5 Frames with the Mamiya 7ii and Kodak Ektachrome E100

My foray into photography began five years ago when I bought my first camera: a humble Canon AE-1. I’ve since sold the AE-1 in favor of my beloved Nikon FM2n (I really wasn’t too keen on the Canon), moved from England to Brazil, took a two-year hiatus from film whilst in Brazil (film was very inaccessible where I was in the Nordeste), then finally I returned to the United States about nine months ago. Since my return, I’ve really been able to get back into film photography and specifically medium format. I am very fortunate to be able to use my grandfather’s Hasselblad 500 C, but it is inherently slower and more difficult to use than my Nikon. As much as I wanted to shoot medium format, I would usually pick up my Nikon instead. Enter the Mamiya 7ii. When in December, I was very lucky to receive a Mamiya 7ii on indefinite long-term loan, for free (that is a story for another day). I quickly fell in love with that camera, the reasons for which I will discuss in this little article.

I spent the week leading up to Memorial Day on the Oregon Coast for a family reunion, where I decided to shoot some Kodak Ektachrome E100 with the Mamiya 7ii; the results of which I’d like to share with you today. When I started shooting film, I shot a lot of C41, especially Ektar, for all of the main reasons people shoot color negative. It was only when I discovered the work of Ben Horne and Alex Burke that I became enamored with slide film. Admittedly, I’ve had a hard time getting the kind of pictures I want from slides until just recently. I love Provia, but it is just so hard to come by these days and Ektachrome leans too blue for my taste. Alex Burke wrote a blog post a few years ago about shooting Ektachrome with a Tiffen 812 filter, and that has completely changed my workflow. The following images were all taken with the 812 filter which rarely leaves my lens when shooting E100. In my opinion, a well exposed Ektachrome slide with an 812 filter renders most scenes closer to life than any other photographic medium.

Something I love about Ektachrome (as well as just slide film in general) is the way that the shadows drop into inky black. When photographing the trunk of Western Red Cedar in Rockaway beach, I intentionally underexposed the midtones by about 2/3 of a stop, with the expectation that I would lose most of the shadow detail as well as gain some saturation. This was exactly what happened and the photograph turned out even better than I originally anticipated.

Photography along the Oregon Coast kind of feels like cheating if you ask me. The scenery is incredible and the conditions were amazing every single day that I was there. During my week-long stay, I put eight rolls of film through the Mamiya: four of Ektachrome and four of Portra 400. The Portra shots turned out great, but there’s just something about Ektachrome. I consider these shots some of my best yet and I hope that I can continue to create work of this calibre in Utah, my current place of residence. I recently acquired a Cabin 667 slide projector for 6×6 and 6×7 film and I cannot wait to get these frames all mounted and projected. I do my best when scanning to capture what I see on the light table, but there’s nothing like seeing a well exposed 6×7 slide projected two metres across.

Overall, I love how quick and easy it is to focus the Mamiya 7ii, as well as how precise the metering is. I typically use the AE-L mode, especially when shooting slides. The stepless shutter in AE-L mode allows me to point the meter at the highlights and over expose them by precisely 1 stop or get a perfect exposure of the midtones. As with any camera though, it has its limitations. For my photograph of the Anemones and Seastars, I had to invert my tripod and guess both focus and composition (stopped down to f/16 to ensure good depth of field), because the viewfinder was inaccessible. Had I been using a medium format SLR with a waist-level finder, such as my grandfather’s Hasselblad, this would’ve been a lot easier. Thankfully, I was able to use the auto exposure function for this shot, which came out to around 3 seconds at f/16.

Though I am very happy with this setup, it isn’t without its drawbacks. For starters, it is very expensive. A nice Mamiya 7ii with the 65mm f/4 lens in good condition can’t really be found for less than $4,000. Other 6×7 rangefinders aren’t exactly cheap either. Then there’s Ektachrome. I think that E100 is Kodak’s most undervalued and overpriced film. It can produce incredible images, but it requires a lot of effort to achieve said results. It’s limited in dynamic range compared to Portra or Ektar, but it’s a more dynamic than Provia or Velvia. It is Kodak’s most expensive film and good E6 developing can be both expensive and hard to come by. In Utah, the only labs that I’m aware of who do their E6 developing in-house are Nichols Photo Lab and The FIND Lab. I’ve had good results from both, but prefer Nichols because of their lower developing price ($8.50 instead of $18.00 for 120) and timely turnaround (typically same-day).

I hope you’ve enjoyed these images as much as I did. Slowly but surely, I’m becoming more consistent at creating images that I am happy with as a photographer. I don’t want to attribute my satisfaction as a photographer to having expensive gear, but it certainly helps to have equipment that is both unimpeding and inspiring to use. If you’d like to see more of my work, feel free to check out my personal portfolio at westenskow.com or on my instagram @samwestenskow.photo. All of film images were developed by Nichols Photo Lab, scanned by me using a Nikon D810 + AF Micro-Nikkor 105mm f/2.8D, and post processed in Adobe Lightroom Classic. The featured image at the top of the page was also taken by me using my university’s Ortery product photography rig.

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