Ektachrome 100: Living Dangerously

I can count the rolls of slide film I have shot in my life on one hand. I use far more black and white film than color and when I do use color, I am usually playing around with some old camera, so I prefer color print film. It’s more forgiving. You really need to be on your game to shoot slide film. Or have a camera that is.

On a recent long weekend trip to Carmel-By-The-Sea, I brought along my very capable Nikon F5 and a roll of Kodak Ektachrome 100, feeling infinitely confident that the F5’s color matrix metering would do the heavy lifting. The camera didn’t disappoint, but the weather did. Cloudy, drizzle, overcast, fog and every once in a while…a fogdog….a clearing in the grey where a shaft or two of sunlight would poke through.

On my first photo walk, I only got a few shots off before it started to rain.

The Cypress Inn was once owned by Doris Day. She loved animals and the hotel is uber dog friendly.

The next day started off a bit more promising, some hazy sun allowing a walk on the beach.

Down that way is the famous Pebble Beach Golf Club.

I walked past this window several times in my hotel and finally the light was right to try and capture it. I have been amazed at how well the F5 performs handheld with slow shutter speeds, owing to its internally isolated film transport and exceptional mirror dampening more than the steady hands of this photographer. If I recall, I think the F5 was showing 1/20th of a second for this shot.

I finished off the roll back home in my backyard. The usual suspects.

This is the first roll of slide film I have shot where most every frame pleased me. The F5’s program mode and exceptional meter nailed exposures. I’ve been afraid of shooting slides. The film is very expensive and when you don’t know what you’re going to get, the reward just isn’t there. But I have three cameras now that I trust; the F5, my Nikon N90s and N8008s, so I might shoot more of the stuff.

As a footnote, growing up, my Dad shot tons of slide film—mostly Kodachrome 25 and 64. He was brave, using a Kodak Retina Iic rangefinder with no fancy meter to lean on. He guessed his exposures after referring to the paper instructions Kodak packed with each roll and hoping for the best. This is one of Dad’s Kodachromes of the fam from the early 1960s—I’m the goofy looking one in the middle.