3M ScotchChrome 100

3M sold ScotchChrome 100 from 1985 through 1996 as the everyman entry in their E-6 slide lineup. The emulsion came from the Ferrania factory in Italy, which 3M had owned outright since the 1964 stock purchase. When 3M spun off the imaging division as Imation in 1996, the same coating line continued under Imation Chrome 100 through 1999, then again as Ferrania Solaris Chrome into the early 2000s. Same factory, three labels.

Processed in standard E-6, the chromes come back with a cool, retro shadow tint that leans blue or cyan. Mid-tones are accurate. Highlights are clean without the punchy saturation Velvia 50 forces or the warm shoulder of Ektachrome 100. The character sits somewhere between Provia 100F and a neutral Sensia, with the cool shadow lean as its signature. Some shooters loved it. Others corrected it out with a warming filter or a CC05 yellow.

The film was inexpensive compared to Kodak and Fuji equivalents at the time, and it was widely sold in drugstores and discount photo chains alongside ScotchColor print films. Pros generally did not load it. Amateurs who wanted to shoot slides without paying Kodachrome prices bought it by the brick, which is why so many family carousels from the late eighties contain Scotch chromes.

Expired stock floats through estate sales twenty-plus years past date. Most has shifted heavy magenta with substantial speed loss; meter at ISO 50 or 64 and treat the color as character. Storage matters more for this stock than for Kodak or Fuji slides of the same era, because the dye couplers were never as stable.

Reciprocity exponent is 1.10. Zone Light Meter applies the correction past one second. A metered 30-second exposure becomes about 35 seconds at the negative. Past about ten seconds the film also shows color crossover that the math will not fix; ScotchChrome was never engineered for nocturnes. Available historically in 35mm only. No 120, no sheets, no large format. Film Ferrania talked about bringing back a 120 version after their 2014 Kickstarter, but it never reached production.