FPP RetroChrome 400

RetroChrome 400 is expired Kodak Eastman Ektachrome High-Speed Daylight 2253, speculated to have been manufactured for high-speed motion-picture cameras at the Tonopah Test Range in Nevada, where the Department of Energy is the suspected end user based on shipping-box markings, though the chain of custody has never been formally documented. The Film Photography Project bought a large surplus lot at government auction in 2015, after Tonopah switched to digital and Kodak's contract expired. Michael Raso spent four years testing the stock before FPP began retail sales in 2019.

The rolls expired in 2004 and were cold-stored for the entire intervening period in their original metal cans. That storage is what makes the film usable today. The emulsion still resolves at close to its rated ISO 400 in broad daylight, with a faux-golden warm cast that has become the reason photographers buy it. Greys go cream. Whites pick up amber. Blues drift teal. Shadows lose some detail and pick up a green undertone that reads as period-correct for film stock from the late 1990s.

FPP recommends rating it at 200 to 400 with 320 as the sweet spot. Daylight balanced, so tungsten interiors go heavy orange. Process in standard E-6. The film does not push well; pushing exaggerates the grain and shifts color further green without recovering shadow detail. Compared with fresh Ektachrome E100 the grain is much heavier and the look is unmistakably aged.

The stock photographs golden-hour and dusk beautifully and falls apart in flat overcast or fluorescent light, where the warm cast turns muddy. Reserve it for light that benefits from the shift.

Available in 35mm only, in 24 and 36-exposure rolls at filmphotographystore.com, while supplies last. The Tonopah lot is finite.

Reciprocity exponent is 1.10. Zone Light Meter applies the correction past one second. A 10-second metered exposure becomes about 13 seconds at the negative. Color shift on long exposures is unpredictable enough that the math is the easy part; bracket aggressively past a few seconds and accept the result as a found image.