Slide film...convince me!

You've got everyone else's opinion, I'll throw in mine. Years ago, I probably shot about 8-10 thousand slides over some 15 years. Probably some 15 to 25 percent more b/w and color negative. Each has its own characteristics (imagine that). I never had a problem getting good photos with slide film from Kodak or Fuji, (Agfa was another story, but many people love it and get great photos. I am just not one of them). But I would try it, just to see what you get. I would suggest at least three rolls to be sure you can nail it. Having used Kodachrome, I am not convinced of digital being superior. Equal maybe, I don't know as I don't have a good high pixel full frame camera. I know people who do get very nice shots, but to me they just don't look the same. And that is just me. I don't require anyone else to think the same.

As to 6x7 projectors, they do exist. I haven't looked for one on ebay for a very long time as I couldn't afford them for what they would give me. When I want slides I stick with 35mm. Properly exposed they will still make stunning projections. Again, a personal thing I am sure.

If you shoot MF all the time, slides may have no practical attraction for you. But you won't know until you try.
 
RichardPhoto said:
Fujilove,

Just buy a roll of slide and be done with it. Shoot it, dev it, scan it, look at it, decide. I really can't see the need for seeking external validation or confirmation about what medium to shoot. Slide film is slide film - it is what it is. The pros/cons are well known as it's been around decades. And surely you know yourself what you want to do with your own pictures - print, project, web, etc.

Asking 'convince me' and 'is slide worth it' on a film subforum is going to get the same results as starting the poll: "Is slide literally the best thing ever?" a)yes b)yes c)yes d)No - because I'm mentally deficient and I don't understand how slide is literally the best thing ever!
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<rant>

And while I'm on the subject...whenever you start a thread with a simple honest question (RFF is admittedly not the worst for this), some plonker always has to start being aggressive and claiming that this has all been discussed before blah blah/it's a pointless topic/go and Google it etc?

Annoying.

</rant>
 
oftheherd said:
You've got everyone else's opinion, I'll throw in mine. Years ago, I probably shot about 8-10 thousand slides over some 15 years. Probably some 15 to 25 percent more b/w and color negative. Each has its own characteristics (imagine that). I never had a problem getting good photos with slide film from Kodak or Fuji, (Agfa was another story, but many people love it and get great photos. I am just not one of them). But I would try it, just to see what you get. I would suggest at least three rolls to be sure you can nail it. Having used Kodachrome, I am not convinced of digital being superior. Equal maybe, I don't know as I don't have a good high pixel full frame camera. I know people who do get very nice shots, but to me they just don't look the same. And that is just me. I don't require anyone else to think the same.

As to 6x7 projectors, they do exist. I haven't looked for one on ebay for a very long time as I couldn't afford them for what they would give me. When I want slides I stick with 35mm. Properly exposed they will still make stunning projections. Again, a personal thing I am sure.

If you shoot MF all the time, slides may have no practical attraction for you. But you won't know until you try.
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I dug out a load of my old slides a few weeks back. Mostly taken while I was in my early teens and didn't have a clue about photography (I haven't changed much) and they still look stunning. Very rich and luminous.

Of course they are all 35mm and I'm not sure I fancy buying and using a 35mm camera just for slides so I can mount and project them. I really don't get on with the aspect ratio of that film.
 
Clearly we have very different ideas of what constitutes aggression. Interesting that someone so sensitive has no issue with a bit of blatant passive-aggression though!

My apologies for bringing my opinions and humour to this thread. I didn't realise that you were literally only wanting to hear things you agree with.

I hope you get the permission to shoot a roll of film you are seeking. Let us know if you want approval to change your car or switch to a new blend of coffee!:rolleyes:
 
It is not a big deal to try. If you DIY BW and color negative. I have bunch of expired, discontinued film. If I want heavy, non digital colors on computer screen. Sometimes...
I could get slide look with slide film x-processed in the C-41 and edited in computer.
You could also edit C-41 to looks like slide.
If you want slide as the slide, it is not for scanning or printing, but for projecting.
 
