Kodak Elite Chrome 200

Elite Chrome was Kodak's consumer-tier label for E-6 reversal. The films inside the box were always closely related to whatever Ektachrome emulsion Kodak was selling to professionals at the same time, but the QC tolerances ran a little looser and the price ran a lot lower. A Kodak R&D engineer once told a forum thread that the original Elite Chrome 200 was built on the E100S platform and the later revision moved to something closer to E100G. The differences were small enough that most working photographers shooting either film could not tell them apart on a light table.

What you got in the can was a daylight-balanced ISO 200 slide film with finer grain than Elite Chrome 400 and a slightly punchier color response than the 100. Saturation sat between Provia 100F and Velvia 100 in the Fuji lineup. Skin tones held without going waxy. Skies stayed honest blue rather than the cyan-leaning Velvia rendering. For amateurs who wanted to shoot slides without paying Ektachrome E100G prices, this was the film.

Exposure latitude is what you would expect from any E-6 stock, which is to say there isn't much. A third of a stop over and the highlights start losing detail. A third under and the shadows block. Bracket if the meter reading is at all uncertain, especially in contrasty midday light. Cross-processing in C-41 was a popular hack with this stock back when labs would still do it; the results lean green and high contrast.

Kodak discontinued the professional Ektachrome E200 in February 2011, and the rest of the Ektachrome and Elite Chrome consumer line followed in the March 2012 reversal-film shutdown that took the last of Elite Chrome 100 Extra Color off the shelves. Surviving stock on eBay and from estate sales is fifteen-plus years old by now. Color shift on expired E-6 is harsher than on negative film. Expect a magenta or yellow cast and reduced shadow density.

The reciprocity exponent is 1.10. Zone Light Meter applies the correction past one second; a metered 30-second exposure lands near 35 seconds at the film plane. In practice you will rarely meter Elite Chrome past a second outdoors at ISO 200, which is what it was built for.