Slide Film more accurate?

[papo]

Can it be said that slide films are more accurate in terms of colors, contrast, depth and sharpness?

While we at it, i keep hearing that slide films are more unforgiving and that you need to have your exposure settings right but i wonder, if i scan them, couldnt i simply adjust all of that in post production (Lightroom, Photoshop, etc) like i would with negatives?

 

[michaelwj]

No, you just can't mess with it more when printing.
No, the information is not recorded.

 

[sevo]

No. They remove one entire step (printing). Prior to digital, that made them the medium of choice for every type of professional use where the end medium was no photographic print. While there are well-defined standards for colour calibration of slide film scanning, nothing equivalent exists for colour negatives. But that is not a matter of film quality but rather due to the fact that no equivalent infrastructure ever developed around CN.

 

[dmr]

While we at it, i keep hearing that slide films are more unforgiving and that you need to have your exposure settings right but i wonder, if i scan them, couldnt i simply adjust all of that in post production (Lightroom, Photoshop, etc) like i would with negatives?

Slide films typically do not have the dynamic range of negative films and your exposure does have to be very close. If the highlights are blown out to white or the shadows are down in the mud, no futzing around with the sliders in software will correct it.

Pick any obviously over or under exposed photo from the web and try editing it and you will see what I mean.

 

[aldobonnard]

Slides colour accuracy will depend on your film processing, which has to be perfect.
Then it depends on your scanner which has to be of a good quality and calibrated for the type of slide (scanner calibrated + screen calibrated for accurate adjustments).

 

[michaelwj]

Following up on my previous post, what exactly is accurate sharpness?

But back to colour accuracy, slide films are no more accurate than negatives. If they were accurate, then Kodachrome would look exactly like Velvia which would look exactly like the scene. But they don't. All photography is a representation, choices made by hardware and software engineers dictate which version of reality the photograph will depict but none are perfect.

 

[Steve M.]

You can't adjust what you ain't got. If the highlights are blown, no miracle of software is going to bring them back. As for accuracy, every film base has it's own characteristic and look. Nothing is "accurate", people just go for the look that suits them. Yes, shooting slides requires much more accurate exposure than negative film. Pick up a few rolls and shoot it. There is no other way to find out.

 

[HHPhoto]

Can it be said that slide films are more accurate in terms of colors, contrast, depth and sharpness?

Reversal (slide) film has finer grain, higher resolution and better sharpness compared to negative films of the same speed.
Velvia 50, Velvia 100, Provia 100F, AgfaPhoto CT Precisa 100 deliver all that. With this better detail rendition compared to Ektar 100, Portra 160 you can make bigger enlargements from reversal films.

Concerning contrast:
A slide on a light box or in projection has a higher Dmax / bigger contrast range (more stops) than a print from a colour negativ.

Concerning accurate colors:
Two aspects are very important:
1. If you want most neutral, natural, precise colours than Provia 100F / AgfaPhoto Precisa are currently the best films on the market.
Followed by Fuji Pro 400H (which is slightly on the warm side).
If natural/neutral colors are needed, you have to exclude all current Kodak negative films, because they all have a significant bias on yellow and a warm colour rendition (that is general policy at Kodak, the films are designed that way). This Kodak design also leads often to a certain cyan cast in blues with Kodak films.

2. With reversal film you already have a finished picture after development. With a proper development the results are perfect.
Send identical exposed slide films to several excellent labs and your results will be all identical.
Therefore you have a perfect accuracy in terms of reliability and consistancy.

But that is not the case with colour negative film:
After development you need prints and / or scans to have a usable, finished picture. Scanning / printing are interpretation processes. And therefore depending on the lab operator, the scanner, the software, the printing paper you will get different results.
Send identical exposed CN films to several excellent labs and your results (scans, prints) will be all different.

All the reasons above (and several more) are the reasons why in professional photography reversal film has been the preferred medium (in most cases exclusively used) for decades.

