First Slide Film

[vicmortelmans]

I've abandoned lab printing from film because it's quite expensive and troublesome to order only a subset of pictures from a film. My workflow is now to scan from film and order digitally. For b&w, my major problem is still getting control over print quality, while for color, I'm mostly struggling to get decent scans.

Up till now, I only used color negative film. My (not too expensive) filmscanner seems to have a hard time getting decent results.

Is it a good idea to try slide film for a change? Will it be easier for the filmscanner to handle? I see one pro: postprocessing is not that critical, because the color is in the raw scan, but I also see one contra: slides have a higher density range (right?), so this may go beyond the limits of my scanner.

What is the experience in comparing negative film to slide film for scanning?

I've bought three rolls Fuji Sensia: 100, 200 and 400, so I can try it out... (quite expensive, slide film, but development is cheap).


I also discovered that I can get slide film developed and returned as a roll, that's good, because my scanner can take a complete roll and scan unattended.

Groeten,
Vic

 

[Nachkebia]

slides have lower density range by them selfs and thats why scanner has to have higher one, I think 😀

 

[darkkavenger]

I am also trying my first slide film into my Contax IIIa. I have used film only with my Pentacon Six so far and had great results even with guessed exposure, and I've scanned with success, despite the low-res of my scanner (an epson perfection 1640su).

Is it just me, or do the scans tend to have a slight blue tint? So far I used only Ektachrome 100GX or 200GX, with an incursion in the realm of Provia. I loaded a roll of Provia 100F. Let's cross fingers!

 

[vicmortelmans]

The color cast is also something I'm wonderig about. On negative film processing, color adjustment is part of the game. For slide film, certainly if it's for screen projection, color can't be adjusted.

A while ago, I bumped in to an object on ebay that looked like a light meter, but actually it was a color temperature meter, which you'd read to know which color adjusting filter should be used for the scene. Just like the white balance for digital photography, I guess (OK, I admit, I'm not an old-timer).

But for scanning slide film, you should be able to apply white balance on your scans as well. Intuitively, I'd say that bright daylight 'raw' slides would have a blue cast (blue sky) and lamp light pictures a yellow or red cast. Overcast skylight probably is most neutral, I'd assume.

Groeten,

Vic

 

[oscroft]

Is it just me, or do the scans tend to have a slight blue tint? So far I used only Ektachrome 100GX or 200GX, with an incursion in the realm of Provia

One thing I've noticed with my scanner (Epson Photo 3200) is that if there is a slight colour cast in the slide, it gets exaggerated in the scan, so a very slight blue cast ends up as a stronger blue cast. Ektachrome slides that I've scanned (ones from 20 years ago - I haven't used modern Extrachrome, though I have some EliteChrome in the fridge) do tend to show a slight cold blue cast.

 

[Seele]

Having been a slide-film (technically, colour reversal film) user since the mid 1970s I think I can share some thoughts.

Technically, the film is a "reversal film" because the image is "reversed" during processing, so that the less original exposure, the greater the density. After processing, you get "transparencies", and when they are cut and mounted, ready for projection, they are "slides".

The density range offered by a colour transparency is inherently greater than a colour print: its viewed through transmitted light and the density range can be above 3, but for a colour print would be struggling to get close to 2. That is why it is very tricky to completely replicate on a print the local contrast in a transpancy; as you need to either sacrifice highlight or shadow details (or both), or compress the dynamic scale somewhat.

Regarding colour reproduction accuracy, a bit of experience would enable you to pick the right filter under all but the trickiest situations. However, the final colour reproduction on the transparency depends on a myriad of factors, including the colour transmission characteristics of the lens, the actual processing procedure, among others.

That is why professional photographers use "professional films" and buy them in large quantities. In practice, a "professional" film means that as long as they are of the same batch and stored in the same way, you can be sure that each roll is the same as the other. Many of them also include a note inside saying that this particular batch has a slight colour cast and requires a certain filter for maximum colour accuracy.

What you do is this: get a "brick" of a professional film, thaw out one roll and keep the rest in the fridge. Use it with your camera and lenses, with the appropriate filters used if necessary, and take it to your usual lab for processing, and then examine the results. If the transparencies exhibit a uniform colour cast, then you know what to do to correct for it for the subseqent rolls.

The use of a colour temperature meter is nice, but the main thing is that you have to make sure you can figure out what the reading means. Some later meters can give direct readouts of the required filter in terms of Wratten appellation, but by adopting the decamired system also saves a lot of trouble too; worth considering.

 

[Rhoyle]

Most all modern "slide" films that are daylight balanced will give you good natural color. Some will be more saturated, some less saturated. If you're getting color casts with your scans, it's probably a scanner or software issue and not a film issue. All scans require some sort of post-processing and whether or not the cast is film related or hardware/software related, you can usually neutralize any color casts pretty easily in Photoshop or any number of other photo programs.

 

[clintock]

finally

finally

I finally have gotten satisfying results using slide film in my scanner.
I finally read the little pop up window that appears in Vuescan at startup telling me to set white balance by control-clicking on something white or neutral in the image preview. In one click I went from despair to euphoria.

I had always been disappointed at the difference in color cast overall of what I saw from the scanner vs what I saw out of the projector on the screen. Now by clicking a few times on things, I can get the colors to match quickly and easily.

It's as though I finally read the shifter on my car and discovered that I had more than one gear.

I think the color cast thing has something to do with projection. Slides that projected and looked fine color wise, would sometimes have either a blue or a blueish purple cast from my minolta scanner. Maybe it's something to do with the huge contrast ratio of the projected image that lets the cast get swamped to insignificance when viewed. We don't need 'daylight' or 'tungsten' eyes, our brains just compensate in real life, perhaps that's what happens when viewing projected slides, but for whatever reason that compensation can't happen on the computer screen or paper, due to there being other white references in view that makes the scanned slide image apper to be cast one way or another. When looking at a projector screen in a dark room, the only 'white' in sight is the one on the screen, so maybe the brain self adjusts to believe it's right.
In any case, 'white balance' is the answer.

My method so far (today) is to use Vuescan (the fully registered version) to scan all the slides as 'RAW' tiff files (Vuescan calls them RAW anyway). The scanning is faster that way, as the file just writes to disk as the scan is happening instead of after.
Then all the white balance and curve manipulation is done to the raw file after the scanner is off and the priceless bulb (minolta- where would I ever get one?) is safely
preserved.

 

[rpsawin]

You might look at the new Portra emulsions from Kodak. It's color negative film and it's made with scanning in mind. I have some that I plan to shoot this weekend (providing we have some light out here....been flat gray for days) and scan it after it's processed.

Bob