Ektachrome E100
What comes back is a positive image in a cardboard mount, held up to light rather than printed.
The Ektachrome name dates to 1946. The current E100 was reintroduced in 2018, after roughly a decade during which colour reversal film looked as though it might disappear entirely.
It is reversal film, and that single fact changes almost everything about how it is shot, judged and stored.
Positive, Not Negative
A colour negative records an inverted, orange-masked image that has to be interpreted before anyone can see it. A reversal film produces the final positive image on the film itself. What you hold up to the light is the photograph.
This removes an entire layer of interpretation. There is no scanner deciding your colour balance, no lab operator making a judgement call. What you exposed is what exists.
It also removes your safety net. On negative film a mistake can be corrected during printing or scanning. On reversal film the mistake is the artefact.
If you are shooting reversal film for the first time, meter for the highlights, not the shadows — the exact opposite of negative film. On a positive, a blown highlight is gone permanently, while a dense shadow at least holds something.
Half a Stop of Room
Reversal film has famously little exposure latitude. Overexpose by much more than half a stop and the highlight is simply clear film — there is nothing recorded there to recover, because on a positive the brightest area is where the least dye remains.
Underexposure is slightly more forgiving but goes dense and muddy quickly. In practice most people meter carefully and, if in doubt, expose a touch under rather than over.
This discipline is part of why slide film has the reputation it does. It does not tolerate carelessness, so the frames that survive tend to have been made deliberately.
The Mount
Processed reversal film is cut and mounted in cardboard or plastic frames roughly two inches square. That mount is not incidental — it determined how the photographs were used for fifty years.
Slides were projected. A photograph was something a room looked at together, at a size no print could match, with light passing through the image rather than bouncing off it. Colour rendered on a projected slide has a luminosity that a print physically cannot reproduce.
This is why the film lab returns Slide Reversal 100 frames in a cardboard mount rather than a sprocket rebate. It is the correct object for this emulsion.
The Model
In the film lab this emulsion is modelled as Slide Reversal 100. The strength dial scales the model itself rather than blending it with your original, so zero returns your file mathematically untouched and 150 pushes it past anything the film did. The artifacts dial controls dust, scratches, leaks and fog separately.
as Slide Reversal 100.Free, no account, and the photo never leaves your device — the developing happens in your browser.
If You Want to Shoot It
Where This Model Falls Short
Slide Reversal 100 is Vintizer’s own model, built by studying how Ektachrome E100 behaved. It is described as being after that film because that is what it is — a model, not the film. Film names on this site identify the real products being discussed and belong to their respective owners. Vintizer is independent and not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by any film manufacturer. Full notice.