FPP RetroChrome 320

RetroChrome 320 is repackaged Kodak surveillance stock. The Film Photography Project sources expired bulk rolls of Eastman Ektachrome High-Speed Daylight 2253, a motion-picture stock originally used in high-speed instrumentation cameras at the Tonopah Test Range, respools it for 35mm, and sells it for cross-processing in E-6 or C-41. Because the base stock was engineered for high-speed instrumentation work documenting ballistics and aerodynamics rather than ground-level portrait or landscape photography, the latitude and contrast curve behave noticeably differently from any civilian Ektachrome Kodak sold to consumers in that period. FPP says it has been kept cold since manufacture, which matters given the stock dates roughly to the 1990s.

The color tilts warm with greens shifting and reds saturating in a way nobody at Kodak designed for portraiture. That is the appeal. Process in E-6 and you get punchy slides with an off character; cross-process in C-41 and you get green-yellow shadows and contrast that prints like a fever dream. The nearest comparison in spirit is expired Ektachrome E100VS from 2003.

Rate it at 320 if you trust the freezer story, which is reasonable given that FPP buys in bulk and stores carefully. Pushing to 800 works in low light, with the usual color shifts and contrast bumps that pushed slide film produces. Underexposure ruins it faster than overexposure. Bracket one-third stops with any old-emulsion slide stock.

The Film Photography Project has been operating since 2009 out of New Jersey, run by Michael Raso, and RetroChrome is one of their longer-running repackaging efforts. Supply depends on how much aerial stock they have left.

Available in 35mm only. No 120 or sheet sizes; the base stock was never coated for those formats.

Reciprocity exponent is 1.10, which is gentle. Zone Light Meter applies the correction past one second. A metered 30-second exposure becomes about 35 seconds at the negative, small enough to ignore on tripod work but worth folding in for nighttime urban shooting. Expired slide film accumulates additional drift on top of the engineered curve, so bracket past about ten seconds.