Advantage to shooting slide film?

[squirrel$$$bandit]

I'm fairly new to serious-amateur film photography, and have only ever shot negative film. Generally I just get negs and a CD of medium-quality scans from the lab; this way I have my "contact sheets" on the computer, and can easily choose a negative to print from there, if I should want one.

What are the advantages to shooting on slide film? I have never used it. Do you get negatives back? Are they easier to scan professionally, or do they look better, or at least interestingly different?

Thanks for indulging my newbie crap.
John

 

[Graham Line]

The slide is the original piece of film. There is no neg with this process.

The slide is the direct-positive first-generation original image - the scene as you saw and photographed it. It gives you an unmanipulated color reference. Current slide films may be more archival than negative films, but this is highly dependent on what film, and how it is processed and stored.

A slide image can be projected, though I can't remember the last time I saw one used this way.

In the past, many publications required slides for publication -- they liked dealing with an original and their editing and prepress workflow was set up to work with color positives. This is no longer the case for most publications.

Shooting slide film can be cheaper than getting a stack of 4x6 prints with each roll.

It's really fun to spread out a couple boxes of slides on a light table and see what you got.

 

[sooner]

John, I encourage you to shoot some slide film and see for yourself. I love slides because they are, well, transparent, backlit beauties wherein you can see the gleam in someone's eye. The colors are rich and saturated, and they just have a vibrancy to them that I don't perceive as much with color negs. I love looking at slides of myself as a baby/kid from decades ago...no loss of quality, they are like a photographic time machine.

 

[jamiewakeham]

Just to be clear, John - you don't get negatives back, you get positives back! I find them much more tactile (odd choice of word, I know) than negs; you can look at it and straight away know if you got the shot or not.

They can be cheaper in the long run. Processing might be a tad more expensive, but there's no need for a contact sheet - you can evaluate them by eye (which I just can't do with negs) and have only the best scanned.

They're more sensitive to under- or over-exposure, so they'll tell you a lot about any faults in your metering technique.

But mostly - oh, the colours! Go get a roll of Provia ad you'll see what I mean...

Cheers
Jamie

 

[Michiel Fokkema]

I like slides for all the reasons already mentioned.
They scan much better. I normally only have to do slight color corrections.
If you however like to have prints, negative film is easier. Also Negative film can cope with more contrast than slide film. I use whatever is the best choice.

Cheers,

Michiel Fokkema

 

[Vics]

Try a roll of Velvia 100, too. (Fuji) Remember that the film has VERY little latitude, which to some means that it will show up your mistakes more. To me it means that the film can't acurately record a wide range of values. So don't shoot on a bright, sunny day at noon! Look for those overcast days when the colors pop and everything's mid-tones. Or shoot just after dawn or just before and after sunset. Beautiful stuff! I have mine developed and left uncut. then I sleeve them in PrintFile pages 5 to a row, just like my B&W stuff. Saves space and money.
Enjoy, Vic

 

[squirrel$$$bandit]

Thanks everyone! So are slides a color-only phenomenon? I may well try this sometime soon. When you send them out for processing, is it costly to get a CD of basic scans along with them, or are we talking like two bucks per image? Because I really like putting my photographs on the internet--up on flickr, and sending them to friends--and I would hate for some of my images to be "landlocked."

I got going on this after watching that documentary about William Eggleston, who is probably my favorite photographer. And his stuff looks, um...pretty damned good. Part of it is the dye transfer prints I'm sure but if slides are good for him, they have to be good in general.

What films do you recommend?

 

[MartinP]

And get yourself a few rolls of 35mm Kodachrome, while you still can. In twenty years you will kick yourself if you don't.

If you have the opportunity, try E6 larger than 35mm too, ideally 4"x5". It could get more expensive to get to a final print but . . . wow, basically.

 

[squirrel$$$bandit]

Will do on the Kodakchrome. Are they planning to phase it out, or are you just reflecting upon the transience of all good things?

BTW, one small question. When you see a black frame around a print, is this the result of it being printed from a slide? It's a look I find really appealing, for some subjects.

 

[oscroft]

Will do on the Kodakchrome. Are they planning to phase it out, or are you just reflecting upon the transience of all good things?

It uses a complex development process, and there's only one lab left in the world that processes it - here in the UK we have to send it to Kodak Switzerland, from where they send it to the USA. Its days are surely numbered, so I'd also suggest you try some while it's still around (the classic ISO64, not the ISO200 stuff).

