in mind. Throw in that it has perhaps the widest dynamic range of any colour film stock you can buy today, and it’s not hard to see why its popular. Having seen what some other people were producing, I wanted to revisit it and see if I could get better results.

Don’t forget to keep an eye out for bracket fungi. Though being a flat and wide subject, depth of field can be difficult unless you are somehow able to get directly above them. 1/8s 110mm F5.6 Bronica SQ-A.

I managed to pick up a couple of boxes of 120 before the prices went up last year and I loaded one up in my Bronica SQ-A to photograph some of the numerous fungi that litter the local woodlands in Autumn. I should add that I did use my old Rotolight Neo 2 to add a bit of fill light on my macro subjects. Using continuous light is much easier when dealing with film, though Ektar might be a good colour film to use with flash due to its wide exposure latitude.

This shot of the light through bracken really shows off the incredible dynamic range that Ektar is capable of. 1/30s 250mm F8.0 Bronica SQ-A.

I was much happier with these results, the reddish tones and high saturation really suited these autumn scenes well, especially the shot with the bright red fly agaric. There’s almost a slide film quality to that photo. The huge dynamic range worked wonders for the scene with the bracken illuminated by the sun, if that had been slide film then the bracken would either have been blown out, or the whole area around it would have fallen to black. Here we have just enough surrounding detail to give a bit more context to the scene.

Though I am not sure I managed to quite get the small spider in focus, this naturally formed composition jumped straight out at me when I saw it. 1/15s 110mm F5.6 Bronica SQ-A.

Looking at the two bonus shots I took in London at night, you can really see how hard the film is working to keep things from either blowing out or being completely lost in shadow as well. It does however give a much less contrasty look that slide film would give and it’s a bit too flat for my liking. I really like that punchy contrast for cityscapes. 

Despite the lack of contrast inherent to colour negative film, I still really like this shot of the City of London. It really shows of the fine detail that is the other signature of Ektar. 85s 150mm F11 Bronica SQ-A.

I suppose the main rival to this film stock is Kodak’s own Portra 160, and it’s tough for me to say which one I prefer, mostly because I don’t have a great deal of experience shooting either. I think overall I prefer Portra’s colours for general photography, but I can definitely see Ektar coming into its own when shooting landscapes or other scenes outdoors, especially if there’s a lot of red tones. I don’t think the fly agaric shot would have looked as good on Portra with more of a teal and orange look.  I do also think that Ektar is marginally more detailed, but not in a way I would deem significant. You’d have a hard time seeing the difference unless you were really pixel (grain) peeping.

I am not such a big fan of this shot of the Shard. The colour palette is very muted and the composition could have been better as well. I should have shifted everything left to have the metal barrier but not the bridge itself. 70s 110mm F11 Bronica SQ-A.

So, will I be using Ektar again? Absolutely, and not just because I have quite a few rolls left on ice. This is also one of the few colour film stocks you can buy in large format, but with the high costs I want to get to know it better first in medium format before I take the plunge on that. As I write this now, I haven’t shot any rolls yet in 2023 but as I look ahead over the summer, I think that will soon change.

I love the warm tones of this clump of fungus, the detail of the sharp centre is also excellent. 1/30s 110mm F5.6 Bronica SQ-A.

Perhaps this last shot would have benefitted from either a larger depth of focus or a slightly tweaked composition. I do however like the lack of scale, it’s hard to tell how small these mushrooms really were. 1/2s 110mm F8.0 Bronica SQ-A.

What are your thoughts on shooting Kodak Ektar? Let me know in the comments down below.

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