While we at it, i keep hearing that slide films are more unforgiving and that you need to have your exposure settings right but i

It is correct that negative film has more exposure latitude than reversal film, but
1. Negative film has no latitude concerning the other important quality parameters:
If you underexpose it, you get significantly more grain, worse sharpness and resolution, lack of shadow detail.
If you overexpose it, you are loosing sharpness, resolution and highlight detail. And you get colour shifts.
Result:
If you want optimal quality concerning all quality parameters, you have expose right. There is no difference concerning that between negative and positive film.
2. Getting a correct exposure is easy. For decades we have excellent metering systems in our cameras.
3. There are lots of excellent tools to manage even very high contrasts before / with exposure:
Fill-in flash, gradual filters, pre-exposure / pre-flashing, pol filter.
Get it right before you press the shutter. Then you don't need post-processing.

wonder, if i scan them, couldnt i simply adjust all of that in post production (Lightroom, Photoshop, etc) like i would with negatives?

Concerning scanning of reversal film the following aspects are important:
1. One further big advantage of reversal film is, you don't need to scan. After development you already have a perfect, finished picture. Look at it on a light box with an excellent slide loupe or in projection and you have a much much better quality than any (scanned) picture on a computer monitor.
2. Next advantage: With the slide you always have a reference, the original. You know how the scan have to look. That is impossible with colour negative film, because our brain cannot convert the negative colours.
3. Most scanners (with the exception of drumscanners) increase film grain by scanner noise. Therefore you benefit with reversal film from its finer grain (see above).
4. Reversal films have a very high contrast range (high Dmax). Most cheap scanners cannot fully record this high Dmax.
5. With drumscanners you can even get lots of detail from strongly under- or overexposed slides.
For example have a look here (scroll down to the portraits):
https://www.fineartdrumscanning.de/bilder/

Cheers, Jan

 

[waileong]

Can it be said that slide films are more accurate in terms of colors, contrast, depth and sharpness?

While we at it, i keep hearing that slide films are more unforgiving and that you need to have your exposure settings right but i wonder, if i scan them, couldnt i simply adjust all of that in post production (Lightroom, Photoshop, etc) like i would with negatives?

How can you adjust something you don't have? If you blow the exposure, you blow the highlights, there's nothing left to scan!

 

[nikonhswebmaster]

1. One further big advantage of reversal film is, you don't need to scan. After development you already have a perfect, finished picture. Look at it on a light box with an excellent slide loupe or in projection and you have a much much better quality than any (scanned) picture on a computer monitor.
2. Next advantage: With the slide you always have a reference, the original. You know how the scan have to look. That is impossible with colour negative film, because our brain cannot convert the negative colours.

Art directors had light tables.

I don't ever remember seeing any negative color film, except in those envelops my mom got from the drugstore with prints.

Maybe it's just me, but how does one look at negatives since the color is always a product of the lab or scanner?

 

[charjohncarter]

Pick any obviously over or under exposed photo from the web and try editing it and you will see what I mean.

No kidding.

 

[SaveKodak]

Art directors had light tables.

I don't ever remember seeing any negative color film, except in those envelops my mom got from the drugstore with prints.

Maybe it's just me, but how does one look at negatives since the color is always a product of the lab or scanner?

Uh they looked at contact sheets and not negatives.

More accurate less accurate, waste of time. Provia looks like Provia, Velvia looks like Velvia. With proper controls they can produce an image that looks a lot like the scene photographed. Perfect accuracy is only something people who are shooting repro or certain types product photography need. If you're out in the world, first you won't remember the color perfectly, second there are a million variations of light and color anyways, and when combined with variation of exposure and development...all bets are off. It just needs to make an acceptable reproduction of the scene visually.

I have a photograph of my girlfriend on Monhegan Island in Maine that I shot on Provia 100F. I used an 81A since we were in open shade. I think the color is pretty dang great. Is it completely accurate were I standing in the same place at the same time? Probably not....

 

[HHPhoto]

How can you adjust something you don't have? If you blow the exposure, you blow the highlights, there's nothing left to scan!

Yes and no.
The very important point is, that reversal film is recording much more detail in the shadows and highlights than most people think.
There is a lot of misinformation on the internet, e.g. that reversal film could only record 5-6 stops of dynamic range.
That is completely wrong!!
Reversal film has, principially in the same way as negative film (but to a lesser extent), also a shoulder in the characteristic curve (highlights).
How much detail can be seen or can be recovered in the shadows and higlights is depending on the viewing methods.
The test results differ from 8-11 stops depending on the used method and the film (Astia or Provia have a higher dynamic range as the Velvias).

Look at the example and the link I've given in my post above: It is absolutely outstanding what can be recorded from the shadows in the underexposed slide by the drumscanner.
The detail is there, it is on the film! Despite the huge underexposure.
You may also have a look at the excellent test results of Tim Parkin (onlandscape.co.uk).

