The Kodak Ektachrome IE: The Ancestor of the Kodak Aerochrome EIR

Many of us know that you have a rare film in your collection and is waiting for the right moment to try this. I want to introduce you a color infrared film in this review, the Kodak Ektachrome IE.

I find it exciting to buy old films and try them. Often I don’t trust to use the old films because I know that I have only one chance to expose and develop it. If something goes wrong, I have no way to correct the errors. It is a unique experiment.

In my film collection, I had a Kodak Ektachrome IE 135 with 20 photos on the film roll (the Kodak Ektachrome IE is the ancestor of the Kodak Aerochrome EIR). The film expired in 1979 and is scheduled for a development process called E-4. This development process is rarely offered in Germany and I have found no laboratory. Also, the search for the right chemistry was unsuccessful.

So now I had this old film that has expired in my year of birth and I was not sure what to do with it, use alternative chemicals, is it worth at all or should I perhaps sell it?

Shortly before my 34th birthday, it was the right time. I took the film for about the 1000th time in my hands, wondering what to do with it. A closer look at the expiration date, I realized that it was the time to start the experiment. Somehow I thought that there may be no better time than now to expose the film around my birthday.

I put the film in my Canon AE-1, screwed an orange filter over the lens and put the ISO number to 50, the double exposures have been exposed to ISO 25. I have exposed the film on a sunny day.

I developed the film in C-41 at 25°C. Beforehand I’ve read that 38.5°C is too hot for the film. The whole development was of course super exciting. I could not judge whether it works at all. I have found just a few information and sample images on the internet about this film. Then it finally happened. The fact that I had developed at 25°C, the entire development process took a little longer. Oh, I also have pushed the film to the next level. I thought that it’s safer.

When I took the film out of the developer tank, I was looking forward to, because it was something to see on the negatives. Now began the great waiting, that the negatives are dry. When they were finally dry, I immediately had to make a test scan. Here are the shots:

And what can I say, I am thrilled and proud of the old film and it makes me happy that I made the experiment!

This article was written by Lomographer frauspatzi. Upload your Kodak Ektachrome IE shots to your LomoHome and curate the best from the roll!

written by frauspatzi on 2013-05-13 #gear #developing #infrared #review #films #eir #aerochrome #135 #cross-processing #infrarot #analogue-cameras #film-reviews #filme #user-review #35mm-films #ie