A Faster Version of ELITE CHROME 100

Kodak's Elite Chrome 200 is the company's next fastest ISO slide film marketed primarily to the consumers who like slide film. Like its slightly slower sibling, it exhibits all of the fine qualities that make ELITE CHROME 100 one of the best all-around slide films on the market.

One of the really nice things about this slide film is that it is generally available at most large retailers. One needn't have to find a camera or photo store to be able to find this film. Wal-Mart sells this slide film in all of their camera departments and in fact, in most of their stores, this is the ONLY slide film they sell.

Here's why I like this film:


SPEED:

At ISO 200, this film is twice as fast as ELITE CHROME 100. The extra speed makes this film more suitable to shooting outdoors on overcast days and in lower light generally. Despite the extra speed, there is not that significant an increase in grain size, which could adversely affect sharpness.

GRAIN SIZE:

Very fine, especially for its enhanced speed. KODAK bills this film as the finest grain slide film on the market. My usage tells me that it probably is. My experience using this film outdoors under cloudy skies has been rewarding. This film's grain size is noticeably less than what one would expect and if you have not tried it yet, I think you'll be surprised by the lack of grain vs. speed of the film.

SHARPNESS:

Kodak ELITE CHROME 200 is possibly the sharpest 200 speed slide film currently available. Master reviewer Howard Creech often writes about his love of "street photography" and his use of certain lenses when shooting under these conditions. Here at epinions, he has also written an exceptionally fine review of Sigma's 28-70 f2.8 lens, which he uses a great deal in his photography. After reading his review, and owning that very same lens, I decided to see how Kodak ELITE CHROME 200 served my purposes.

I was wandering down the boardwalk in Atlantic City, NJ on a hot, humid, overcast day in late August. The boardwalk was very crowded and there was an exceptionally large crowd watching a performance by the USAF's Thunderbirds. With one roll of Elite Chrome 200, I decided to concentrate my efforts on the crowd viewing the demonstration, rather than the demonstration itself.

Despite the fact that there was a noticeable and palpable haze in the air, I wandered up and down with my Nikon N80 with the Sigma 28-70 mounted on the front. I had set the camera to its Manual exposure setting and with the light available, selected f8 as my aperture setting. For speed, I chose 1/250 of a second. This permitted me the flexibility to stop action (if necessary) and also provided enough exposure time to realize well exposed images in each frame.

When I received my slides back from the lab, each shot was universally well exposed and clear. All of the images were incredibly sharp. I smiled to myself because I remembered how awful the day had been from a photographer's standpoint. Yet despite the less than great conditions, the sharpness of every slide attested to the quality of this film.

CONTRAST:

I consider ELITE CHROME 200 to be a medium contrast film. When I shoot slide film, which is approximately 40% of my usage, I prefer slide films that will capture darker, shadowed areas with a minimal amount of stark contrast between light and dark. With ELITE CHROME 200, the user can count on getting back slides that will not gravitate toward deep, dark shadows. The film is fast enough to capture details in darker areas of the frame without loss of detail. That is another reassuring feature about this film and why I like it so much.

COLOR:

Kodak's ELITE CHROME family of slide films are known for their faithful palette of colors. Unlike more highly saturated films, ELITE CHROME slide films return colors that are consistently true to what the photographer saw when he/she clicked the shutter. Bright colors, such as yellow and red do not heat up and lose detail. This is especially useful when shooting brightly colored flowers under less light than one might like. Green stems do not veer toward the brighter end of that color's frequency range.

In short, the colors one expects to see are the ones the user WILL see when they get their slides back from the lab.

CONVENIENCE:

As I said above, this film, marketed by KODAK primarily to consumers rather than professionals, is widely available. In addition, because this film utilizes E-6 processing, turn around times are shortened. At the photo store I deal with in Parsippany, NJ, they can process E-6 slides in-house and as a result, I can get my slides back within 24 hours. Should I get them into the lab early enough in the day, I can get them back by close of business that day. This has made my usage of this series of KODAK slide films all the more convenient, enjoyable and cost effective.

OVERALL IMPRESSIONS:

Kodak ELITE CHROME 200 provides the user with a high level of convenience, quality and flexibility. It delivers faithful colors, medium contrast and minimal grain. Given these qualities, it is an excellent general purpose slide film. In addition to its stated 'true' ISO speed, this film can safely be pushed to ISO 400 without significant increase in grain, or loss of sharpness and contrast.

I like this film; it provides excellent results in less than optimum light and lends itself well to flash photography. It's a great general purpose slide film.