Color Transparency Ques.?

35mm color negatives are what i am very used to for my processing and

shooting of photos. Can i do anything i would with 35mm color neg

with 35mm color transparency? Also is 35mm color transparency just

another name for slides? If so what would be the benefits of shooting

color transparency over color negative? Would it be easier to shoot

in color transparency if alot of the work i do i blow up to at least

8x10 or is color transparency really meant for use to project the

images using a projector? I'm a little confused can someone clear

this up a bit for me? Thanks so much.

"Color transparency film" is the same thing as "color slide film" -- and some people also call it "color reversal film" (although that term is a bit confusing, because it sounds a lot like "color negative film" which is something completely different).

 

Yes, anything that you would normally do with color negative film can be done with slide film. And of course, slides have the additional capability of being projected if you want to do that. Slides are also easier to evaluate than negatives, since they're, well, not negative.

Why don't more people use slide film over standard color neg film then?

If you want prints, shoot print film (color negative); if you want slides shoot slide fim. From way back, people were used to popping negative film into their Instamatics with no metering and getting good prints due to the forgiving nature and latitude of print film.

The exposure of slide film has to be right on. Before, to make a print from a slide, an internegative had to be made to cut down on the contrast of the slide. Slides were mostly made to be shown on a screen with a projector, people wanted prints that they could put in albums or in picture frames. Things have changed a bit now due to optical scanners but why shoot slides, have them developed and then hand them back and say, "Okay, now make me some prints from these"?

People often shoot print film over slide film because they're used to prints. People can hold prints in their hands. Slides should/need to be projected on a wall or screen for them to look their best.

 

Also there are zillions of mini-labs/one hour photos and most of these only process color neg film into prints. Because people want color prints, most labs won't do slides in-house and have to send them out to another lab. This takes time, but people can have their color prints in one hour.

 

Color neg film has a great deal of latitude which covers up mistakes in exposure. With slide film, you need to be pretty much on the button with your exposure. Most people don't know how to use the light meter in their camera and with color neg film they don't even know that their exposure could be off.

And, even the best transparency or slide, does not have as much color correction as color negative film does due to the orange color masking. This, the latitude, and the low gamma make color prints that are excellent compared to prints from slides, unless you get an internegatve made, and even then, the colors are not as good.

 

Don't forget, you can have slides made from your negatives too.

 

Ron Mowrey

Paul, <br><br>

 

Slide film is not as prevalent since it's more difficult to process: Conventional C41 color print film only

 

requires 4 chemistry steps, and if any of the steps is a little bit off, the color shifts can be compensated for

 

in the printing step. On the other hand, E6 (Ektachrome) requires 6 chemistry steps, and if any of them are off,

 

there's no turning back because there's no printing step. K14 - Kodachrome - has a whopping 14 steps; and you

 

just about have to have a chemist to keep the process in control.<br><br>

 

<b>Worth noting</b> is that, in general, color print film is cheap to buy, but expensive to process & print. On

 

the other hand, Ektachrome film is expensive to buy, but cheap to process. <br><br>

 

<b>Also worth noting</b> is that slide film is having a bit of a renaissance, due to the digital revolution: As

 

it turns out, scanning negative (color print) film is a bitch, trying to match the colors. And, if you try to

 

scan a print made from a negative, you lose the wide gamut of bright colors, such as reds, oranges, and blues,

 

that were originally in the scene, since you're transforming from the CMY to the RGB color space. For portraits

 

where the color saturation is low, color print film is OK, as the CMY gamut is wide enough. <br><br>

 

<b>On the other hand, </b> slide film has a nice wide color gamut with rich color saturation, especially suited

 

for landscape, sports, architecture and nature/wildlife. But more importantly, it's <b>very</b> easy to scan a

 

well-made slide, since you're remaining in the RGB color space. Plus, it's very easy to adjust the scan for any

 

color corrections you so choose.

 

<br><br>

Cheers! <br>

<a href = "http://users.snip.net/~joe"><u>Dan Schwartz</u></a>

The depth of colour and contrast achievable with transparency film goes beyond the ability of colour film. In the good ol' days a Cibachrome print from a slide (admittedly expensive) would blow away a print from a negative. I have read on this site that an expensive scan of a slide and an expensive print from that scan will also blow away a print from a negative. From what I can gather so far a digital image must be heavily PSed to achieve the colour saturation of transparency films. It is much easier and less expensive to get decent prints from negatives but now that Ektar 25 is gone it is difficult to get the same level of saturation and contrast as a print from a slide.

