Color Negative vs Color Slide..Why the difference?

[Chinasaur]

Looking at this thread "Impressed with Sensia...", I'm seeing that slide film is vastly better than what I've been shooting with lately. 'O course I "choose" to shoot crappy color film but still...this is light years better than what my eye sees on color negative film.

Sooo..why IS slide film better than negative film?

Be gentle..I'm still a n00b at heart 🙂

 

[tapesonthefloor]

Slide film was valued because it would record a very close facsimile indeed to what the camera actually saw in terms of light and colour. The colour and white balance of print film, on the other hand, was not codified in the frame in any way and was dependent on the darkroom printer to balance things out.

In 2011, when digital cameras are mainstream and even the results from print film can be manipulated digitally, slide film is obsolete.

My opinion is that unless you're going to use the slides in an actual slide projector, you're better off with print film.

 

[SolaresLarrave]

I disagree, Nicholas. Most newspapers, before the digital eclosion, favored slide film over print. Also, there's the facsimilar quality you mention that makes transparencies a better choice for fidelity and accuracy. Try capture a sunset with a digital camera. Then we can talk.

Slide film is the best way to register a scene. You can consider it a "positive negative" in that you can get an image from it by scanning it or photographing it (which used to be done in the past). Of course, it's not perfect, but it's the closest there is.

Again, try using a digital camera to photograph a sunset and then see what the sensor does to it.

Now, Chinasaur... if you want to find out, try a roll of ANY slide film and you'll decide whether to adopt it or to mark it as "done."

Take care and good luck! 🙂

 

[tlitody]

slide film is a much higher contrast film than negative film. That means that slide film is better for lower contrast subjects compared to negative film which is better for higher contrast subjects. Typically slide film is good for around a 5 stop brightness range whereas neg film is good for 7 or 8 stop contrast subjects.
Now that is a very rough guild as films have changed and the scale of slide film has got longer and importantly slide is now scanned where you can use a lot more of captured range than you could when printing direct to cibachrome paper.

Slide is good for studio product work and indoors with studio lighting. Its not good for weddings and bright sunny days. But its also good for dusk and dawn landscape shots.
Neg films are good for portraiture, people, weddings, landscapes and most things in normal contrast lighting.

One is not better than the other. They are just different.

Neg film is more difficult to get good colour if you scan and don't know what you are doing. But if you do know then it will scan perfectly.

 

[jan normandale]

if you want the definitive discussion on "E6 and C41 what are the differences?" this is the thread to end all threads. Good luck with it.

http://www.largeformatphotography.info/forum/showthread.php?t=73255&page=2

 

[ktran]

I think there are fewer more statisfying things, photographically, than getting back a well-exposed roll of E6 film processed as E6, and holding the strips up to a light. It's magical, really. The first time I did that (I never shot slide as a teenager/etc. during the "film era"), I couldn't believe what I saw, and was hooked.

Really, just try it. You might understand why I think cross-processing is for wimps 😉

 

[jan normandale]

I think there are fewer more statisfying things, photographically, than getting back a well-exposed roll of E6 film processed as E6, and holding the strips up to a light. It's magical, really. The first time I did that (I never shot slide as a teenager/etc. during the "film era"), I couldn't believe what I saw, and was hooked.

Really, just try it. You might understand why I think cross-processing is for wimps 😉

heh.. okay I'll challenge you to an Xpro shoot out then we'll see who the "men" are in this crowd

;D

 

[tomalophicon]

Since when did neg film have a white balance?

 

[Jamie123]

Since when did neg film have a white balance?

Color neg film always has. It's usually balanced for daylight but there used to be some tungsten balanced neg film.

 

[sevo]

Since when did neg film have a white balance?

Since they introduced colour film. Every colour film inevitably matches some colour temperature/white balance.

Originally, tungsten balancing even was the rule, with negative even more than with slide, and filters were supposed to be used for daylight - the first films (with speeds not exceeding ASA 10) needed artificial light in most conditions, and daylight to tungsten filters lose more than a stop more than tungsten to daylight, making the latter the more succesful approach.

The last (photographic pictorial) negative films with tungsten balancing, Portra 100T and Fujicolor NPL 160, vanished in the mid 2000's - but there still are a few cine films by both Kodak and Fuji around.

