Business Notes FILM

"The best news of the year," raved a critic in the New York Times. "A showstopper," declared another. The reviews were not for a Broadway hit but for the hottest new product in photography: Kodak's supercrisp Ektar color + film. Not available in the U.S. for another month, the film is so much in demand that American shutterbugs and camera shops are buying rolls from dealers in Europe, where Ektar was introduced last November.

Hailed as the finest-grain color film ever made, Ektar enables photographers to enlarge pictures to poster size with almost no loss of clarity. The film is recommended for use only with a single-lens reflex camera, as Ektar is currently available in just two speeds: very slow (ISO 25) and very fast (ISO 1000). Clarity will not come cheap: Ektar 25 is expected to cost about $6 for a 24-exposure roll, compared with $4 for Kodak's most popular film, Kodacolor Gold 100.