 

Me, I try to shoot both as often as possible and hence my move from a medium format TLR to 4x5 sheets. Good luck!

I don't understand this argument about slide film being so difficult to expose properly.

 

I used to load my Olympus Stylus with Provia 100F. The slides always came out properly exposed.

 

If a little pocket-sized point-and-shoot like the Stylus can properly expose slide film, there's no reason why people shouldn't use it in their SLRs, which obviously have more sophisticated metering systems.

Ron, you had good results from slides because you knew what you were doing. Most folks just follow what the camera says; just let the DX coding and their program setting do the job for them. Your average consumer doesn't know what a spot meter is, 18% gray or the term "meter the highlights or shadows". Working as an instructor in various photo classes and as a behind-the-counter clerk in photo stores, these people were safe using color neg film, but put slide film in their hands, WHOA!

Well, the only real thing that you would be taking advantage of in slide film, would be fine grain if you were looking to make prints. Slide film is really meant to be viewed in all its glory on a lightbox with a loupe.

 

R.T., possibly, but what are you shooting with your epic? Easy metering situations no doubt. It is when you encounter difficult situations, such as when you want to hold detail in white snow and still render the bird 50ft away vivid and bright that shooting slide film really gets difficult. The easy rule of +1.5 - 2 stops really goes out the window with slide film. With slide film, 1/3 of a stop yields very different images, and in most cases, the difference between a keeper and one for the trash.

 

It is in these difficult situations, and when you really want to render colours exactly where you want them that you should really take the camera off of auto mode and bracket with the help of a good spot/incident meter.

In my case I use slide film because I am a student of proper exposure technique. The learning curve is steep when using a totally manual camera system such as mine. Slide film is the only way to learn proper exposure. I can't learn a thing except composition when using print film.

There are a lot of threads here in the archives about slides vs. negatives. Someone always says what James does (slides for slides; negs for prints) and there is a certain logic to that. However, given the growing prevalence of Frontier labs and other digital printing processes, it's not as cut and dried as that anymore. In fact, at many places, the steps they use to make prints aren't any different between slides and negatives, except that the color correction may be easier for slides if the monkey at the machine is paying good attention (some of the operators are excellent; some are just collecting paychecks).

 

Does that mean you should shoot slides? No. Neg film is far better than it used to be for color and grain, even if there are valid reasons to use slide film.

 

Bottom line: if you're interested in what slides have to offer, you can get anything done with them that you'd get done with color negs, and you can thus choose whatever film you like.

<i>I used to load my Olympus Stylus with Provia 100F. The slides always came out properly exposed</i>

<p>

That only means Olympus Stylus is a very capable camera, it doesn't mean slide film like Provia 100F is easy to expose ;-)

<p>

For difficult lighting, I always use spot meter.

I have some examples of Olympus Stylus with different films (scala 200 B&W slide film, Provia 100, Kodachrome 200, etc) in this thread:

<p>

<a href="http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=007UpA">

http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=007UpA</a>

<p>

The Kodachrome one is the most difficult.

For 35mm,

slides tend to be easier to archive, because you can sort each individual slide, and alter your filing system as the years go by.

 

Negatives should be kept sleeved in their strips of 6: which means you must file them all, sequentially (e.g. by date). Now that means

that you must somehow get from the print, presumably mounted in an album by subject, to the neg. So then you have to either mount and code each print in the album, or risk writing the code on the back of the print.

 

Of course, if you keep the negs off-site you're OK if your house burns down.

Daniel, here is a snow scene shot with Provia 100F and Olympus Stylus Epic. Since the camera doesn't have exposure compensation, I used spot meter at the 18% gray, which I believe is the cloud in the sky.

The blue hue is due to the scan and I kind of like it so I didn't correct it in Photoshop. The real slide looks ten times more spectacular.<div></div>

Here is a detail of the slide shown above. Shot with a 2MP digital camera through a loupe. The overall color is more accurate than the scan. The chromatic error in the horizontal line is due to the loupe. The dark short line near the left foot is not dust but some wood pole in the snow. The dark spot in the sky is a small scratch on the light box.<div></div>

I dont see any detail in the snow, but besides that, you did use a grey card, effectively taking an incident reading of the situation, because you KNEW the meter would have been fooled and you would have ended up with nothing.

