Slide film...convince me!

I love slide - I shoot more C41 for latitude tho. But when you pick up a roll of MF slide film from the lab .. oh man, that feeling is special!
One thing that slide can actually do better than C41 & digital is red tone rendition in my opinion. I always have the feeling that strong red subjects seem isolated on C41 or weirdly saturated on digital.

I'm with you on that digital red thing. I've got photos of flowers taken on a sunny day with a digital camera that look like one huge blob of red.
 
PS And to help more, if you like the idea of making B&W slides look on Ilford's website and Leitz make excellent projectors with excellent lenses including flat and curved field ones...

Thanks David. I've been having a look at projectors and the Leitz ones do look good. I wouldn't be projecting very far or on a large scale, so I don't think I'll need anything super high powered. A couple of medium format ones have caught my eye, but they are either very expensive or seem very old. Though I'm not sure whether that matters too much when it's basically just light shining through a slide? There's a very old Linhof 6x7 projector for sale down the road from me that looks pretty awesome ;)
 
Though I'm not sure whether that matters too much when it's basically just light shining through a slide?

The screen matters too; as was mentioned earlier, a good glass-bead screen will really make your pictures appear brilliant.

I projected my slides on a flat painted white wall for years until getting a proper screen, and for the first time I saw what I'd been missing. It was beautiful!
 
Thanks David. I've been having a look at projectors and the Leitz ones do look good. I wouldn't be projecting very far or on a large scale, so I don't think I'll need anything super high powered. A couple of medium format ones have caught my eye, but they are either very expensive or seem very old. Though I'm not sure whether that matters too much when it's basically just light shining through a slide? There's a very old Linhof 6x7 projector for sale down the road from me that looks pretty awesome ;)

Hi,

I can't fault their projectors; I've had mine since I got the CL decades ago and the only expense has been a bulb and that was last year and replaced from ebay. And I've travelled around with it a lot. Also Leitz slide magazines are fairly universal so no messing around moving the slides about.

And the first time you stand on a stage and see one of your slides about 8 or 10ft tall you'll be gob-smacked and forget what you were going to say to the audience...

B&W slides can be awesome too.

I don't know about the Linhof but on this forum someone will.

Regards, David
 
Slides

Slides

Because a well exposed slide in the right light is a thing of beauty.
 

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I stil teach color photography using slide film for several reasons. 85% of males have some form of color blindness according to scientists (admittedly most are minor issues), so having a positive to compare when you scan images and color correct is a plus for some. Digital bypasses this so that skill becomes more difficult to address. The rigor of getting the exposure is a plus, and tightens up students B&W chops as well. Reuse a professional lab and turnaround is becoming an issue, so I am debating dropping color photography as a whole course sand moving it to a section of the advanced curriculum.
 
Whenever I shoot slide film, which I do infrequently, I have to say "wow" at some of the shots for their colors. From this summer in FL, Velvia 100, Summicron DR:

19352745399_a5015e36f0_b.jpg
 
I don't care if I loose shadows when I expose for highlights. I'd post-process this shot the same even if the recording medium had 50EV instead of 5...

 
They say a picture is worth a thousand words...

8139816835_2cdae305a1_c.jpg

Mamiya 7 - Kodak e100vs

I can only wonder what the real slide looks like :)

My newly acquired Mamiya 7ii sitting alongside my Pentax 6x7 are the reasons I started thinking about slide film in the first place. I looked at the big negatives and thought, "damn, imagine if these were slides..."
 
Whenever I shoot slide film, which I do infrequently, I have to say "wow" at some of the shots for their colors. From this summer in FL, Velvia 100, Summicron DR:

19352745399_a5015e36f0_b.jpg

Interesting though that the highlights in the sand have blown - this is the thing about slide film: absolutely drop-dead gorgeous colours, but forget the latitude.

You either have highlights or the lowlights, you can never have both with E6.

Still - beautiful colours, the blues and greens are amazing. That's why I love slides.

rjstep3
 
I can only wonder what the real slide looks like :)

My newly acquired Mamiya 7ii sitting alongside my Pentax 6x7 are the reasons I started thinking about slide film in the first place. I looked at the big negatives and thought, "damn, imagine if these were slides..."

Why continueing to imagine how it would look like, get out and shoot a film of slides. See it with your own eyes.

Huss said:
How big is your freezer?

Not big enough to my taste :D Got about 200 rolls of Provia 400X (and a bit of Velvia), Should keep me going another year or 4. Don't know what I will do when those are gone. I hope Ferrania delivers.
 
Larry, those are outstanding. Which film did you use?

These are Velvia 50. With a Pentax 67II. (First one is cropped square, but from the Pentax.)
Since these were downgraded from TIFF files to jpgs, and went from the larger scanned Adobe RGB color gamut, to the smaller sRGB gamut to go on Smugmug, they lose something. Since the Adobe RGB gamut is less than the full natural color gamut on the actual slide, something is lost there as well.
But, with projection, it's all there, and it's a lot more impressive than it looks on a monitor.
 
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