But again:
Exposing correctly is extremely easy. Especially with the curent metering and exposing systems, or a separate lightmeter.
So nothing to worry about.

Cheers, Jan

 

[BillBingham2]

I always preferred slide film as the images always felt more pure, closer to what I was seeing. They looked dark when I wanted them to look dark, not muddy like the 4x6 prints always did.

Kodachrome and Extachrome weren't perfect, but for me the were more than good enough for everything I wanted to do.

B2 (;->

 

[Calzone]

Reversal (slide) film has finer grain, higher resolution and better sharpness compared to negative films of the same speed.
Velvia 50, Velvia 100, Provia 100F, AgfaPhoto CT Precisa 100 deliver all that. With this better detail rendition compared to Ektar 100, Portra 160 you can make bigger enlargements from reversal films.

Concerning contrast:
A slide on a light box or in projection has a higher Dmax / bigger contrast range (more stops) than a print from a colour negativ.

Concerning accurate colors:
Two aspects are very important:
1. If you want most neutral, natural, precise colours than Provia 100F / AgfaPhoto Precisa are currently the best films on the market.
Followed by Fuji Pro 400H (which is slightly on the warm side).
If natural/neutral colors are needed, you have to exclude all current Kodak negative films, because they all have a significant bias on yellow and a warm colour rendition (that is general policy at Kodak, the films are designed that way). This Kodak design also leads often to a certain cyan cast in blues with Kodak films.

2. With reversal film you already have a finished picture after development. With a proper development the results are perfect.
Send identical exposed slide films to several excellent labs and your results will be all identical.
Therefore you have a perfect accuracy in terms of reliability and consistancy.

But that is not the case with colour negative film:
After development you need prints and / or scans to have a usable, finished picture. Scanning / printing are interpretation processes. And therefore depending on the lab operator, the scanner, the software, the printing paper you will get different results.
Send identical exposed CN films to several excellent labs and your results (scans, prints) will be all different.

All the reasons above (and several more) are the reasons why in professional photography reversal film has been the preferred medium (in most cases exclusively used) for decades.



It is correct that negative film has more exposure latitude than reversal film, but
1. Negative film has no latitude concerning the other important quality parameters:
If you underexpose it, you get significantly more grain, worse sharpness and resolution, lack of shadow detail.
If you overexpose it, you are loosing sharpness, resolution and highlight detail. And you get colour shifts.
Result:
If you want optimal quality concerning all quality parameters, you have expose right. There is no difference concerning that between negative and positive film.
2. Getting a correct exposure is easy. For decades we have excellent metering systems in our cameras.
3. There are lots of excellent tools to manage even very high contrasts before / with exposure:
Fill-in flash, gradual filters, pre-exposure / pre-flashing, pol filter.
Get it right before you press the shutter. Then you don't need post-processing.



Concerning scanning of reversal film the following aspects are important:
1. One further big advantage of reversal film is, you don't need to scan. After development you already have a perfect, finished picture. Look at it on a light box with an excellent slide loupe or in projection and you have a much much better quality than any (scanned) picture on a computer monitor.
2. Next advantage: With the slide you always have a reference, the original. You know how the scan have to look. That is impossible with colour negative film, because our brain cannot convert the negative colours.
3. Most scanners (with the exception of drumscanners) increase film grain by scanner noise. Therefore you benefit with reversal film from its finer grain (see above).
4. Reversal films have a very high contrast range (high Dmax). Most cheap scanners cannot fully record this high Dmax.
5. With drumscanners you can even get lots of detail from strongly under- or overexposed slides.
For example have a look here (scroll down to the portraits):
https://www.fineartdrumscanning.de/bilder/

Cheers, Jan

Jan,

Thanks for the concise and thorough writing.

Cal

 

[nikonhswebmaster]

Uh they looked at contact sheets and not negatives.

Probably just me, but I never knew anyone shooting neg color.

Anyway, I never did.

 

[GarageBoy]

You can get c41 shadows to look dark too, dodge it during your print stage

 

[edge100]

Following up on my previous post, what exactly is accurate sharpness?

But back to colour accuracy, slide films are no more accurate than negatives. If they were accurate, then Kodachrome would look exactly like Velvia which would look exactly like the scene. But they don't. All photography is a representation, choices made by hardware and software engineers dictate which version of reality the photograph will depict but none are perfect.

