Kodak Ektachrome E100SW

E100SW arrived in 1996 alongside its neutral sibling E100S as Kodak's response to a market buying Velvia faster than the existing Ektachrome stocks could be sold. The SW stood for saturated warm. The film pushed saturation noticeably above the neutral E100S without going as far as the later E100VS, and carried a warm bias that worked well for landscape work in the hours either side of noon. Galen Rowell and other Fuji loyalists never crossed over, but a sizable contingent of magazine shooters used SW through the late nineties.

Character-wise, the saturation lands between Provia 100F and Velvia 50. Greens render slightly toward warm, reds stay rich without flaring, and skies trend a degree or two warmer than the calibrated neutral. Shadows fall fast: like all E-6 stocks of this generation, SW will block in zone II if you do not place exposure precisely. Latitude is essentially half a stop in either direction before something visible breaks.

Kodak discontinued E100SW in 2002 and folded the warm-saturated niche into E100GX when that pair launched in 2003. The replacement reduced grain and modernized the color science. A few longtime SW users still say in print that they preferred the older emulsion's specific warmth, which is the kind of subjective claim that gets argued about on Photrio without resolution.

Formats during the production run included 35mm and 120. Sheet sizes were catalogued but quietly dropped before the line ended. Freezer stock from the late nineties still turns up at estate sales. Expect dye drift toward magenta in long-stored material.

The reciprocity exponent is 1.10. Zone Light Meter folds the correction in past one second on the standard curve, which on this film is mild: a 30-second meter reading climbs to roughly 35 seconds at the negative. For tripod work past about four seconds, Kodak's published data warned of a slight magenta crossover, which you cannot correct with simple time compensation. Bracket and accept that color on expired SW is a separate problem from density.