<I>In the good ol' days a Cibachrome print from a slide</i><P>In the 'good old days' I never saw a portrait printed with the over-rated Ciba junk either. Seems to me that a good qualifier for any reproduction system is how those materials are capable of rendering a human being, and Cibachrome doesn't qualify under that category very well. I was printing 4x5 color neg sheet film to Kodak Duraflex long before digital printing entered the scene, and those images darn near equaled Ciba in terms of color saturation and drastically surpassed them in terms of dymanic range. R-type printing is stupid, illogical, and was invented only to provide a means of getting silver halide prints from slides without an expensive CMYK plate phase. Fuji Reala + Fujiflex Supergloss is also superior to Ilfochrome, unless your sole criteria for 'fine art' color reproduction is a picture of fire hydrant.

There is detail in the snow. But do you think that the dynamic range of computer screen or consumer grade print can hold this much for a snow scene? IMHO, slide film is the best choice for situation like this and the optimum viewing method is light table or projection.

 

BTW, I didn't use grey card, I just metered on the cloud. You should know the light of the scene when you take a picture with any camera, whether it is a full manual Nikon F or a full automatic Epic. Only the methods are different, the goals are the same.<div></div>

The above examaples help me prove my skepticism with slide film and the near fanatacism surrounding this medium.

 

Seems to me that *ANY* medium that is such a complete and total pain to reproduce on a computer monitor should draw serious flags about it's use. Save me the "slide film is SO good it records information that you simly can't scan" speech.

 

If you want prints, shoot print film. If you want to stare at slides, shoot slide film. If you have a film scanner, learn to use Fuji Astia before messing with Provia.

Scott,

Those three images I posted were to explain my points:

 

1. You can shoot slide film with an Olympus P&S.

 

2. You can shoot slide film in difficult scene like snow.

 

3. The dramatic contrast of snow scene can be captured by Provia but not necessarily be able to DISPLAYED on the screen.

 

The first image was a quick scan with Minolta SDIII, there was not color or photoshop adjustment because I don't want to spend time on it. I don't claim it is a perfect image and I believe any trained printer can make astonishing print out of it with any method he chooses to use. The second and third images were shot with a 2 MP digital camera through a loupe, the third one was even through the plastic sleeve.

 

I know your opinion about slide and negative film from a photo technician's point of view and I agree with you Reala is a great film, as I can show in the following photo shot by myself with a Nikkormat + 50/1.4. But not every body wants prints or can afford huge amount of high quality prints. Next to digital, slide is the more economic way to make and view high quality first generation images. That is the reason I use slide and digital. As a hobbyist who is interested in taking picture instead of spending hours in darkroom (chemical or digital), slides and digital are the best choice.

 

With enough money and time, you can create astonishing images from any medium if you know how to make the composition and exposure right.<div></div>

Reala is a good print film and easy to scan. But sometimes there is something more than quality. I am sure I can still find my slide easily in 10 years, but negative, who knows?<div></div>

I have color films going back over 50 years. They are still printable and all are in good condition.

 

I have Ektachromes that are totally shot from the same era. Red overall. Kodachromes from that era are still good.

 

The E1 and E2 process stuff is just NG. E3, E4 and E6 stuff is not old enough yet to judge, and neither is the C41. Lets hope that they keep better. At least I know all my negs are still printable. And, Kodacolor film from 1950 prints at just about the same balance as todays films.

 

Regarding the prints above, the snow scene. In photoshop you could correct the brightness differences to get a better pic, but on easel from a negative, you could dodge the print, and the colors would be more accurate.

 

In any event, there are pros and cons, but the professionals in the field use negative a lot. It is forgiving where they cannot risk mistakes. The astronauts shot it in orbit and on the moon.

 

Ron Mowrey

If you wonder about the sharpness difference between this picture and the Provia I posted, remember that the size of the whole Olympus Stylus Epic is about three 35 film boxes, much smaller than the Nikkor 50/1.4 lens! And that camera is about $80 (new).<div></div>