+1

This is a bug-bear of mine. There are two kinds of colour accuracy: accuracy of the original scene and accuracy of duplication of the slide.

As pointed out, Velvia 50 doesn't look like Kodachrome, which doesn't look like Provia 100F, which doesn't look like Astia, which doesn't look like Ektachrome, and so on. Each film applies its own tonal palette to the range of colours presented to it in the scene. And none of them are "accurate" with respect to the colours present in nature (whatever that means).

That, of course, has nothing to do with the accuracy of scanning the slide, which is a quantitative and reproducible thing. We calibrate our scanners with IT8 targets for each film type, and then use the associated LUT to map the scanned colours (which are biased by the individual scanner) into the "accurate" colours.

Negatives are a completely different beast; they have always been a medium of interpretation, where the printing stage is an integral component of the final subjective image characteristics (colour balance included). This is why there aren't equivalent calibration images for negative film: there's nothing to calibrate against. A film negative is not merely an inverted positive.

 

[edge100]

Reversal (slide) film has finer grain, higher resolution and better sharpness compared to negative films of the same speed.
Velvia 50, Velvia 100, Provia 100F, AgfaPhoto CT Precisa 100 deliver all that. With this better detail rendition compared to Ektar 100, Portra 160 you can make bigger enlargements from reversal films.

Concerning contrast:
A slide on a light box or in projection has a higher Dmax / bigger contrast range (more stops) than a print from a colour negativ.

Concerning accurate colors:
Two aspects are very important:
1. If you want most neutral, natural, precise colours than Provia 100F / AgfaPhoto Precisa are currently the best films on the market.
Followed by Fuji Pro 400H (which is slightly on the warm side).
If natural/neutral colors are needed, you have to exclude all current Kodak negative films, because they all have a significant bias on yellow and a warm colour rendition (that is general policy at Kodak, the films are designed that way). This Kodak design also leads often to a certain cyan cast in blues with Kodak films.

2. With reversal film you already have a finished picture after development. With a proper development the results are perfect.
Send identical exposed slide films to several excellent labs and your results will be all identical.
Therefore you have a perfect accuracy in terms of reliability and consistancy.

But that is not the case with colour negative film:
After development you need prints and / or scans to have a usable, finished picture. Scanning / printing are interpretation processes. And therefore depending on the lab operator, the scanner, the software, the printing paper you will get different results.
Send identical exposed CN films to several excellent labs and your results (scans, prints) will be all different.

All the reasons above (and several more) are the reasons why in professional photography reversal film has been the preferred medium (in most cases exclusively used) for decades.



It is correct that negative film has more exposure latitude than reversal film, but
1. Negative film has no latitude concerning the other important quality parameters:
If you underexpose it, you get significantly more grain, worse sharpness and resolution, lack of shadow detail.
If you overexpose it, you are loosing sharpness, resolution and highlight detail. And you get colour shifts.
Result:
If you want optimal quality concerning all quality parameters, you have expose right. There is no difference concerning that between negative and positive film.
2. Getting a correct exposure is easy. For decades we have excellent metering systems in our cameras.
3. There are lots of excellent tools to manage even very high contrasts before / with exposure:
Fill-in flash, gradual filters, pre-exposure / pre-flashing, pol filter.
Get it right before you press the shutter. Then you don't need post-processing.



Concerning scanning of reversal film the following aspects are important:
1. One further big advantage of reversal film is, you don't need to scan. After development you already have a perfect, finished picture. Look at it on a light box with an excellent slide loupe or in projection and you have a much much better quality than any (scanned) picture on a computer monitor.
2. Next advantage: With the slide you always have a reference, the original. You know how the scan have to look. That is impossible with colour negative film, because our brain cannot convert the negative colours.
3. Most scanners (with the exception of drumscanners) increase film grain by scanner noise. Therefore you benefit with reversal film from its finer grain (see above).
4. Reversal films have a very high contrast range (high Dmax). Most cheap scanners cannot fully record this high Dmax.
5. With drumscanners you can even get lots of detail from strongly under- or overexposed slides.
For example have a look here (scroll down to the portraits):
https://www.fineartdrumscanning.de/bilder/

Cheers, Jan

Excellent post, Jan. Spot on!

 

[SaveKodak]

Probably just me, but I never knew anyone shooting neg color.

Anyway, I never did.

Folks shot anything and everything. Some choices certainly were more popular than others, but as usually it was job dependent.