Elite Chrome 200 was a “high-ISO” color transparency film made by Kodak during the 1990’s and into the mid-2000’s. It was one of those films you could find at most corner drug stores, and you typically would chose it if you ran out of film while out-and-about and needed something. Elite Chrome was a low-budget Ektachrome film. A rumor that I remember about Elite Chrome 200 is that it was actually Ektachrome E200 that didn’t pass the quality control inspection, but I have no idea if that was true or not. Interestingly, Kodak claimed that Elite Chrome 200 was the lowest-contrast ISO 200 reversal film on the market. Because of how it responded to C-41 chemistry, it was a popular option for cross-processing.
I shot several rolls of Elite Chrome 200 film back in the day. Unfortunately, Ektachrome had a tendency to fade over time—it’s not an especially great archival film. I actually made a recipe mimicking faded Elite Chrome 200. This recipe is more like if the film wasn’t faded. I wasn’t intentionally intending to recreate Elite Chrome—in fact, I stumbled into this recipe when I used Classic Chrome instead of Classic Negative with my Fujicolor Superia 800 recipe. I was pretty shocked by just how good it looked! Sometimes changing the film simulation can produce good results, and sometimes (like when Omar Gonzalez used Classic Chrome instead of Classic Negative with my Agfa Vista recipe) it doesn’t produce good results. Fortunately for you, this is an example of when it works, and it just so happens by chance to resemble Elite Chrome 200 film.
This film simulation recipe is compatible with all X-Trans IV cameras, except for the X-T3 and X-T30. If you have an X-Pro3, X100V, X-T4, X-S10, X-E4, or X-T30 II, this recipe is completely compatible with your camera. If you do have an X-T3 or X-T30 and want to use this recipe, you’ll have to ignore Grain Size (set it to Strong), ignore Color Chrome FX Blue, and ignore Clarity. In lieu of Clarity, use a diffusion filter, such as a 10% CineBloom or 1/4 Black Pro Mist.
Classic Chrome
Dynamic Range: DR400
Highlight: -1
Shadow: +1
Color: -1
Noise Reduction: -4
Sharpening: -1
Clarity: -4
Grain Effect: Strong, Large
Color Chrome Effect: Strong
Color Chrome Effect Blue: Weak
White Balance: Daylight, -1 Red & -3 Blue
ISO: Auto, up to ISO 6400
Exposure Compensation: +1/3 to +2/3 (typically)
Example photographs, all camera-made JPEGs using this Elite Chrome 200 film simulation recipe on my Fujifilm X-E4 & Fujifilm X100V:
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Put up the uncompressed pictures for download. Otherwise you can’t see the quality!
There are three reasons why I don’t. First, big pictures take awhile to load and would make the website crawl. Second, I’d have to pay more for those pictures (data storage). Third, people will steal the pictures (yes, people steal my pictures anyway, but at least it’s low-res images–if it were high-res copies, people would really steal them… I know this from experience). I appreciate the suggestion, though, and I hope this makes sense.