nwcanonman said:
I also find Astia is the best for weddings with slide film. To equalize light, use fill flash - ON EVERY SHOT. Also using a Strobo-Frame to raise that flash, so you get no red-eye works great. I also use a OmniBounce diffuser of the flash, both inside and outside shots.
That's one good way to approach shooting slides for something like this (and digital, something I already knew but got burned by anyway). Just the same, I much prefer color neg.
The interesting thing about the availability of good digital tools for post-shoot processing is this: before the advent of desktop film scanners, fast(er) computers and studlier versions of Photoshop, adherents of color neg film argued the virtues of easy printabilty vis-a-vis color slide film; most of these people were wedding and/or event shooters who lived or died by their proofs. On the other side were shooters for magazines and agencies, whose images lived or died on the AD's light box (and/or poorly-adjusted monitor – having worked for some years at a stock photo agency, i could tell you a few stories); with these guys and gals, you shot 'chromes or you didn't do the shoot, period. They didn't worry about proofs...the slide
was the proof. The rest was CMYK separations for publication, well out of the shooter's hands.
For film shooters, digital post-production turned it all upside-down. On the one hand, 'chrome shooters no longer had to suffer the indignities of internegs (and their often-serious limitations...I made them in a pro lab for a while, which was probably instrumental in my switching to color neg afterward. Sort of like the worker in a hot-dog factory deciding to go vegan) or the intricate ins-and-outs of making a proper Cibachrome (or paying through the nose to get a proper one made for them). At the same time, color neg shooters also gained immense control over their film: they could see results on the screen, too, and, furthermore, could play color neg's wide latitude to even greater advantage (I'm still floored by what I can pull out of my Portra and Fuji Press 400/800 scans with damn little tweaking in P'shop). And, you could get great prints from either (even better now). From this perspective, at least, digital's Da Bomb.
However, there's still the latitude problem: technology hasn't really figured out (yet) how to get back what you've lost in a slide or digicam file – whatever's blown out stays blown out. If you shoot slides or digital, you still have to dial the exposure down a good deal (unless, so I hear, you're shooting with a Fuji FinePix S3, whcih offers somewhat more latitude, but, alas, it's an SLR...). Technology-wise, color negs's been where it's at for some years: the best high-speed emulsions from the mid-90s onward (the sole exception being Fuji's Provia 400) were color-neg-based, largely pro-shooter-driven. The stuff is more stable as well (provided it's processed properly!), so it shouldn't disintegrate the way color negs of emulsions past did.
I still shoot 'chrome for some projects, but, for the bulk of my color work, shooting neg means rarely having to say "I (censored) up".
- Barrett
