Best Film for the Canon EOS ELAN II
The best film to use in your Canon EOS ELAN II is going to depend on your lens, lighting, and if you want to use color or black & white.
Choosing an ISO 400 35mm or faster will let you skip being burdened with a flash and/or tripod.
If you want to shoot images in low light, such as inside, make sure that you have a fast lens. For lens lens suggestions go read my article on the 5 Best Lenses for the Canon EOS ELAN II.
Color Film
Consumer
Kodak UltraMax 400 - A good choice for a plethora of lighting conditions. Using this film you should be able to handhold the EOS ELAN II in the vast majority of scenarios.
The photographs will have very good colors and tend to be on the warm side.
Fujifilm Superia X-TRA ISO 400 - An alternative to Kodak that could have far better availability based on where you are in the world.
When compared to Kodak, Fuji tends to be a small amount cooler with stronger blues and greens.
Lomography 800 - You’re limited to just a few choices if you want a color ISO 800 35mm film. For film stocks geared towards consumers, Lomography 800 is the single option.
It is offered in the 120 film format, for use in medium format cameras.
Kodak Gold 200 - A staple film that was released in the mid-1980s. It offers the look of family snapshots from the 80s and 1990s. For the classic photography experience have a flash.
Over-expose it by 1 or 2-stops to produce the most popular look the film can achieve. This will help you achieve the great colors everyone loves the film for.
Professional
Kodak Portra 400 - Among photography enthusiasts online, Portra 400 is without a doubt the most widely used color film emulsion. Overexpose it by 1 or 2-stops to get the appearance the film is highly regarded for.
There’s also ISO 160 and ISO 800 emulsions of Portra. 8x10 sheets, 4x5 sheets, and rolls of 120 film are also available.
Black and White Film
Consumer
With low prices and very good favorable to be used in the Canon EOS ELAN II.
The biggest appeal for budget minded photographers and photography students is the affordable price. Even if you would not put yourself in those groups, it is nice to have low-priced rolls of 35 film available for evaluating recently obtained used cameras.
Kentmere 400 - It’s made by the parent company of Ilford, Harmon Technology. This is great because that allows this to be the most commonly sold film out of the 3.
Foma Fomapan 400 Action - It’s much easier to find in Europe as the film is manufactured by Foma Bohemia in the Czech Republic.
A very good 35mm film to use for your first few attempts at developing film at home or film photography. Also a good selection if you’re looking to try out a camera to ensure that it’s functioning correctly.
Ultrafine eXtreme 400 - You can get the best price by buying it from Ultrafine.
They sell chemical developer kits for 35mm color film, so if you develop film at home you could have previously done business with them.
Professional
Kodak Tri-X 400 and Ilford HP-5+ 400 are the two most widely used black and white film emulsions. They have a lot of traits that are comparable that make them so well received, while maintaining different rendering.
You can create great images after pushing both film emulsions 2-stops. A roll can be shot at ISO 400, 800, or 1600, making them very flexible.
Ilford HP5 Plus 400 - The fundamental differences are that HP5 Plus is cheaper and has lower levels of contrast when compared to Tri-X. Minimal amounts of contrast can be good due to the fact contrast can be changed when making a darkroom print or editing digitally.
The film stock has subdued grain and still appears great when pushed 2-stops.
Kodak Tri-X 400 - This film possesses a more distinctive style. To showcase the traditional grain structure, contrast, and look of the film, it should be developed in Kodak D-76.
You will undoubtedly see far more contrast with Kodak Tri-X 400. That’s awesome if it’s the style you want because it results in substantially less work when making a print in the darkroom or during digital processing.
Transparency Film
Slide film, also known as reversal film or transparency film, results in a positive image. That means a projector or lightbox can be used to view the slides.
This is distinct from the more often used negative film emulsions that produce images that need the colors to be inverted for the image to be seen.
Slide films are considered very hard to work with because slide film has much less dynamic range and latitude compared to negative film.
Kodak Ektachrome 100 - This is a film known for terrific skin tones and fine grain. There’s almost no hypersaturation of colors. It is daylight color balanced.
Fujifilm Velvia 50 - This is a very sharp daylight balanced slide film with high levels of saturation and contrast, giving photos a beautiful look. When compared to all the reversal films available, it has the greatest resolving power.
