Color: Slide film or negative film?

thorsten said:
Hi everybody,

I used to take color negative film (Kodak Portra series) because I *heard*, that color negative film is more forgiving when it comes to exposure and has a larger tonal range than slide film. Now I more and more see, that a lot of people (perhaps more) choose to go with slide film instead of negative film. Why would someone prefer slide film?

Thanks and regards,
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Two reasons people use chrome film (aka: E6, slide, transparencies):

1) Archival attributes
2) Colour

Besides B&W, chrome film is the most archival of films. The best being Kodachrome.

Few neg films can rival Kodachrome or Velvia for its colour. The closet rival IMO would be Reala, but then Reala isn't archival. As far as colour is concerned, everything else is second rate to K64, K200, and Velvia.

The only reason I shoot neg film is when I plan to give the job away or, in the case of B&W, I plan to make my own enlargements.

Chrome isn't forgiving and its vital to get the exposure spot on. You wouldn't want to guess the exposure settings here.
 
Do you recommend a slide film for use with an old Yashica GSN? I would like to go for a trip to the Indian Himalayas for 30 days (no developing there) and I am worried about I should bring slide film with me. Actually I will be over 5000m above the sea level for some time, and I worry about the huge UV range there is.
If you say no, what print film do you recommend instead?
 
mc_vancouver said:
Has anyone tried the AGFA ULTRA colour film? Of course Agfa is no longer, but the film is still out there. Ultra saturated, it isnt recommended for skin tones, but for scenic, architecture, abstract, it's really something. Try it around the "magic hour" just after sunset...
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Ultra 50 was a lot of fun to use, though it had a tendency to really blow out the reds bigtime... and yeah, forget skin tones. I still have a few bricks of 120 Ultra 50 in the freezer, will have to bust some out and feed the GA645 one of these days!
 
dmr said:
Nick, not to hijack this thread, but what did you use to check the shutter speed?

I've given both of my RFs the sanity check with a TV screen, and they seem to be more or less accurate, but I know this test is not the best and I'm trying to think of something simple that will be more accurate. About the only thought I can come up with is to shoot some exposures of something that rotates at a known accurate speed and measure some angles.
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I can't remember if it was Ed Romney or someone else (I will try to find the book at home, wish me luck) but there is a simple circuit for using a Commodore 64 to test shutters. Last time I checked, C-64's were about a dime a dozen on epray. As I sit here typing, I think it was someone else. I think Romney showed the TV method.
 
Take care with this if you are going to scan... my scanner (Epson 4490) doesn't handle overexposed negatives well, a stop over is enough to degrade the image (noise in the highlights). With a dedicated film scanner with decent D-Max you should do fine (and Fuji Frontiers are miraculous with overexposure).

patrickjames said:
Thorsten-
If you are not sure about what film to use and you are going on a trip you should definitely take neg film. Downrate the film one stop in your camera (rate it at 200 instead of 400) and you can almost do no wrong. Neg film is very forgiving to overexposure but underexposure looks like hell. Overexposing neg film also does things like smoothing out skintones. By the way, you can get neg film to look like slide film in Photoshop very easily, if that is what you desire, so in effect, you have the best of both worlds.
I think slide film is beautiful, but it looses all of its qualities when you try to make a print. Slide film is transmissive, which is what makes it so beautiful. Prints are reflective.
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Ted Witcher said:
Not to hijack, but here's a quick question: my Velvia shots tend to go blue outdoors. This is a daylight-balanced film, of course, so can someone explain something about color temperature to me that I'm missing? What are your tricks for avoiding this blue cast? Thanks.
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An 81A filter kills the blue cast from open shade. Daylight balanced is only "balanced" to the extent of meaning sunlight, i.e. a colour tempertaure around 5-6000K. Open shade can be a lot higher, so it looks blue...
 
I tend to use slide film quite often (Velvia mostly). It has a brilliance and realism few prints can match IMO, like stepping back into the scene again.

I also usually use slide for a first roll in a "new" camera, simply because you get back what you shoot, warts and all. Wayward shutter speeds don't get corrected in printing, nor do your mistakes. I also use it for available-light shots for similar reasons - nothing worse than having an inky-black background with bright lights and such blown into a grainy-grey background with blown-out lights, just because the processing machine "corrected" for average exposure!
 
thorsten said:
... Why would someone prefer slide film? ...
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I love the results I get from slide film. I've used E100VS, Elite Chrome, Velvia and Fortia and love the colors I get.

As for color negative film I've used Portra, Ultra Color and Superia - while they were nice, they didn't have the same oompfh! that slide film had :)
 
Lots of great info already but here's my 2 cents anyway. I've never had much luck scanning neg film, always had lots of grain and the colors always just look flat. I shot velvia almost exclusively back when I was having prints made directly from the slides. And these I thought were fantastic. But since I've started scanning and inkjet printing at home I've gone to Astia as its less contrasty, the colors seem more realistic and the dynamic range is better. I'm sold on it and use if for almost everything except when I want to take pictures in harsh mid day light, then I use negative film or digital. Believe it or not its actually pretty easy to get a fair amount of dynamic range from a digital file.
As for the economy of it; I buy Astia on the web for under $5/roll and have it processed at my local "pro" lab for another $5. I don't pay them to mount it but do it myself as I'm probably going to throw away somewhere between 25 and 75% of the frames due to closed eyes, poor composition, incorrect exposure, lens cap on, etc. So for me the benefits are great color, easy scanning, easy storage, affordable (as long as you don't buy it at the local camera store for $10/roll) and I just love the tangible nature of having an original that one can view on a light table. I still keep discs of my scans but I'm comforted by the fact that no matter what happens in the world of digital storage I've always got something I can look at and work with. I'd recommend starting with something like Astia or Sensia first and trying the more saturated films later. Depending on the light and film chosen the color can be either truly wonderful or just plain gross. The results are more easily predictable with the lower contrast films and you can always increase saturation in PS. You'll learn a lot about metering, too.
 
stupid questions

stupid questions

but am i going to have problems using velvia 50 in hawaii for scenery shots with a polarizer on?

anything i should watch out for?

what about some night shots of sunsets? i read somewhere that the shutter shouldn't be open for more than 3 seconds or something like that?

:confused:

thanks.
 
iridium7777 said:
but am i going to have problems using velvia 50 in hawaii for scenery shots with a polarizer on?

anything i should watch out for?

what about some night shots of sunsets? i read somewhere that the shutter shouldn't be open for more than 3 seconds or something like that?

:confused:

thanks.
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If you really must do sunsets you'll need at least a KB6 (morning/evening) or even a KB12 (tungsten/daylight correction) blue filter if you want anything approaching reality
 
Sparrow said:
If you really must do sunsets you'll need at least a KB6 (morning/evening) or even a KB12 (tungsten/daylight correction) blue filter if you want anything approaching reality
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should i be using the polarizing filter during the day? i just bought it because i like how the water looks greenish through my sunglasses and wanted to convey the same in pictures.

if i use no filters at all my pictures will be junked? during the day/sunsets?
 
iridium7777 said:
should i be using the polarizing filter during the day? i just bought it because i like how the water looks greenish through my sunglasses and wanted to convey the same in pictures.

if i use no filters at all my pictures will be junked? during the day/sunsets?
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No they just won’t look like it did in reality the film will register more of the red end of the spectrum than your eyes do, if want to preserve how it looked you need to block some of the red light, so you need a blue filter.
 
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