I have quite a few Kodal Carousel slide trays, each of them full. They go back to the 1960's. Someday I plan to scan some of them.

Why take slides when all I'm going to do is look and work on them with my computer?
 
Does anyone on here scan their slides with a flatbed?

I gave up with 35mm negatives as the quality wasn't very good, but I'm wondering if it would be worth trying with medium format slides? Are they a lot more difficult to scan than colour negative?

I'm asking in case I end up with a slide I'd like to print, rather than something for sharing digitally.

I guess there must be a thread somewhere on here?
 
RichardPhoto said:
Clearly we have very different ideas of what constitutes aggression. Interesting that someone so sensitive has no issue with a bit of blatant passive-aggression though!

My apologies for bringing my opinions and humour to this thread. I didn't realise that you were literally only wanting to hear things you agree with.

I hope you get the permission to shoot a roll of film you are seeking. Let us know if you want approval to change your car or switch to a new blend of coffee!:rolleyes:
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Your wisdom is really helpful, thanks.
 
Does the Cibachrome (Ilfochrome?) process still exist?

I have some thirty year old prints that are still very good. OK they were expensive but worth it.
 
Bill Clark said:
I have quite a few Kodal Carousel slide trays, each of them full. They go back to the 1960's. Someday I plan to scan some of them.

Why take slides when all I'm going to do is look and work on them with my computer?
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I agree. I need to go and see if I can find a sensible projection option. Meaning sensibly priced. I can't imagine I would enjoy scanning them often.

I have a dim and distant memory of someone constructing a backlit slide holder that was mounted on their wall and looked incredible. Not sure if it was on this forum? That would be a great DIY project :)
 
Dralowid said:
Does the Cibachrome (Ilfochrome?) process still exist?

I have some thirty year old prints that are still very good. OK they were expensive but worth it.
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Sadly not. I believe the production of both chemicals and paper stopped a few years ago. If it did exist, I would already be shooting slides and not trying to work out what to do with them!

I haven't seen many Cibachrome prints, but the ones I have seen looked beautiful.
 
i've scanned a lot of slides on a flatbed (epson v700) and i found it easier than colour negs. However, what's dark is going to go black.
It's not too bad what it gives me, but again, has no advantage for me over a digital shot (even a non-fullframe shot, since i dont even own a fullframe digital).
I've printed some shots from scanned 6x9 slides and they don't look as good as i hoped for, but i admit it was not a high end printing, just a regular mail-out digital print service.
 
Internegative?

Internegative?

FujiLove said:
I got back into film photography 18 months ago and have been loving shooting B&W and colour negative film, processing it at home and printing it in my little darkroom. What I haven't yet tried is slide film. Well, when I say I haven't tried it, I mean since I was about 14 years old when slide was all I shot back then.

I realise there is no practical way to print from slides in the darkroom these days, so I'm wondering whether I should give it a try. There still seems to be a lot of people shooting it, so how are you viewing your photos? Are you scanning and printing via an inkjet? Mounting and projecting? Or maybe just using a light table and a loupe?

To make things a little more complicated, I only shoot medium format 6x7, so again, I'm wondering whether that will make things impractical...or maybe 6x7 slides are just too lovely to miss out on?

My only remaining scanner is an Epson v550 flatbed and I don't have the budget to get a dedicated medium format scanner (or the patience to use one very much).

So what do you think? Is slide film worth giving a go? If it's a, "yes", which emulsion would you recommend starting with?
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I used to print from slide film, and the process was to use an internegative, which added a cost factor, but worked well.

My question would be wrapped around the option of finding a wet lab that still offers the ability to produce an internegative from transparency film.

I know I can get a digital scan of a transparency, but in my case, that would still involve getting a higher quality scan than I have been able to achieve with flatbed scanning.

I have purchased about three new Epson scanners (V500 and V750) only to be totally frustrated scanning 120 film to the standards I require.

