 Jason, why are you still drinking those? You've cracked the code. You have a working version of Aerochrome. Monica, you just don't get it. How could you get it? The thick, rich, creamy, accentuated nuances of the flaming hot, mountain dew are nothing to be trifled with. You said it tastes like swamp ass. It's not over until Kodak brings it back. Well what if it kills you? You want our son to grow up without a father? Maybe she's right. Maybe it's time to give up this facade. All my hard work down the drain just like that. All those hours of chugging just flushed down the turlet. No, I can't give up this easily. Something isn't right. Someone is trying to get me out of the game. The wheels of big film are in motion. I can't trust anyone anymore. Has Monica been in contact with Kodak all along? Does she know something? Who can I really trust? I see you. I have to keep going. Even if it tastes like ass sweat, greater men have died for less. Do it for the Aerochrome. Finish what you started and leave a wake of destruction in your path. Today's episode is sponsored by Squarespace. Well, Monica, it's that wonderful time of year yet again. The time of year you actually get a real job? Sorry if I sound a little bit different in this video. It's because I am currently sick. Sick of this yearly bullshit. Well, it's Christmas time. Or at least it was like a month ago because this one is coming to you super late. This holiday season we find our reluctant hero deep in the throes of editing a three hour video. Regardless, I still found time to watch Monica put up all the decorations by herself and not help at all. After getting tased by some broken Christmas bulbs, the tree lights were finally up and the decorations were coming together. Do you hate this peanut song too? Not a huge fan, no. You know what's funny? In the original story of the Grinch, he also hated peanut songs. Yes. Oh no, it's too beautiful. It's a little denser with the lights on top, but I think it looks pretty good. I'm a little denser after the holidays too. Is this a picture of you as a baby? Looks like you saw a ghost. I'm cute. This year, I got several submissions from you all to shoot some expired ectochrome, but because I'm already up to my double chin in film, there was no way I could shoot it all. I am only human at the end of the day. In fact, it was a pretty uneventful holiday season overall, so best to prepare yourself for disappointment. So this guy named Sergio sent me a bunch of ectochrome to use for ectochrome Christmas. There's a lot of good stuff in there. Thank you, Sergio. But he also sent some letters that say, read this on camera, please, which is kind of ominous. Ransom note kind of vibe, you know? Dude, Jason, I want you to use all of my slide film for an ectochrome Christmas series. I hope this sh** is all good. Good boy. Baxter likes to be in front of the camera. Photography is my passion, especially film photography, since I was 16 in 2017. Two of the film are Elite Chrome. One is Retrochrome 400. One is Ectochrome 100D. So that was note number one. Let's see what Ransom note number two says. And not gonna lie, I'm so excited to see this. Back to the editing dungeon. Anyway, eventually I finished my long ass time consuming video. And it's time to party, because Monica would be leaving in a couple days to go home to Virginia, which means I'd be solely responsible for taking care of our domesticated pet raccoon pig. To help take the edge of parental responsibility off, Monica got me some liquid from some guy named Josh. Josh? A Guillermo del Toro himself. Anyway, I also got Monica this tight nebula projector, and in return she got me a bar of soap for Christmas, because I guess she's trying to tell me something. Anyway, the next day was pretty busy. Monica left to go home, and Caleb came over for some alone time, finally, which we filmed. That's a long and very suggestive way of saying, we finally got to work on our long time coming podcast. We actually went through the motions and recorded a test episode with no real intent to have it air, but we think it turned out pretty good, so we're gonna put it up. Oh, and FM2 was 120 bucks? Yeah. Where's the shipping from, like Pyongyang, North Korea? No, Florida. Oh. Nothing good happens. Oh. Alright, what's up? Admittedly, not much is up with me, thanks for asking. This might be the driest and most boring ectochrome Christmas ever, honestly. I haven't shot anything. I mean, I'm not gonna lie to you. My mom is not really like my film stock of choice most of the time, so I don't know why I keep doing this to myself every year. I got a couple of prints for my brother and my mom. This is a picture I took on 6x7 on the Makina 670. My mom saw it on my Instagram and said she liked it. I also got my brother this book on UFOs. UFOs caught on film. Amazing evidence of alien visitors to Earth. Pretty interesting. As a ex-compositor for movies and TV shows, I gotta say, a lot of these look fake as sh**. Look, dude, I