Color slide noob: kodachrome alternative for street photography ?

[Samsam]

Hi guys,
let's be clear, i'm a total color slide noob, however i saw pictures taken with Kodachrome slide film on the internet and i figure slide film may be interesting to try for street photography. Considering Kodachrome is really expensive here in France and that i don't want to send the pics to the US each time i finish a roll, i would like to know which slide film do you advise me to put in my camera ? I can't figure it out with all these sensia, provia, elite, elitechrome, ektachrome... there are also a lot of ISO differences out there.

Secondly, I have a 50mm Summicron ( last version ), 35mm Summilux ASPH, 35mm summicron preasph, 35mm Summilux pre-asph, i was wondering which lens do you recommend for slide film to try out first ?
Thanks 🙂

 

[arseniii]

The best option is for you to try it yourself and see which one you like better. They are all slightly different in color tonality and saturation. My favorite are PROVIA 400 and Velvia 100! None of them are any close to Kodachrome because it's different process and technology, but still beautiful film!

 

[jarski]

my usual ones are Portra 160 and Velvia 50, but have to confess my color photos come mainly from digital.

 

[brainwood]

It's all a matter of personal taste as Kodachrome has a distinctive look but Kodak seem keen to push their E100G as a suitable replacement. I haven't tried it myself yet but I will when I get a chance.

http://www.kodak.com/global/en/prof...ssionalFilmPKR.jhtml?pq-path=13319/1229/13364

cheers

chris

 

[meven]

The best option is for you to try it yourself and see which one you like better. They are all slightly different in color tonality and saturation. My favorite are PROVIA 400 and Velvia 100! None of them are any close to Kodachrome because it's different process and technology, but still beautiful film!

Same here, Provia400X and Velvia 100 are great. Provia400X is my favorite, the grain is very fine for ISO400 and I love the colours but it can be pretty expensive!

These two photos are Provia400X in the streets of Shanghai (I already posted them before in an other thread). As you can see the grain is very fine and the colours are amazing (IMHO);

 

[hans voralberg]

Try Provia or Velvia, Velvia IMO however has a weird red cast on skin tones, so just experiment see if you notice it too much

 

[Roger Hicks]

Now that Kodachrome is officially dead, you can't use it for much longer anyway.

How do you intend to use the pictures? Because if you're going to scan anyway, at some point, I'd consider Ektar 100 negative film, NOT overexposed, as an alternative to slide. For me, this comes (or can be brought) closer to Kodachrome than any current slide film.

Cheers,

R.

 

[ZorkiKat]

Now that Kodachrome is officially dead, you can't use it for much longer anyway.

How do you intend to use the pictures? Because if you're going to scan anyway, at some point, I'd consider Ektar 100 negative film, NOT overexposed, as an alternative to slide. For me, this comes (or can be brought) closer to Kodachrome than any current slide film.

Cheers,

R.

Quite true. Majority of all film used today eventually get scanned anyway. Individual 'signatures' of films tend to be altered by the scanning hardware and software, and any scan needs to be tweaked before it can be used. It's in this step that you can either restore what you feel was lost during scanning, or alter the scan for hue or saturation, or contrast properties you desire.

Colour negative film has some advantages over slide film: It's forgiving towards exposure so you can get away with less than perfect metering. Slide/chrome/tranny film requires more careful exposures. Second, colour negative (C41 or equivalent) processing is easier and cheaper to find than E6, or K14 (Kodachrome) for that matter.

Unless you like looking at slides on lightboxes or limit their sharing to projectors in darkened rooms with friends, there is perhaps not much reasons left why slide film should be used.

And as for the choice of lenses- should that be a concern? Get one, put on camera and start shooting. When your pictures come out later and are appreciated, I doubt if any one would really care which 35mm you shot it with.🙄

 

[Roger Hicks]

Unless you like looking at slides on lightboxes or limit their sharing to projectors in darkened rooms with friends, there is perhaps not much reasons left why slide film should be used.

One other reason: easy filing and finding in hanging files...

Not necessarily compelling, but worth mentioning.

Cheers,

R.

 

[Tom Diaz]

Now that Kodachrome is officially dead, you can't use it for much longer anyway.

How do you intend to use the pictures? Because if you're going to scan anyway, at some point, I'd consider Ektar 100 negative film, NOT overexposed, as an alternative to slide. For me, this comes (or can be brought) closer to Kodachrome than any current slide film.

Cheers,

R.

I agree about Ektar and I like the fact that it can be processed easily. I can get developing and preview-quality scans in an hour at a drugstore.

I do like E100G quite a bit and have had great results with it. It is very sharp and fine-grained although it does not have quite the same palette as Kodachrome (not sure what does).

Tom

 

[Pherdinand]

e100g is fine indeed but i prefer e100gx because of the slight warmtone.

Slide film for street is a bit tricky, though. Depends which street🙂
The high contrast/low dynamic range and the care that has to go therefore in the slide film exposure makes it a bit difficult. If you can swallow the fact that the uninteresting parts of your image will be blocked up or blown out, then you should be fine.

here are a few.

 

[Pherdinand]

seems that quite some of the "warm tones" were lost in my above photos because of the recompression done by the forum (stupid color spaces thing). SOrry.

 

[nightfly]

Kodak Elite Chrome. Cheap and good.

I find most negative film processing sucks these days so shooting slide film is necessary if you want color. Also you can get them developed but not mounted so you can easily scan and store.

 

[hans voralberg]

The above post is awesome!!

 

[Samsam]

wow, these colors are amazing. Is it the VS version of the elite chrome or the basic version ?

 

[nightfly]

Basic elite chrome 100 shot with a Yashica T4. I get nice results with my Leica too but something about the Zeiss lens on that T4 makes it really sing.

 

[SimonSawSunlight]

I say Provia 400!

 

[Renzsu]

wow nightfly, amazing shot!

I find the advantage of slide film is that it's easier to color correct the scans to match the film since you can compare them 1:1. However, I guess in the end you have to edit your shots so that they look like what you remember them like, so both negatives or positives might be different from what you had in mind anyways.

 

[nightfly]

For me slide film looks more like the color equivalent of how I process my black and white- contrasty and with a lot of pop. Color negative film usually looks a little dull and dreary to me and always a bit disappointing. Much of this I attribute to poor processing but whatever it is what it is.

When I look at color slide film just putting it up to the light I get the same feeling of excitement I get looking at my black and white negs hanging in the bathroom and this seems to carry through post processing in a way that color negative film doesn't. Basically it gets closer to my vision.

Totally visceral and un scientific.

 

[Chuck Albertson]

I've found Kodak E100G is the closest to Kodachrome in terms of grain, sharpness, color. I shoot it in medium format and, once I've gone through all the Kodachrome in my fridge, will be shooting more of it in 35 mm.

Any of the lenses you listed should be fine.