Slide Film, A CALL TO ARMS! : SHOOT IT OR IT WILL DIE

Just finished developing 5 rolls of Velvia 100 (two rolls at speed, three at 200). From what I can determine in the basement light, I have some gorgeous shots, many taken in low light. Velvia rocks!

However, that was a lot of work, what with the water bath and almost constant agitation. I could be talked into sending to a lab for a reasonable price.

Lost track of this thread, I will have to look back and see if there is any consensus as to a good mailorder lab.

Randy
 
zauhar said:
Just finished developing 5 rolls of Velvia 100 (two rolls at speed, three at 200). From what I can determine in the basement light, I have some gorgeous shots, many taken in low light. Velvia rocks!

However, that was a lot of work, what with the water bath and almost constant agitation. I could be talked into sending to a lab for a reasonable price.

Lost track of this thread, I will have to look back and see if there is any consensus as to a good mailorder lab.

Randy
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How cold is your ambient temp?

For home processing, plastic inversion tanks are fantastic due to the heat insulation properties and volume of developer. May not be economical one shot. But standard replenishment is simple for E-6 and works well (110/111mL per 35mm/36exp and 120 roll for FD and CD etc).
 
Way to keep the thread going.

Anyone email Precision? I haven't heard anything from them yet.--or from you guys, for that matter.

Come on, make the effort.

It's only an inquiry. Takes 5 minutes.

In the mean time--

Here's William Albert Allard using Velvia in Italy
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0205/feature6/zoom3.html

Ninja Edit

I don't want to get sidetracked, but it says 'strobe' on some of his pictures, but I swear I can't tell he used one.

Also,

Should I refrigerate or freeze exposed rolls while I'm getting enough rolls exposed to cut down shipping costs?
 
We stopped shooting slides down here for sometime now as the only remaining lab that process slides was badly damaged by floods during a strong typhoon. They didn't replace their equipment as it's no longer economical but they still process B&W films. The core of the business now is large format digital printing.
 
this thread is an excellent read.

I had to slide test my m3 before my travels this wednesday, and here is one of the results - funnily enough on velvia 100f... but I haven't got the scanning method down pat for this type of film.


FUJI_VELVIA_100F_M3_16JUN12_21_ by Kosta., on Flickr

shot as a drive by... got the look of love from the bike :p
 
Hate to hear that Gil.

You may be one of the people that can benefit from home processing--provided you can have chemicals shipped to the Philippines economically (*relative term).

Keep up the fight man.

All is not lost.

This is what we're trying to do here--awareness and visibility.

We want to let people know it's still an option.

I know that doesn't go very far towards bringing e-6 process back to the Philippines, but right now, it's the best I got.
 
zauhar said:
Just finished developing 5 rolls of Velvia 100 (two rolls at speed, three at 200). From what I can determine in the basement light, I have some gorgeous shots, many taken in low light. Velvia rocks!

However, that was a lot of work, what with the water bath and almost constant agitation. I could be talked into sending to a lab for a reasonable price.
Click to expand...

A Jobo CPP-2 with the lift will greatly reduce the effort. It tempers your chemicals and tanks, and you just have to add and dump your chemicals at the right time. Watch ebay for a good one.
 
wilonstott said:
Also,

Should I refrigerate or freeze exposed rolls while I'm getting enough rolls exposed to cut down shipping costs?
Click to expand...



I freeze film until I'm ready to shoot it. Once I shoot it, I leave it at room temperature until I process it or send it off. But that is never more than two weeks at most.

I've read that an undeveloped exposed image will begin to degrade if left unprocessed, and freezing the exposed film will slow it down. I have no idea if that is actually true or if I'm just perpetuating a myth, but I would go ahead and freeze or refrigerate the exposed film if it was going to be more than a couple of weeks before development. Just be sure to use airtight packaging, and when you remove it from cold storage, let it come up to room temp before removing from the packaging, same as you would for unexposed film.

All that said, I often let B&W film collect for a month or two in my darkroom at room temperature before I process it, and I've never had a problem. I've had a couple of rolls of B&W exposed film processed after a year at room temp, and no visible problem. Color film is said to be more sensitive.

What the Great Yellow Father (moribund) says: http://www.kodak.com/global/en/consu...fo/e30/e30.pdf The small section that discusses exposed film says to process right away, but you can keep it in the fridge for a few days. I know that many people violate that recommendation and hold for much longer before processing without any issues, but for critical color fidelity, I'm sure Kodak's recommendations are best.
 
I remember there is still a homemade one here but not on a regular basis as the economy of developing a few rolls is not cost efficient.

wilonstott said:
Hate to hear that Gil.

You may be one of the people that can benefit from home processing--provided you can have chemicals shipped to the Philippines economically (*relative term).

Keep up the fight man.

All is not lost.

This is what we're trying to do here--awareness and visibility.

We want to let people know it's still an option.

I know that doesn't go very far towards bringing e-6 process back to the Philippines, but right now, it's the best I got.
Click to expand...
 