want there to be aliens just as much as the next guy, but like, extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof or whatever the phrase is. And Monday, I'm gonna go see Avatar. I'll give you guys like a short review if it sucks or doesn't suck. By the time this video comes out, I think everyone will have seen it probably. Alright, so I just saw Avatar. The way of fish or whatever it's called. It was fine. It's basically just the first one except underwater now. What I actually thought was pretty funny was that somebody brought their toddler to see the movie, but this is a movie that features a lot of killing and dismemberment, so that kid's gonna need some therapy or something in the future. Ran out of wrapping paper for this, so I found the next best thing, an old iPad box. It'd be kind of cool to see my brother get his hopes up a little bit. Oops, might have splurged a bit this year, comma, hope you enjoy. Having not shot any ectochrome yet in a bout of extreme ectochrome constipation for the ages, I prepared to head up north for some success by packing my 8x10 camera. As you probably don't remember, I have a literal butt ton of expired ectochrome 100S that was kindly donated to the channel. It produces some weird results and I'm not 100% in love with it, but maybe my heart's just not open to love right now. I was actually interested in trying out an experiment with this film where I red scale it and see what I get. To red scale sheet film, it's actually pretty easy. You just have to f**k up putting it in the sheet film holder and put it in backwards. A lot of people actually do it by accident, but this time I'm doing it on purpose for some reason. I don't know what I was thinking. I was clearly having some sort of breakdown as demonstrated by the fact I decided it was time to finally wash my dirty-ass Lexus. Quick taco bell run because I am my body's own worst enemy. After being glued to the toilet for four hours, I made a vow to whatever overlord was doing this to me that I would be good and actually shoot some ectochrome this ectochrome Christmas. So now, dizzy and dehydrated, I decided to load up my Leica M6. Let's see what we got. This is all stuff from last year and if I remember, most of it was kind of ass. This is the new stuff this year. Kodak underwater. That might be kind of cool. Elite Chrome 400. I think I'm going to do this. It's the P800 1600. Should I push it to 1600? Because it says for push processing, but that was when it was fresh. It's got the same yellow base that variochrome and retrochrome have and those are two of my favorite film stocks. So it actually gives you like a table here. I guess it's a 400 speed film. Push two stops to 1600 and I guess you can even push it three stops to 3200. I think I'm just going to stick with the base though. 400. That honestly might be the fastest I've ever loaded this camera. Feeling more alive than ever, I also decided to load up the Mamiya 7 and do some night photography around the neighborhood. I loaded up some ectochrome sex panther 50, which expired in 1995 and was kindly sent to me from overseas. I decided to shoot it at box speed. It's got a really interesting spell. With gusto, I headed out that night hoping to bounce back strong from my brief ectochrome hiatus. I was half surprised to find out that not only is this film still cooking up some nice tones, but it actually delivered some really nice shots overall. Like this one. I've been waiting for this shot for the better half of an eternity at this point. These cars just keep coming. I'll get it though. I'll get it. This shot could have been better. I think in the moment I was kind of rushing because everyone in the laundromat was staring at me for some reason. This shot is definitely underexposed. I was hoping to capture a little more detail in the shadows, but it's a gamble sometimes. I think bumping the exposure would have blown out the highlights in the bathroom window harder than whoever was actually in there blowing it up themselves. The next day was time for Baxter and I to pack it all up and hitch a wagon due north. After all, my mom would be making some gooey butter cake and I just couldn't ignore the sugar and fat calling my name. The drive itself was uneventful as per usual, but I did stop at a gas station around Sunset to catch some nice light on the Ektochrome P800 that was in my Leica M6. It was also Baxter's feeding time and it's definitely better to feed the boy early before he gets rageful and vindictive. With my check engine light blinking any time I went over 25 miles per hour, I eventually made it to my mom's place. That night, because I hadn't been punished enough by that long-ass drive, I decided to load up a sheet of Ektochrome and do a three-hour star trail exposure. Come on. Come on, come on out. Come on. Come on. Knowing full well that it probably wouldn't amount to anything. The boy was I right. It was crazy overexposed. It was like if you took a raw sheet