Amateur Slide Film

I read a post in the nature forum where the poster had mention that

Fujifilm Sensia is amateur. Now, I don't know that much about slide

film since I couldn't afford it/can't get it processed in town, so

I've only ever shot one roll and it was Sensia 400. The results, in

my opinion, were downright INCREDIBLE. But, am I missing out on

this? Is what I thought was good improved on by other films out

there?

 

To be honest I didn't even know there was such a thing as amateur

slide film, I don't know any point & shoot people that use it, so I

figured it was all professional.

Pro film generally means better consistancy from roll to roll.

Sensia is good film and excellant for general use including producing great skin tones. Provia is more consistant, with greater colour saturation and has more contrast, it's still good with skin tones. Velvia is very saturated and contrasty, good for OTT landscapes but poor on skin tones.

I use 100 and 200asa slide films, by 400asa I switch to neg film, I'm not that impressed by sensia 400.

Do you mean "downwright INCREDIBLE" good or bad :)

 

Gareth has said it all. Try New Sensia 100 too. (Old) Sensia 400 was the badest film I ever used. A very good ISO 400 slide film is Provia 400, but it has it's price. For general purpose and as a beginner to make experiences I would recommend New Sensia 100.

Like others said. ISO 400 slide film is best kept for extreme cases (like ISO 1600 prnt film). The results aren't bad, and can even be better than ISO 400 negative film, but a good ISO 100 film (sensia does fine) is much much better in my opinion, especially in the grain department.

 

Some people shoot slides in *good* point-and-shoots, e.g. in the Olympus Stylus Epic.

try kodak's Elitechrome Film. The 100 and 400 are GREAT. Havent tried the 200, but I bet its awesome. If you like 400 Fuji film, try I think its called Provia 400F, I liked the results I saw from this film, though I never shot it myself.

 

as for affording it, check e-bay and B&H. On e-bay, I have gotten EB100(elitechrome) for dirt cheap, and B&H always seems to have the best prices.

 

As for developing, try mail order A&I (anadi.com) is great. Great results and prices. Also, for $10 they will give you a CD rom with 5-6MB TIFFs of your images which makes getting prints cheap and realiable. Or you can use Adorama, but their CD is 5-6mb JPEGs. Persoanlly, for hte few extra dollars, I prefer TIFFs then JPEGs.

"Amateur" here is a relative term. The person-on-the-street doesn't shoot slides at all. Lots of serious amateurs shoot slides for several reasons, including the beautiful results.

 

Several factors help make slides more beautiful than prints.

The brightness range of a slide (darkest black to brightest highlight) is much larger than the brightness range of a print. The colors are often more subtle and more saturated. Overall, there's a strong "snap" in a slide than a print. Finally, 100 speed slide film has very low grain.

 

Another big bonus, and the clincher that's pushing me to slides over prints, is they are easier to archive. I'm to a point where I sometimes shoot 100+ shots in a weekend. Working with all the prints and then associating them with the appropriate neg is a pain. The slides are prettier, take up less space, and you can read the original. I can put about 40 slides on the small light table I scrounged from the trash at work. Print film doesn't have the snap, takes more space for prints+negs, I can't read the neg, and about 20 or so prints covers my whole kitchen table.

 

There are a few problems with slides, though. You can't pass them around the office. True, a slide show is very impressive, but prints are still easier to share, IMO. Slides have narrow exposure latitude, meaning some photos are not going to come out well on slides but neg film would be fine. Finally, the dark shadows are tough to scan w/ normal equipment.

 

So, lots of serious amateurs use slide film. Turns out there's not that much difference between pro and amateur films. Stuff like shelf life, roll-to-roll consistency, etc are all tweaked a bit differently. A pro might be shooting lipstick or something. The photo on the box better be the *exact* same shade as the product in the box. I only care if my flowers are colorful and pretty, not if the shade is a spot-on match. Hence, I save a few bucks and buy the cheap stuff. The pro can't afford to mess around; for them, those few dollars are the insurance, and cheap insurance at that.

