Kodak Ektachrome 100D 7294

Kodak Ektachrome 100D 7294 is the cinema sibling of the still 35mm E100 reissue, sold primarily in 16mm and Super 8 cartridges for motion picture work. Same emulsion family, same E-6 chemistry, different perforation. Kodak survived the great Ektachrome blackout (the line went dark in 2012, reissued in 2018) and 7294 returned with the still version. It is the only color reversal cinema film in current production from any manufacturer.

Palette runs neutral with moderate saturation. Skin tones come back accurate, grayscale stays gray. Compared to the old Ektachrome 64T (7280) that defined low-budget 16mm work for decades, 7294 has finer grain, cleaner blacks, and a smoother highlight rolloff. Versus Kodak's Vision3 negative stocks, it gives you the positive image straight off the processor.

Spike Lee mixed 16mm 7294 with archival footage in Da 5 Bloods to blend new material into a Vietnam-era look that would have been instantly broken by anything more modern in its grain or color rendition. Music video shooters reach for it because projection carries a punch no telecine pull replicates. The structure uses Kodak's T-GRAIN tabular crystals, tight enough that 16mm projection holds up where older Ektachromes would fall apart.

Daylight balance at 5500K means no filtration outdoors. Under tungsten you need an 80A or a color shift in post. E-6 only, and the lab list keeps shrinking. Latitude is the usual reversal knife edge: half a stop over and highlights are gone, a third under and shadows block. Bracket on anything that matters.

Available in Super 8 50-foot cartridges, 16mm 100-foot and 400-foot rolls, and 35mm ends rewound into still cassettes. No 120, no sheet.

Reciprocity exponent is 1.10. Zone Light Meter applies the correction past one second. Kodak says the film needs no compensation between 1/10,000 and 1 second; past that a metered 4-second exposure becomes about 5 seconds at the negative. For motion picture shutter speeds the math is academic. For tripod work on the 35mm cuts it stays a quiet correction.