of 8x10 film and just shined your car's high beam lights at it. The next day was uneventful. I pretty much just hung around and wrapped some presents that, as per usual, I waited to the last second to take care of. There was a half-decent sunset that evening and because I was too burnt out to go anywhere, I just decided to shoot some P800 in the backyard. After all, between the time it takes to set up the 8x10 plus the time spent complaining about setting up the 8x10, the sunset might have faded away. Baxter himself was less than impressed by the beautiful sunset before him and chose instead to eat dirt for some reason. Anyway, it was Christmas Eve and tradition called for us to get so blitz that we couldn't possibly wake up at a reasonable time on Christmas morning. I was in charge of the drinks since a flaming hot Mountain Dew and tequila was vetoed by everyone there. I had to move on and make some other manly cocktail. So I chose Cosmos and Appletinis. Anyway, Christmas morning came and went, like usual, with opening gifts and stuffing ourselves with gooey butt cake, coffee, and champagne. For Christmas, my mom got Baxter a new smart dog toy that was designed to hide treats in these shelves and it would force Baxter to use his brain to figure out how to get them out. Unfortunately, Baxter doesn't have time in his busy schedule for that kind of bullshit and just decided to flip and then smash the damn thing. Alright, what's up? I've been having really bad heartburn. I don't know. I kind of figured it's just a side effect of being an adult. I imagine that's probably what the doctor would tell me. You're just, uh, old. Um, so I'm gonna try and eat some ice cream because I'm kind of out of options. I took a bunch of Tums, probably more than you should. Been drinking water. That's really gross, actually. I'm on the counter and I make Baxter's dog food here on the counter, so I think I just ate dog food. I don't even know if I'm gonna be able to get through this one roll of 35mm. This might be the, uh, lamest and, uh, least exciting ectochrome Christmas I've made yet. And I've made some pretty bad ones. A Lexus LS400 restoration video. Later on, I noticed that the living room was looking extra magical for some reason so I loaded up some more 8x10 ectochrome and shot some interiors with the promised filter. The first shot I slammed out was the 240mm Nikkor. One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi, eleven Mississippi. It was a seat on the couch being lit up quite nicely and I thought it would be cool to show the surroundings to give it a better sense of mood and of course that juicy 8x10 depth of field. What can I say? This shot is probably the best that I took the entire trip. On the next setup, I swapped out the 240mm Nikkor for the 120mm Nikkor while maintaining the one quarter promised. I also shot doubles, one normal at 100 ISO and one red scale at 40 ISO. One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi, sixteen Mississippi. I do like the colors on the normal ectochrome but something kind of funky was going on with the focus. As an excuse, I can say, I don't know, it was dark in there and it was hard to be spot on most of the time. Another good excuse would be, I suck at 8x10. The red scale image, however, definitely makes the living room look like a fiery inferno deep in the underbelly of hell which wasn't exactly the pleasant Christmas image I was going for, but a fun experiment regardless. Eventually the rain let up for a day and I cruised out to meet up with Joey along the coast. It was time to crank out some beautiful 8x10 sheets. No more baby this was big league stuff. Before the morning fog burned off, I wanted to nab a red scale photo of the scenery and the ocean mist. I've been trying to red scale and foggy conditions for the better part of forever but can never A. seem to find foggy conditions and B. have red scale on me when I do find those conditions. I wouldn't really say I achieved what I was going for here, but it's not a bad shot, I don't think. Red scale definitely made the ocean look like a cursed river of blood or something, but it's still interesting visually at least. After that shot, I turned the 8x10 around and set up a different non-red scale take that would hopefully just be a nice ocean texture composition. I used a tiny bit of tilt to get everything in focus. The shot probably didn't need it at all if I just closed down, but it's a large format thing, you wouldn't get it. But hey, apparently I also didn't get it. I think what happened was I forgot to switch my meter back to 100 ISO after the 40 ISO red scale, so this image is about 1 in 1 third stop overexposed, which isn't great, but at least there's a lot of details, so that's cool. I also busted out the M6 as I would need to get through some of the P800. Our next location was by far the most interesting. I think it was an old beachfront restaurant that went out of business, but the patio spanning windows that looked