A look back into my C41 years.

<p>I only got into photog in 2004 which I pretty much jumped into digital. I did shot film SLR briefly from a family member's camera. </p>

<p>I have since shot slide and tried pro labs out for my C41 and home scanning. </p>

<p>1) Over the years, I've mostly used cheap C41 and got them processed cheaply. They weren't great at all. But do any of you get a feeling that now you have seen digital and slide film and they seem so much more perfect? That, you kind of miss the older years when you gotten used to the lesser quality prints? Looking at a slide or a digital file, just seems so different to my younger years. </p>

<p>2) Is it my lack of experience. I notice that professional C41 scanned myself or printed from pro lab still look a bit different to pro slide film. There is still more of a film look with C41. Thought? <br>

Having seen normal flavour film such as Kodak E200 (slide film) and Elite Chrome 100 they look more like digital than C41, they are cleaner and more saturated. Even films such as Velvia with more saturation.</p>

<p>Cheers.</p>

<p>1 Consumer labs consume.<br>

2 We all learn<br>

3 All films and prospecetive have a life of their own you have to learn the life and use that.<br>

4 See one for this. as it used to be that any place you went you got great results even 1 hour labs in the 80s and 90s but not now. A 1 hour lab is like a crap shoot like trying a new B&W developer with a film you never used before.</p>

<p>Larry</p>

<p>I think your slides only look so much better because cheap labs can't process them, hence forcing you to go to a better lab. If you had your negatives processed at the same lab, you might get similar results to the slides (taking into consideration that <em>every film behaves differently and there are too many variables to fairly compare C41 vs E6</em>).</p>

<p>As to 2), it really depends on what you consider a "film look". If you mean "different from digital", I do notice that C41 has a more "bumpy" texture to it (especially 400 and up), while 100% crops from slides don't have that same look.<br>

I disagree that prints used to be of a lesser quality in the "older years". If anything, printing was of a higher quality; people used to have darkrooms and take time to print by hand, instead of just scanning and printing digitally. The only problem is that many people fail to keep their prints in conditions good enough to stand the test of time.<br>

Also, emulsions have changed over the years. Kodachrome is gone, Tri-X's changed, quality control has changed. It's all different now - there can be no fair comparison.<br>

When you say Ektachrome and Elite Chrome look cleaner, what C41 film are you comparing it to? Slides do have finer grain, and I believe a lot of them tend to be more saturated. They also don't come in speeds as fast as C41.</p>

<p>Velvia is probably one of the most saturated films you can buy; you can't fairly compare it with anything. It's also ISO 50, which makes it very fine grained.</p>

<p>Early print film was prone to horrible color shifts and fading. But once that problem was solved, color print films could be great, but it depended on the film. Slide film could produce great results, but the latitude was so narrow, you either got it or it was pretty much useless.</p>

<p>I was meaning in my days when I weren't into photography. I used cheap film and cheap labs. So to me film processing was maybe lesser quality in the past which I kinda got used to. I'm only 31 so that would of been 1995-2000 for me. In the past I have never used optical prints, always been 1hr mini labs in my experience. Don't think in my little country if they have any at all, even the pro labs are using mini labs with the larger formats of LAMBDA and DURST.</p>

<p>These days sure, slide film at the better labs, digital just look better cos you don't need to find a great lab to do decent prints.</p>

<p>Comparing slide film to say, Fuji Superia 400 or Kodak Gold 400 which I shot most in my earlier years with a point and shoot. Also comparing to Fuji NPS 160 and Portra NC and VC 160s. Unless I was relying on the 3D Matrix of my Nikon, walking around London at summer with a lot of sky, unless it underexposed my image and produced the grain.</p>

<p>Mr. Poon...</p>

<p>"I disagree that prints used to be of a lesser quality in the "older years". If anything, printing was of a higher quality; people used to have darkrooms and take time to print by hand, instead of just scanning and printing digitally." </p>

<p>How right you are! </p>

<p>A. T. Burke</p>

<p>:)</p>

Not everyone had a wet darkroom but most photographers have a dry darkroom today. My photos were better than those of people who just took what the lab gave them. I could burn in a sky, dodge out shadows, increase/decrease contrast, crop out a "Stop" sign, etc. Today people in a dry darkroom can do all that and a lot more to enhance photos and a lot faster and more conveniently..

<p>C 41 film can look great, if you know how to work with it. Negative films respond to (and in my opinion) require some over exposure (over exposing c 41 color will increase color saturation.)</p>

 

<p>Of course, there's just no comparing to slide film :)</p>

<p>Ray, I wish I could figure out WTF you are talking about. Are you - and various posters like Jared Thompson saying slide/digital are inherently "better" than negative film?<br>

Personally, I have never shot digital, but have always used slide film (Kodachrome, Ektachrome(various), Provia, Velvia 100, etc), which I scan with a film scanner and post process in Photoshop. I don't care so much about the prints - maybe I will pass around a few 4x6 glossies of my recent vacation or family event - but mostly I'll show my slides as on-line images on my photosharing website or as a slideshow on a DVD, viewed on a television. Yes, I know these are poor substitutes for a nicely projected transparency on a 50"x50" screen, but that's life in 2010.<br>

Today, I am trying to decide whether the wider exposure latitude of negative film is a reasonable trade off for the sharp, grainless crispness of slide film. Given that I can fool around with saturation and contrast in Photoshop, and given that computer monitors and TV screens don't really really demand much in the way of resolution - my definition of "better" is something that holds shadow and highlight detail, and is easy to scan, with only moderate adjustments required in Photoshop for color/saturation/contrast.<br>

So, is slide film "better" - or not - for a photographer like me who does not want to make giant prints, but is mostly concerned with video/TV display? Heaven knows I've struggled with many a transparency made under harsh lighting which wasn't perfectly exposed, where half the image was lost in black shadows or burnt out highlights. Maybe negative film is the answer?<br>

-gw</p>