Modern CN film has enough of a colour range that colour balancing can be postponed to the print stage for consumer purposes (and pros are/were always expected to use filters). But twenty-thirty years ago, the colour and contrast range of fast films was not that stellar, and ISO 400 consumer CN film still used to have a compromise balancing somewhere in between daylight and tungsten (at around 4500-5000°K), to make filtering what mostly were indoor Christmas shots (400 used to be marketed as a film for the winter season) easier for the labs.

 

[tomalophicon]

Whoops. sorry guys that was a bad joke gone wrong. I was just nitpicking with semantics. I've always been under the impression it was 'colour balance'.
I think that sort of blew up in my face.

 

[Lilserenity]

I used to shoot slide pretty much exclusively for colour, up until the discontinuation of Kodachrome a couple of years ago.The main reason being that it gave me the colour I looked for in my pictures that I could not get in negative film satisfactorily with what was available. (Fuji has been always too variable for me, and the Kodak offerings apart from Gold was a bit weak for standard fine grain deep-colour negatives although 160VC was OK.)

However I also started shooting Kodak Elite Chrome 100 and 100 Extra Colour and found them to be 'good enough' E6 films, in fact they're fantastic, so I was transitioning to those anyway for convenience (sending Kodachrome to the USA was a pain) and then along came Ektar 100.

So now I shoot Ektar 100 for pretty much all my colour landscape work in 35mm if my main output is a print of some sort. I shoot Portra where I need flexibility of exposure error and where most of my shots will be dominated with people. I shoot Portra exclusively (apart from B&W) in my Autocord as I do not use a meter (yet, I may do one day) so exposure latitude is important, plus it gives to look I am after in MF.

I now shoot Elite Chrome where I want slides to project in my Leica P150 projector.

I did this on a recent (well back on Thursday-recent!) holiday in Tuscany where in one OM body I shot Elite Chrome 100 where I wanted slides that I would project for the sake of projecting, and Portra (160/400/800) in the other OM for things that I would not project at all (street shots) or in the use of the Autocord. Of course I can scan the slides and make prints, that's fine, but I can't do the reverse.

So long answer, but the only reason I shoot slides these days is where uiltimately I will be projecting the images at some point, otherwise Ektar has too many benefits to not use it (saturated, latitude, fine grain...excellent film basically for everything but getting slides to project!)

Vicky

 

[rogerzilla]

If you scan, negative film is much easier to use (massive exposure latitude) and slightly sharper. If you want an original for publication - and not many places want 35mm slides now - then it's slide film.

The one advantage of slide film is that there is no messing around trying to get daylight colours to look natural, because the slide is what it is. On the other hand, you can fix colour casts and incorrect colour temperature easily with neg film; no faffing about with warmup and cooldown filters, and even fluorescent light isn't a major problem.

 

[thegman]

Personally I just think of negative as "colour film" and slide as "colour! film". I think the colours you can get out of Velvia and E100VS are amazing, and that's the reason to shoot slide film. If they made a C41 Velvia, I'd be all over it.

 

[Herjulfr]

I just love the colours of Velvia. I also like to project the photos on a huge white screen, although I could do it with a digital projector too. But it would be more expensive.

 

[umcelinho]

I think there are fewer more statisfying things, photographically, than getting back a well-exposed roll of E6 film processed as E6, and holding the strips up to a light. It's magical, really. The first time I did that (I never shot slide as a teenager/etc. during the "film era"), I couldn't believe what I saw, and was hooked.

Really, just try it. You might understand why I think cross-processing is for wimps 😉

DITTO! Sadly, processing E6 in Brazil is too expensive and the labs that will still do it not rarely scratch rolls... so I've - sadly - decided do sell all my colour slide film and shoot only colour negs. If I lived in a city where it would be more affordable and less of a hassle, I'd be shooting E6.

 

[divewizard]

For me the key difference for me is the results I get when NCPS or PCV scans my film. The results from the slide film are dependable since the operators job is to match the colors in the slide. With print film I often do not like the colors when I get my scans back.

If I did my own scans I would probably use print film exclusively since it has more dynamic range, and scans easier since it has a lower DMAX. I do my own scans at 16 bis/color not the 8bits/color I get from NCPS and PCV. Also I can adjust the color balance to my personal liking when I scan them myself.
However until I have the time to do my own scans I will shoot most of my color on e6.