out into the ocean were a photographer's dream. Anyway, I set up the composition as my 8x10 started falling apart. I definitely had to go with the 120mm lens and ultra wide on 8x10, somewhere along the lines of a 15mm equivalent. Unfortunately, as you can probably imagine, a lens this wide on 8x10 has little to no room for movements, so to counter that I tried to get a bit lower to get the perspective line straighter but not lose the horizon behind the window sill. But it wouldn't matter anyway as the slim exposure on color positive film would just blow out the highlights. I do like this shot, however. Color maybe wouldn't have been my first choice, but it's whatever. Nothing matters anymore. I knew this location was too good to pass up and considering how this film looks like Grimace's purple gooch sometimes when it's normal I decided to uno-reverse its ass and shoot a different composition on red scale. And it turned out awesome. It looks kind of like the upside down from Stranger Things. I love the soft depth of field and the glimmer of light out off to the side. This is just one of those rare cases where I think red scale worked. Outside the clouds were moving in over the rolling hills and the light was hitting the building perfectly at an angle feeling self-conscious about breaking out my big ass camera because people would think I'm overcompensating for something. Back to the role of P800 in my Leica M6 for these ones. Afterwards we headed up to the mountainous forests in search of somewhere to knock out the remaining two sheets of ectochrome. Eventually I found a cool building that's actually a toilet with some nice lighting and some trees that had a little bit of moss which always points towards civilization. Anyway because it takes like 45 minutes to set up the beast and then figure out rear swing and exposure the light had gone behind a cloud but I was determined to wait it out. 700 years later it finally reappeared and I took the photo real quick not knowing how much time I had. Happy to announce I nailed the exposure on this one but otherwise it's kind of a bland photo I do wish I tilted up a bit more. Back at the house Baxter was excited as per usual to see me or maybe he was just gassy and wanted to go outside it's hard to tell sometimes. The next few days it rained a lot and one evening I decided to bust out the final sheet of red scale to just cap everything out. I was thinking with the even diffused lighting and droplets in front of the lens I might get something very apocalyptic looking. I mean it's close I guess. Severely underexposed somehow. Ride back to LA was definitely very waterlogged and Baxter wanted no part of it whatsoever. I eventually stopped at a gas station as all cars do if you really think about it and shot some final comps on the P800. But before we close out this video I'd like to quickly thank today's sponsor Squarespace. Squarespace is an all-in-one website building platform that can deliver the website of your dreams. The only ceiling is your own creativity. Start from the ground up by picking from hundreds of professionally designed templates that feature all sorts of classic style. From there build your website with add-on modules like photo galleries and text blocks. With Squarespace's intuitive user interface it's incredibly easy and fast to make on-the-fly adjustments and additions. I've been using Squarespace to host my own photography for a couple years now and it's incredibly easy. Especially for someone like me who has never built a website before. Plus if you run into a snag, Squarespace offers award-winning 24-7 customer service. So what are you waiting for? If you're ready to build a website you can start a free trial today at squarespace.com slash grainydays. If you use the code grainydays at checkout you can get 10% off your first purchase. Anyway, that concludes another year of me whining about ectochrome. Eventually I returned home and just like Godzilla returning to the ocean after beating up some giant insects. I returned to my desk to spend the next three weeks editing with no breaks in between because it's all I do nowadays and I have no friends and I'm a total f***ing loser. Going home for the holidays is always a lot of fun. But you know what isn't as much fun? Making ectochrome Christmas videos. Every year I find myself forced to shoot a film stock that overall I'm just not that crazy about. To me at least ectochrome is kinda like ripping ass. Most people don't like it and if you have to force it it's probably s***. I mean, I wouldn't classify any of these images as fine art or whatever you're supposed to be doing with ectochrome. But maybe that's because ectochrome doesn't really inspire me. All this to say, I don't know if I'll do ectochrome Christmas again next year. Maybe it'll evolve into something that doesn't suck as much. Like maybe an ectochrome Christmas. I still have a few roles lying around and I feel like that'd be pretty wild time. We'll see.