Kodak EliteChrome 100 is a beautiful film, and it's dirt cheap. Fuji Sensia 100 is also very, very good.

Elite Chrome 100 is the off-the-shelf consumer (amateur) version of refridgerated (professional) Ektachrome 100GX & 100G. Assuming you bought the Elite Chrome from a fresh supply, you'd be hard pressed to notice a difference between that and the two others mentioned. I traded off between Elite and 100GX last year at various locations - gardens, parks, scenics, etc, W/ a good polarizer, and couldn't tell which was which - both were outstanding. I've been told that the two films are cut from the same factory roll - 100GX from the center portions, and Elite from the sides, though It's highly questionable.

Fujichrome Sensia films are marketed as the "amateur" line of slide films of Fuji Photo Film Company.

 

I have used Fujichrome Sensia 100 extensively and it is a great film, so close to Fujichrome Astia Professional that is really hard to see any difference, it has given me very consistent results, it has a very faithful color palette, soft contrast, great sharpness and very fine grain.

 

Fujichrome Sensia 100 and Fujichrome Astia are my main daylight transparency films, I highly recommend them both.

<I>The slides are prettier, take up less space, and you can read the original. I can put about 40 slides on the small light table I scrounged from the trash at work</i><P>I can pull up a few hundred images taken with digital capture in about 5-seconds, and I can get high quality prints made (usually superior than prints from slides) by simply dragging and dropping them to an FTP site. Also, I don't know of any amatuer that would prefer to squint at 24mm x 36mm pieces of postage stamp sized film composed of industrial dye vs a print in hand, or the original scene. Excuse for large format I guess.<P>Have never seen a big variance between fresh amatuer slide emulsions like Sensia 100 and their professional counterparts other than minor color balance. Kodak E100G is a *great* film, and if it has a consumer counterpart, it's worth trying. It's the Elitechrome versions of E100VS that are nasty. Sensia 400 is *supposed* to be an amatuer version of 400F, and that film *is* amazing.

I use Sensia 100/200 because it's cheaper than Provia or Kodak E100/E200. I do notice consistency issues now and then-- some rolls I've had processed have a blue cast compared to other rolls-- but there are so many variables involved (labs, place of purchase, different batches, different countries) that I'm not fussed by it. Some of the better rolls have come back excellent-- colours are strong but not overly saturated and the skin tones are great. I'm pretty sure I'm using New Sensia 100 but the rolls are only marked RA for 100 and RM for 200 so I'm not always sure. I've never used the 400 version; I either push Sensia 200 I stop with good results or switch to B/W ISO400 film.

 

I have used Kodak EliteChrome 100 Extra Colour (Kodak EBX) and it's noticibly warmer than the Fuji emulsions. Haven't worked out my mind about EBX and ED3 (200), sometimes the warmer colours are appealing but I've grown used to the more neutral/cooler balance of Sensia. For practical purposes the Kodak and Fuji products are very similar. I've only pushed Kodak and Fuji's 200 slide films 1 stop but both push process very well to that level and work out cheaper than buying Sensia 400 (where I am, at least.)

While Sensia 400 is supposed to be the amateur version of Provia 400F, when I looked for it at my local photo store, they sold them at roughtly the same price! So I stuck with Provia 400F.

 

For an (old, not the new 100F) Astia equivalent, Sensia 100 is very good and noticeably cheaper than Astia was. I like it's reasonable contrast and warmth too, so that's nice. Maybe they'll upgrade it to match the Astia 100F or they already, I don't know, I guess I might get a pleasant surprise the next time I buy some!

Scott,

 

You write that a digital print is better than a slide print. Have you ever seen a cibachrome (ilfochrome) print made from a good slide (velvia / ektachrome etc.)?? No digital print print could ever hope to match it, well not for a good few years anyway. But I see your point of it being more convenient.

 

Steve Foster