Like everyone, I was excited to hear about Santa Color 100, until I saw it was $17 a roll and ships from Finland. This is not practical. Fortunately I was able to find a more-local source and more-sensible rate for re-spooled Kodak Aerocolor IV in Popho Film's Luminar 100.
What's the consensus on this stuff? Well in C-41 it's got a soft contrast with the reds and some greens really popping (lucky coincidence for the Santa brand?) and interestingly it pushes up to 400 reasonably well with attendant contrast boost. Can be a pain in lab scanners because there's a barely-there orange mask compared to standard color negative, more like a gentle peach tone.
Alright, cool, so what the fuck happened here? And how?
First and foremost, it's my fault. But—if I may—it's also Analog Resurgence's fault:
Oh great! I've still got a roll or two's worth of stock D9 developer sitting around just going to seed, and what a cool, sexy idea! I'll put an 85c filter on to correct some of the expected coolness without risking overcompensating for it and we'll see how it goes!
By the time I got through 36 shots in the limited opportunities where shooting a 100 speed film is viable in my life this time of year, I was getting nervous about just how long that D9 had sat. It's in a light-safe, accordion bottle I keep in a cupboard away from any heat sources. It's probably fine?
Good developer is the color of piss, right, so this was very good developer, if you've never had a sip of water in your life. It's fine. It's fine. Just bump the first dev time from 11 minutes to 13...at 106F instead of 104F...and agitate constantly. All inversions, all the time.
Phew ok, well that was probably bad but it's over. Do a rinse and then put in the reversal bath. Then get stuck in some behavioral loop and continue the constant inversion process for this step despite there being no sane justification to do so, but simply from being panicked about how badly this is going to turn out and dissociating, probably.
And that's how it is on this bitch of an Earth! Look upon my works and despair. There's something really special about how digital development errors in the E-6 process look. c.f. the "hot pixels" effect I had show up in Provia '99 which are not actually digital artifacts despite all appearances.
The worst part? I just want to do this again with fresh first developer, asap. And I want to push it, too. I want to turn this industrial aerial surveillance film into the only unexpired 400-speed 35mm chrome that money can buy. I want to attack and dethrone God.
CineStill D9 (1+2) 13m @ 106F (constant inversion) => Reversal 8m @ ~104F (constant inversion)
Konica Minolta DiMAGE SE5400II => VueScan => Adobe Lightroom Classic