Hi Daniel,

Athiril said:
Resolution isn't as simple as a test chart.
Click to expand...

we know. We are doing such tests for years now. We also compare with other test patterns and other objects people are using in their real life. But one of our result is that we can precisely predict the performance in such situations with the results generated by our standardised test method with medium object contrast.
And with test charts you have the possibility to quantify and compare.
But that is only one of our methods used.
I've published these results because writing about all the other tests would have been a much much too long text ;).
And: The Ranking between the films is not much different at an low object contrast of only 1,5:1.
The resolution and sharpness advantage of Velvia 100F and Velvia 100 is then a bit bigger compared to the performance
at medium contrast of 1:4 - 1:12.

Athiril said:
I would prefer to see grey on grey line chart results not black and white, real scene high spatial frequencies are typically low contrast for most of us.
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As I have written in my original post the object contrast of the testchart was 1: 6 (2,5 stops), which is not a high contrast, but a very moderate, medium contrast.
Details with such an object contrast can be found a lot in almost every shot we normally take.
We've used a relatively low object contrast of 1,5:1 as well. Velvia 100F is at 80 Lp/mm, Provia 100F at 60 Lp/mm, and the ISO 100 CN films mostly in the 50-55 lp/mm range.

Athiril said:
High end results call for high end optics. You won't see it without that, even if the lens is good, the response rate won't be high in high spatial frequencies.
Click to expand...

Please have a look at my original post: The lenses we have used are normal standard 50mm prime lenses with a relative low price. These type of lenses are used by millions of photographers.

Athiril said:
You'll naturally get a boosted response rate from high contrast material on a high (relatively by comparison) contrast film.
Click to expand...

Again, we did not use high object contrast, but medium and lower contrasts.

Athiril said:
Fuji's datasheets indicate Pro 160S is ridiculously finer than Reala. That Reala 500D is as fine as Reala, some other Eterna stocks finer than Reala. But I've seen good scans of these, and they do not appear as fine as 400H in some examples.
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Well yes, due to Fuji's datasheet Pro160S / 160 NS are a bit finer grained than Reala and Pro 400H. We can confirm this from our tests. The grain difference between Ektar and 160NS is quite small and irrelevant in most normal shooting situations, especially if you expose 160NS @100. And E100G, Elitechrome 100, Provia 100F, Astia 100F, Sensia 100 and both Velvia 100 are even a bit finer grained than both.

Cheers, Jan
 
Hey guys,

Sorry there has not been any responses thus far, but you guys blew this thread up over the weekend while I was out of the office.

We still do handle the processing for these films, but we are having to utilize different methods now for getting these small orders filled and that is why we now are having to assess the surcharges.

This also hurts me as an avid Astia 100F and Velvia 100 user, and I am looking forward to seeing what solutions are brought forward in this thread and it's related discussions.

I have an email out to our higher-ups requesting any suggestions or solutions that they might have for this predicament as well as what it might take in numbers for us to restore the full-service slide processing.

Just to add a little slide film love to this thread, here are some of my recent shots processed with our current service:

7391652480_d1e4ed9a87.jpg


7279894438_5a2c869d12.jpg


Appreciate the slide love y'all, it's refreshing to see the community band together over a common interest.
 
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Speedfreak said:
Please post your references.

All I ever hear of is film sales are going down.

http://www.google.de/trends/?q=kodak&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0

http://www.google.de/trends/?q=fuji&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0

http://www.google.de/trends/?q=analog&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all
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Kodak:
http://soundcloud.com/film-photography-project/film-photography-podcast-2011
Film as a whole in the UK:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/...raditional-camera-film-makes-a-come-back.html
And the Lomo folks:
http://www.techradar.com/news/photo...eras/lomography-film-sales-increasing-1057144
Ilford and Fuji are both mentioned in this article:
http://www.tqsmagazine.co.uk/photography-blog-how-film-became-novel-again/

Nobody is seriously suggesting film will get back to the point it was in the late '90s but there is a very real resurgence of interest in it.
 
PrecisionCamera said:
Hey guys,

Sorry there has not been any responses thus far, but you guys blew this thread up over the weekend while I was out of the office.

We still do handle the processing for these films, but we are having to utilize different methods now for getting these small orders filled and that is why we now are having to assess the surcharges.

This also hurts me as an avid Astia 100F and Velvia 100 user, and I am looking forward to seeing what solutions are brought forward in this thread and it's related discussions.

I have an email out to our higher-ups requesting any suggestions or solutions that they might have for this predicament as well as what it might take in numbers for us to restore the full-service slide processing.

Just to add a little slide film love to this thread, here are some of my recent shots processed with our current service:

7391652480_d1e4ed9a87.jpg


7279894438_5a2c869d12.jpg


Appreciate the slide love y'all, it's refreshing to see the community band together over a common interest.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the reply Christian! Look forward to hearing news on the numbers required to keep processing going. It looks from your website that the cost has gone up to $20/roll for develop and high res scans even for RFF members. Is this true or am I missing something?
 
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