Poll: Do you use slide film?

Poll: Do you use slide film?

  • Never

    Votes: 135 19.0%

  • Occasionally

    Votes: 261 36.7%

  • Frequently

    Votes: 254 35.7%

  • Other: e.g. I shoot slides but in my SLR instead

    Votes: 61 8.6%
  • Total voters
    711
Since more and more labs are digital-printing negatives nowadays, I have switched to slides completely. Mainly using provia 100f and sensia 100 for 135 and provia 100 and velvia 50 for 120. The good news is that Fuji may resume the production of velvia 50 next year.
 
I use more and more slide film for my colour photos. I have only just discovered Kodachrome and I intend to shoot it for as long as it is available in Europe. Other than that I am quite taken with the natural colours of Agfa Precisa 100 (another one that will be soon gone) while I also like Fuji Provia 400.

Most of the times I shoot slides on my SLR but occasionally I will use it also in my rangefinders. Some of the latest rf lenses really do excel in colour also.
 
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Those of you who shoot slide film regularly, when you get it processed, do you get your slides mounted or do you get them uncut so you can prepare strips for scanning? If the latter, do you cut and mount individual slides?

For me getting slides mounted is nice, but I haven't yet figured out a good slide storage system. Strips of film fit into my Printfile system nicely.

Gene
 
GeneW said:
Those of you who shoot slide film regularly, when you get it processed, do you get your slides mounted or do you get them uncut so you can prepare strips for scanning? If the latter, do you cut and mount individual slides?

For me getting slides mounted is nice, but I haven't yet figured out a good slide storage system. Strips of film fit into my Printfile system nicely.

Gene
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I usually get full-frame 35mm slides mounted and store them in sleeves kept in binders. Half-frame I do as develop-only, cut into strips myself, scan the strips, and then cut and mount the strips.

Medium format transparency I treat like negative film: develop, cut, and sleeve.
 
I'll shoot Kodachrome 200 until the bitter end.

It's sharp, has nice hard grain and nails down odd, offbeat colors like nobody's business.

It's expecially effective under florescent and odd mixes of mercury vapor and other light. It's the tri-x of color film.
 
summaron: Good to know; I've never tried the 200, hadn't heard much discussion of it, actually. I'll have to try it. PhotoEngineer (Ron) over on APUG once spoke of a Kodachrome 400, based on T-grain emulsion, that never made it to market. (Ron was a chemical engineer at Kodak and was involved in R&D with Kodachrome.) He said it was fantastic. What sadness.
 
Trius, be forewarned that K200 has a maddeningly pinkish cast. But the pictures it gets right are better--richer and "righter"--than those I get with my other two color favorites for low light shooting (usually at 1/5 & 1/2 sec at f2.8), Portra 400NC and Fuji NPZ.

Thanks for the story about K400. It's a miracle anyway having Kodachrome around at all, sort of as if Facel Vegas or Delahayes were still being made.
 
Thanks for the tip. Sounds like something PS could cure if scanning were involved. Now I'm quite intrigued to try it out for some of my super-low-light Irish pub/jam session shots.
 
I shot a lot of colour slide film with my G2 until I bought the E1, now I rarely use slide film. Mostly black and white
 
I just got my first ever rangefinder, a Nikon S3 about ten days ago, but all I plan to run through it is Fuji Sensia II 100 ISO colour slide,which is (except for Ektachrome 400 pushed one stop for those really low light conditions) all I currently use in my motorized Nikon F, motorized F2AS and motorized FA.
Really, for me, there is no need for other films.
 
I don't operate my own darkroom, so if I want color it will be from a commercial processor.

Over the years I tried various local labs, and I just got tired of bad results. I would get prints with bad color casts, or bright images printed as 18% gray. All black and white would come back printed in dull shades of mud. I was not trying to have my negatives processed at the cheapest place possible, I was willing to pay for good quality development and printing. I am sure such quality labs are out there, but I never found them.

Using slide film lets me see my images without the interference of bad lab techs or machine prints. If I want color then I use slide film. I use color print film only when I want the exposure lattitude.
 
I have Kodachromes, Ektacrhomes, Agachromes, Panatomic X slides from as far back as 40 years ago. 10,000 or more. the Kodachromes are magnificent, the Panatomic as well, the Agfa and the Ektacromes are DOA. I just bought a pile of Kodachrome 64 and 100 rolls of 120 Scala for the freezer. Slide machines and trays are going for a song. Since I am in my 60's I figure I can make this work another few years and then it wont matter, but slides are still what makes people gasp when projected in the right environment. There was an article in tne New Yorker last week lamenting the deterioration of good movies seen in big theaters. Instead Hollywood is moving toward (bad) movies for the IPod and downloadable to TV. I think big room slide shows are going the same way. Sad, but grab and use it while you can.

They are beautiful. color or B&W.
 
Never.

I've never bought a roll of slide film in my life, except for the time someone sent me out mith their SLR to take slides of some artwork for them. (Oh, wait; bought a roll of Fuji 120 slide film, once, for a photo club nighttime project.) Hell, I barely use color.

It's funny, though, because my old man was a monster slide photographer from the 40s through the mid-70s, and I saw gobs of nice, sharp, correctly-exposed Kodachromes and Ektachromes as a kid, all taken through a 50mm f/3.5 Color-Skopar on a Prominent. He gave me that camera around 1981, and I promptly banged a roll of Tri-X into it and went crazy.

I guess I've always preferred the immediacy and versatility of the pocketable, instantly-displayable snapshot.
 
Of all Film I have tried so far, Sensia gives absolutely the best results when scanned with my Epson 4180 flatbed.

So for Color I use Sensia 100 and for B&W I use XP2 or Delta 100, the last one to process by my own to provide scratchfree negs.

Stephan
 
I quit using slide film several years ago when it became painfully clear that the little gems are absolutely worthless.
Properly exposed slides are so, so perfect to look at on the light table. But when you actually go to do something with them, i.e. make a print or any other viewable reproduction, the magic is lost; I've tried scanners ranging from a Scan Dual III to an Imacon; the Imacon and high end Nikon scanners get close, but still can't deal with the high density portions of a slide, and all suffer from noise.
I've since seen wet, optically enlarged prints that seem to have actually gotten the beauty of the slide onto paper. But it came too late, and now I don't even know if there's a place to have such prints made.
The ones I've seen that looked really nice to my eye said Fuji Crystal Archive on the back. Anyone know if this material is still available, whether anyone still offers prints made on it, or whether using it in a home darkroom is feasible?
Anyway, I gave up. On the rare occasion that I shoot color I either use print film and live with mediocre scans or shoot digital.
 
I have a kodak slide projector and about 200 slides. I haven't looked at them in years. There's a unused roll in the frig. 1980's was the last time I took slides.
 
I've got a G2 body dedicated to Kodachrome right now- ten rolls for the spring & summer & fall if it lasts. I love to shoot slides (Kodachrome now, often Velvia, E100 or my now precious few rolls of Agfa RSX) for our family 'snaps'.
The upside is the rare 'slide show' where we set everything up, and roll through a bunch of trays on the Pradovit. Something really great about these nights, something I recall very vividly as a kid- seeing the slides. Something about once a year, but a special occassion for sure.
 
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