An ISO 100 speed is also available.
Fujichrome Provia 100F - Offers vibrant and realistic colors with medium color saturation and contrast. It’s a daylight color balanced film with ultrafine grain.
Foma Fomapan R100 - This is a black and white slide film, noted by Fomapan as having fine grain, higher contrast, and excellent resolving power. It’s also billed as a alternative for the discontinued Agfa Scala transparency film.
Film Basics
Consumer vs Professional Film
Professional films cost more due to the fact they have a greater dynamic range, are easier to push, and larger latitude.
You should expect a big difference in availability. Consumer film emulsions can usually still be bought from big-box stores and pharmacies in limited quantities. Professional level film emulsions usually need to be bought from a online or specialized photography store.
ISO
A film’s sensitivity to light is displayed by the ISO.
The higher the ISO of the film, the less light will be necessary to get a photograph. Additionally, expect to see noticeably increased film grain.
ISO 100 and slower films (ISO 25, ISO 50, etc) may be tricky to use handheld in the EOS ELAN II. This is because if you don’t have full sun, the exposure times will probably take longer than what you could handhold without resulting in motion blur.
To get around motion blur you’ll need to use a fast lens, tripod, and/or flash. The extra equipment may not be needed if you use a higher speed ISO 800 or ISO 400 film.
The dial to select film speed is marked as ASA on the Canon EOS ELAN II. The change to using ISO from ASA (American Standards Association) happened after the creation of the International Standards Organization (ISO).
Film Latitude
Film latitude is the range of stops film can be overexposed while holding onto adequate results. Pro film emulsions have a greater latitude along with a slightly increased cost.
Negative film has a greater amount of latitude when compared to reversal film. That is a reason it is thought of difficult to shoot.
Dynamic Range
The range between the brightest and darkest details of a picture is referred to as dynamic range. Parts of an image that are not in this range will be seen as black underexposed shadows or solid white overexposed highlights.
When working in a variety or quickly shifting lighting conditions, films with a bigger dynamic range are a much better choice.
- Digital cameras 14+ stops
- Negative film up to 13 stops
- Slide film 6-8 stops
Reversal film is considered to be difficult to shoot on account of the small dynamic range. Golden hour is the prime time to shoot transparency.
Film Type
35mm film that is sold in canisters is used by the Canon EOS ELAN II. 35mm film can also be described as 135 film, and it is the most often used type of film.
The only other film format you are probably going to come across is 120 or 220 film that is used by medium format cameras}.
One of the fantastic properties of film is that you can switch the film emulsion you work with and get a fresh look to your images.
DX Coded Film
Nearly all available 35mm film for sale currently has DX encoding. This makes it possible for cameras to detect and set the ISO when the film is loaded.
ISO (ASA) on the Canon EOS ELAN II needs to be manually dialed in. For that reason DX-coding is not going to make a difference.
Canon EOS ELAN II Resources
Where to Get Film Developed?
There are only a few possibilities for where to have 35mm film developed. For a more thorough discussion of the choices have a look at my article on Where to Develop Film.
WARNING: Big box stores and pharmacies have stopped processing film locally. They ship the film away to be processed by a 3rd party. As a result, you will not receive your processed negatives back.
- Develop Film at Home
- Use a Local Photography Lab
- Use a Mail Order Photo Lab
- Pharmacy or Big Box Store
Sending your film to a mail-order photo lab to be processed and scanned is the simplest option if you are new to shooting film. If you consistently shoot film, this may be a disadvantage because it can get expensive.
So long as you are shooting a moderate to high volume of film, there are a couple of actions that can be done to reduce your expenses.
Bulk Loading Film
One of the ideal options to spend less money on film is to buy a roll of 100’ of film and load canisters by hand.
Once you are done, you will end up making roughly 18 rolls of 36 exposures each. Depending on the film stock you can expect to save 20%-30%.
Another thing to keep in mind is that you’re limited to 100 foot rolls of black and white film. This is because black & white film is a lot easier and less expensive to process at home.
Home Developing and Scanning
You can develop and scan film at home. In fact it’s a smart way to lower your costs so you can shoot more film with your Canon EOS ELAN II.
Black and white film is by far the simplest to process. Developer temperature and time are both not as necessary to do correctly with black & white film as temperatures and time are for color negative or transparency film.