Like I said, I was happy with the Internegative process years ago, but is it still available in wet processing???

I have used Prophotosupply in Portland Oregon for high quality scans in the past to convert transparencies to digital.
 
U41336I1455725509.SEQ.0.jpg


A picture's worth a thousand words ! And çuz nobody wants to come over for a visit and
hang around your computer to look at pictures. But every time we entertain there's always
people downstairs looking at my selected slides on a home built light table. Peter
 
Moto-Uno said:
U41336I1455725509.SEQ.0.jpg


A picture's worth a thousand words ! And çuz nobody wants to come over for a visit and
hang around your computer to look at pictures. But every time we entertain there's always
people downstairs looking at my selected slides on a home built light table. Peter
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Ah, now you're talking :)

I assume you can still buy mounts for medium format slides then?
 
FujiLove said:
I'm looking for the opinions of the people who do still shoot slide film, and I'm interested in why they still do it and how they go about viewing and/or printing the images.
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FWIW, it is worth considering that when someone says that digital color is better than transparency color what they are saying, if expressed a little more accurately, is that they like digital color better for some personal reason of theirs. Those reasons might not apply to you. If ultimate dynamic range and resolution are the only things that count for you, then digital with a high resolution sensor is better, for you, than slide film. If qualities outside those two quantifiable measures matter to you, then slide film might be something you would really enjoy.
I shoot both color slide film and high resolution digital color. They're different. Better DR is not the same as better photograph. Some people here have said that there is no point in shooting color transparency film any longer. That is their opinion, I just can't see it. But that's only my opinion.
It might be difficult to get a good scan of an improperly exposed transparency, but that is an exposure problem, not a scanning issue. With a properly exposed slide, it is absolutely not difficult to scan-other than the fact that good scanning is not particularly easy to begin with, for any media.
You've got a MF camera. That right there is a great reason to shoot color slides, but mostly for projection, secondarily for creating huge vibrant prints.
A 6x7 projector is hard to come by. Hasselblad PCP 80 projectors are readily available, but are not cheap. In your position, buying one of those and projecting slides cropped to 6X6 or 6X4.5 would be the best reason for shooting slides, in my book. If that is not something you want to do, you lose one of the big reasons for shooting slides, IMO. Most people who do that will tell you that viewing a digital color photo on a monitor, or a large print, is a joke compared to the visual impact of a projected medium format color slide. That is the biggest reason I shoot MF transparencies. But, it's expensive, and a little cumbersome. I can show a photo to my family on a monitor, and have them say "that's pretty", then show them the same photo a month later, projected, and the usual reaction is "oh, my God!"
Personally, I prefer the available transparency emulsions to the available C-41 emulsions, so for film I mostly gravitate to black and white and slides, but that is a color palette issue, and personal preference only. Mostly Provia for people and general work, Velvia 50 for landscapes.
I scan with a Nikon 9000 MF scanner and use Silverfast software, both the Ai scanning software, scanning with multi exposure at 64 bit RAW, and their HDR processing software. Their HDR processing of the resulting RAW scans is absolutely critical to getting the scans I am happy with. Any drawbacks to the inherent dynamic range limitations of slide films are minimized with this method. 6x7 you will end up with around a 280MB TIFF file, with which you can do almost anything. Scanning on a flatbed with Vuescan wont get you the same results. You can get extremely rich files using this method which hold up amazingly well to processing in PS, with excellent tonal range. But then, at this point you are back in the digital realm, which perhaps you don't wish to be. But, you asked for personal opinions and experiences.
So, if I had a MF film camera, I would absolutely shoot color slides.
 
My pleasure. I have two Coolscans (V and 9000) and have been very passed with the results from both. I'm afraid I don't have personal experience with flatbed scanners but I've seen very nice results from such scanners too.

FujiLove said:
Thanks Philip - I've heard it's a tough beast to scan without a high-end scanner (drum scanner maybe). Are you using a flatbed or a dedicated film scanner?
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