 

[BillBingham2]

I think you can get the slides scanned when you have them processed by Kodak or others. There are B&W positive films, but they are hard to come by. I used to only shoot slides, and then there were kids.

I prefer slides because I got the exposure I wanted, not what the machine printing wanted to give me. I shoot very full frame (my style) so it worked well. I pulled out the slides I liked and kept them in a best-of three ring binder. You are using less resources so it may be greener than print films.

Kodak has dropped out of the Kodachrome processing business, others have picked it up. Kodachrome makes all the world a sunny day (Paul Simon song from way back). It is thought to be by many one of the best films ever for color rendition and sharpness. Basically, it rocks.

B2 (;->

 

[sepiareverb]

Slides ain't just for color anymore. dr5.com will process pretty much any B&W film into slides for you- lovely tonality, in your choice of warm or neutral tone.

As to wanting prints, if you're scanning anyway I don't see any difference between color neg or slides on that front.

 

[bmattock]

If you are going to shoot slides, you should spend a couple bucks and pick up an old battery-operated hand-held slide viewer. Even better than a light table - it magnifies the image like a little TV set. Pretty cool stuff. Of course, you have to have the slides 'mounted' to do this - which used to be what everyone would do, no questions asked. Now, however, some places ask if you want them mounted or sleeved (like negatives). Because they know some folks scan instead of having the neighbors over to annoy them with yet another slide show of the inside of their rain-streaked rental car windshield as they drive past ancient German castles. The ones we left standing, anyway. But I digress.

 

[squirrel$$$bandit]

OK, I bought some Velvia and Kodachrome from B&H and will shoot a roll of each next week. And will print out some order forms from Dwayne's. They appear to offer a CD of scans for 4 bucks, not bad at all.

I read up on this film on the internet and it kills me how close I am to Rochester. Why didn't I get into film back in the day? Kodak evidently still has a K-14 facility at HQ...for testing purposes...maybe I can make myself a pal up there and get it done same-day on the sly ;-)

 

[pevelg]

I used to only buy film, always Reala 100. I then went out on a limb and bought a projector, a screen, and a procector lens. Grabbed a bunch of Velvia and went of the vacation in Alaska. After waiting for over two weeks for a lab to process them (I no longer go there!!! 🙂), I recieved my slides and displayed them on the projector. I was shocked. The colors, the sharpness, the detail.... Everything is just so beautiful. I have since gave up on negatives. Reala is a great film in my opinion and a lot easier in developing/printing than the slides, but the beauty of Velvia conquers never-the-less. One thing though, Velvia is tough to scan. I hear Provia is a lot better and can be made to look like Velvia by just adding saturation in PS.

 

[mhv]

Slides ain't just for color anymore. dr5.com will process pretty much any B&W film into slides for you- lovely tonality, in your choice of warm or neutral tone.

Positive transparent B&W pictures have been with us way before color reversal emulsions were devised. They were called lantern slides then, and were produced either as a positive print from a negative, or by reversal processing.

 

[sepiareverb]

...They were called lantern slides...

I remember them well😱

 

[shg005]

Try a roll of Velvia 100, too. (Fuji) Remember that the film has VERY little latitude, which to some means that it will show up your mistakes more. To me it means that the film can't acurately record a wide range of values. So don't shoot on a bright, sunny day at noon! Look for those overcast days when the colors pop and everything's mid-tones. Or shoot just after dawn or just before and after sunset. Beautiful stuff! I have mine developed and left uncut. then I sleeve them in PrintFile pages 5 to a row, just like my B&W stuff. Saves space and money.
Enjoy, Vic

One note about Velvia 100 - real sensivity for this slidefilm - 64 (not 100) espesially for scanning.

 

[infrequent]

@shg005 - is that true of all films for scanning? pull it by third of a stop and process normally?

 

[iamzip]

My two cents:
I also just learned about slide films (thought they were just for slides), and have 2 rolls in my fridge to shoot. To sum up on what everyone has said:
Color slide films are known for rich, saturated colors, especially Fuji Velvia.
It is rather difficult to make real, photographic prints from slide film, but with modern technology you can simply scan it...
pretty much an B&W film can be processed into positives - although I am not sure how often this is done, or what the purpose would be.
My local camera shop says that Dwayne's is the only place in the states that will do Kodachrome anymore.