Sandra Coan: Shooting EKTACHROME Before the World

Sandra Coan: Shooting EKTACHROME Before the World

(54min, 50MB)
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Bill Manning invites EKTACHROME Beta Roll Tester, Sandra Coan to share her experience shooting an emulsion before the rest of the world. We also learn about Sandra’s work as an educator for photography education powerhouses like CreativeLIVE and KelbyOne. Additionally, we learn about her work as a film photographer in the a maternity and newborn photography industry.


On August 3, 2018 Kodak Professional revealed to the world that EKTACHROME beta test rolls were sent out to a few select photographers before it goes out to the rest of the world. Photographers from the EKTACHROME Beta Test Team Sandra CoanBenj Haisch, and Michael Turek, shared Instagram stories of box openings like it was Christmas morning.

We began to see photographers loading the film into their cameras. Photographers like Sandra, immediately took it into the studio for portrait work.  Michael Turek took it to geographic landmarks like Horseshoe Bend. However the world impatiently waited as the film had to be sent to labs to process these never-before-seen emulsion.

It was roughly a week later  Sandra Coan and Kodak Professional revealed to the world the first portrait shot with EKTACHROME E100.

https://www.instagram.com/p/Bmj6yT9Hmdv/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
Immediately, photographers began commenting their approval of the new emulsion, thus building more excitement for this film. Questions about this image started to flood in. I had a million questions myself and I thought, “Why don’t I just interview Sandra and get all of the questions out of the way!” I proceeded to send a direct message inviting her to guest on the show and talk about her experience shooting EKTACHROME.

Sandra is a maternity and newborn photographer that that shoots film for the majority of her professional work. She has also taught classes at major photography education sites like CreativeLive and KelbyOne. She shares her experience transitioning from a teacher to becoming a full-time photographer after being inspired by Annie Leibovitz’s picture of Demi Moore which ultimately launched the maternity photography industry.

Sandra and I share our stories with newborn photography and she shares some tips and tricks to get through a photoshoot with a newborn. It’s not as easy as you think!

We dive into her experience shooting EKTACHROME. Her experience is all positive. She shares the wide range of experiences shooting a film the world has not seen yet. She shot her images on a Canon Elan 7 with the Canon EF 85mm f/1.2L. Her scans, completely untouched, were scanned on a Noritsu scanner at our previous guest’s lab, Richard Photo Lab.

Sandra tells us about the grain characteristics of the film and says they are surprisingly smooth. Sandra shared 100% crops of these 6 megapixel scans of the following images.

Sandra shares great advice on how this film should be exposed and has shared a 7-stop exposure test to show the film’s exposure capabilities. Like any slide film, you generally have to shoot at the rated box speed (ISO 100) and meter for your midtones. Over exposing your image quickly gets blown out, however to our surprise, EKTACHROME handles underexposure quite nicely, providing a very pleasing muted tone at 1-2 stops underexposure! Sandra very much enjoyed shooting this film and can see adding EKTACHROME E100 into her film arsenal.

Ektachrome-Exposure-Test

There are so many questions still have to be answered . How does it handle pulling and pushing? How does it look like when it’s cross processed in C-41. How does this film look like in comparison to other slide films like Fujifilm Provia and Velvia? Sandra has provided so much information to the film community and gives us a great idea what to expect with this film before it hits shelves.

Additional Links Regarding Ektachrome:

Kodakery Podcast: Episode 74 – Update on EKTACHROME

Studio C-41 travels to Rochester to interview Kodak.

*Images used with permission by Sandra Coan.

Bill Manning

Host and Executive Producer for Studio C-41

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