Kodak Ektachrome E100VS

Fuji Velvia 50 defined saturated landscape slide film through the 1990s and Kodak knew it. E100VS was the direct counter-move: a vivid-saturation Ektachrome emulsion at ISO 100 instead of 50, designed to give landscape photographers speed and color without having to shoot Fuji. VS stood for Vivid Saturation, which was at least honest.

The comparison to Velvia is worth making carefully. Velvia 50 is more saturated in greens and cyans. It is also less forgiving of overexposure. E100VS pushed reds and oranges harder than Fuji, which made it better for autumn foliage and desert landscapes, and the highlight latitude was a noticeable half-stop wider. One stop overexposed on Velvia gives you blown-out sky. One stop over on E100VS often gave you something printable. For travel photography where the light changes fast and you cannot bracket everything, that difference mattered.

Outdoor portraiture on E100VS was a mixed result. The saturation that made rock faces and autumn leaves look great also pushed skin tones toward orange-red. Photographers who used it for people tended to rate it at 64 to pull down the contrast slightly.

Kodak discontinued the whole first-generation E100 lineup in 2012. The current E100, introduced in 2018, is closer to where E100G sat than where VS sat. There is no direct current replacement for VS. Fuji Velvia 50 and Velvia 100 are both still in production and fill roughly the same space.

The reciprocity exponent for E100VS is 1.10. Zone Light Meter applies the published correction past one second. In practice, slow-shutter landscape work on slide film requires more care than the exponent alone can address; bracket a full stop on either side past two seconds.