Transparency films

What are transparency films mainly used for? What are it's advantages over color

negative films?

When I first got into 35mm photography, Kodachrome slides were my choice. It was a very fine grain film and had a lot more detail when projected on a screen or seen through a hand held viewer than any other film. Additionally by the time you put negative images on paper, the paper loses even more detail. Nowadays I still prefer the handheld viewer to a computer monitor. As far as commercial uses go some magazines believe transparencies give the best results. National Geographic used transparencies for years. The latest Arizona Highways photo section says they prefer 4"x5" transparencies over digital for their best pictures.

As far as I have fooled with 35mm slide film a.k.a. transparencies, they make sense only if I'm scanning them personally or get high quality scans by someone else. When directly printed on Frontier or Noritsu, it's more or less same what you get from negative and less than you see on slide. Another story is exposing slide properly, which includes special kind of scenes you can use it for (for best results).

 

Sure, you can shoot slides and project them on white screen in darkened room, playing vinils or roll tapes in background and become a cool guy in your network.

Andrejs,

projecting slides on a white screen in a darkened room is not a question of becoming a cool guy! It's the more rewarding way to see pictures, you have a so bright image and a so high dimension you could not relly achieve with prints.

 

Regarding "special kind of scenes needed to expose slide properly" this is completely wrong and the prove is the million slide exposed by photographer over the years and the slide used by the major magazines over the world, this include landscapes: something can't really be manipulated to obtain proper exposure!

Transparencies until a few years ago were the primary means by which images were transmitted and evaluated for publication. The major commercial advantage was that the buyer could view the image with a loupe and did not need to look at prints. Digital is now the dominant means because files can be transmitted over the Internet and obviate the risk that a valuable transparency could be lost. Transparencies are more archival than color negatives and it is hard to beat viewing a transparency on a light box or by projection for vibrancy.

Diego, "cool guy" wasn't to offend someone projecting slides, rather in days of technomania and expensive realty so few are projecting that it's rather uncommon. Turntable would nicely complement this analogue luxury, if you start to mess with slides at all.

 

Regarding "special kind of scenes" I should be more specific, I mean lightning and I'm pretty sure that I will not shoot slide again under trees to capture event as people are where they are, move independent from me and don't care about hotspots caused by massive contrast in scene (rays of light between trees and shadows under trees). There's "shoot or miss". When I go out for pure nature I'm free to arrange frame at my will and can wait for cloud to diffuse harsh light or for sun to warm up rainy day. Sure I'm novice and fail in situations where more experienced shooters survive.

I have a couple of reasons for prefering slide film

 

1. They look great when you set them on the light box and look at them under a loop...better than I've ever seen a print look.

 

2. They look great when projected, even on my Cheap Argus projector with a 500 watt bulb. Many people my age(I'm 18 years old) have only ever seen slide shows in school of art or documents that have been duplicated a hundred times and look horrible. Most of those same people are absolutely amazed when I show them what an original slide is capable of.

 

3. My scanner seems to prefer slides. The mounts hold the slides flatter than the film strip holders that camer with my scanner do, so scans from slides are sharper. Also, it seems to do a better job of getting the colors right with slides, and the files require less tweaking. As always, your milage may vary in this respect, and all scanners are different.

 

4. The pro lab that I use charges $18 to process a roll of C41 and proof it to 4x6s. A 36 exposure roll of E6, cut and mounted, is $7.95 to process, and I don't need proofs to see what's on the film.

 

5. I have yet to see a print film as saturated as Velvia

 

There are still times when I shoot print film. Many people don't share my same appreciation for looking at slides on a light box, and would much rather look at 4x6 prints.

Partly Kodak's monopolistic tendencies. The ONLY color films in 35mm were slide films, mostly Kodachrome, and some Ektachrome, until the consent decree in the 1950's. Yes, they had Kodacolor, but ONLY in roll film sizes. That's because Kodachrome only worked commercially with economies of scale, the processing machine had to be running flat-out all the time to be produce good results and be economical.

 

Print film would probably have taken over the marketplace for color sooner if Kodak hadn't done that game.

 

But it wasn't until the quality jump to C-41 film and RA-4 paper, and the great drop in printing costs, that negative film really took over from slide film in color.

 

The advantages of slide film are:

 

1. No interpretation needed to see the image. No cost of prints.

 

2. When projected, widest brightness range of any photographic display medium.

 

3. Kodachrome is very sharp compared to all other color films.

 

4. There are some very color accurate and fine grain ISO 100 slide films.

 

5. Kodachrome remains the most stable film (or paper) for storing color images.

 

6. There are some colors that come out better (purer, more saturated) in slide film than print film/paper.

 

The disadvantages of slide film are:

 

1. Very high contrast, thus the lowest ratio between scene highlights and shadows before you lose one or the other

 

2. Kodachrome has some rather distorted corners of the color spectrum. Dark reds are brown.

 

3. You have to get the color balance right when you take the picture.

 

4. The film scanners in minilabs can't scan it worth a darn.

 

5. The film is more expensive.

 

6. Developing is more expensive.

 

7. High speed slide films inferior to high speed negative films in grain, color, etc. Kodachrome 200 is very grainy. The 400 speed E-6 films are grainier than the print films.

 

8. The developing labs are going out of business, or dropping their quality standards. It's hard to keep an E-6 line in control, and Kodachrome lines are notoriously tricky. (Kodak's last Kodachrome line in Fair Lawn was a mess before they shut it down and outsourced to Dwayne's.)

 

9. Scanning slides demands a scanner with better shadow detail, because their shadows are so dark. (Related to 4.)

"Partly Kodak's monopolistic tendencies."

 

I agree with John's pros and cons, but there are better reasons why color negative film was not sold in 35mm until the late 50's. It simply wasn't very good. It was grainy and unsharp with poor color saturation. E-1 and E-2 Ektachrome wasn't very good either. Only Kodachrome had the image structure to yield pleasing results in 35mm.

 

The 1956 consent decree did deal with Kodak's monopolistic practice of selling film only with the price of processing included. It opened up processing to many independents, but it had nothing to do with film formats.

Heard a reference to National Geographic in here, "used transparencies for years", and another about "publications"- both seemed to be describing the use of this film in the past tense. Less than two years ago, I asked a frequently published Geographic photographer exactly how many of his brethren were shooting digital. His response, "Just myself, and one other, all of the others are still shooting film."