+ 10000
🙂
And especially if you look through an excellent optical loupe, like the Schneider and Rodenstock slide loupes:
http://www.schneider-kreuznach.com/foto_e/zubehoer_lupen.htm
http://www.rodenstock-photo.com/en/main/products/magnifiers/aspherical-magnifiers/
My reasons for shooting slides:
1. Projection: Absolutely unsurpassed quality (brillance, sharpness, resolution, fine grain, tonality) at that big enlargements.
I've compared slide projection with excellent projection lenses to the current most expensive beamers (2 MP; 7000€).
The result is absolutely clear: Slide projection is a league of its own. Far superior resolution and sharpness, better brillance and tonality, much better color reproduction.
The most expensive beamers can not compete at all with slide projection.
With beamers you have the situation that you pay e.g. 7000€ for a 24 MP Nikon D3x, and then you pay another 7000€ to smash this resolution down to the extrmely low resolution of 2 MP with the beamer (and the 2 MP are only valid in horizontal direction, in vertical direction you have even 40% less resolution).
2. Slide viewing with an excellent slide loupe: Outstanding quality, fast, convenient.
Viewing slides this way with a little daylight light table (like this one
http://www.kaiser-fototechnik.de/en/produkte/2_1_sortiment.asp?w=381 ) is as fast as looking at prints in a photoalbum. But with better image quality.
This way you can easily show others your slides without projection.This set-up is smaller and lighter than a photoalbum or a laptop.
3. Prints have a limited contrast range of about five stops (max. contrast from deep black to shiny white on the print). There is a physical limit which cannot be surpassed.
Slides as a transparent medium can deliver higher contrast ranges. With certain (BW) slides films even more than 10 stops.
This greater max. contrast range of slides is one reason for their higher brillance.
4. With slide film you can achieve higher resolution, better sharpness and finer grain compared to color negative films.
There have been some scientific tests proving that films like Ektachrome E100G, Provia 100F, Velvia 100 and 100F, Astia 100F have about 30-40% higher resolution than Ektar 100.
I've made some comparison tests, too, and can confirm that.
5. Reliability:
What you see is what you get.
Give your slide film in 5 different labs, and you will always get the same results.
Give your CN film in five different labs and order prints from them, then you will most probably receive five different results, because the operator at the printer does an interpretation. You get differences from the scanning and from the operator of the machine, who decides about contrast and colors.
6. Most authentic form of photography: A slide is an original, the pure form, not manipulated in any form.
7. Versatility:
Slides can be viewed only with the eye, holding against light, with a loupe, they can be projected on a screen, and you can scan and print them (and currently there is still the possibility to make a Ilfochrome, or a direct print with Harman Direct Positive Paper).
Color negatives can only be printed.
8. Very cost efficient:
Color negative film makes sense if you want prints.
For a quality print I have to pay here about 35 - 40 cents depending on the lab.
A 36 exp. CN film, developed and with prints cost me more than a slide film with development.
If you consider projection than there is an even much more significant price gap: With projection my huge, brillant picture of 1m x 1,5m or 2 x 3m cost me less than 1€ in total.
A print from CN film of that size cost me much more than 100€, and doesn't have the brillance, resolution, fine grain and sharpness of the projected slide.
9. BW slides:
Their tonality is unique. Yo can not get this unique look with prints.
Once you have seen BW slides, you are hooked.
Slides, that is where film is absolutely unique and can not be replaced by CN or digital.
Cheers, Jan
