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Slide film vs digital projection


henrymudd

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I’m a long time slide shooter. I just love the way they look when projected onto a nice screen. Having said that, it’s getting harder and harder, not to mention MUCH more expensive to continue shooting slide film. I was wondering if there are any digital projectors that can compete with a slide film projector?

 

Specifically is there a digital projector that can take a photo shot on a Nikon D850, or Olympus OM-D E-M1 that is as good as a 35mm Fuji Velvia Slide projected by my 30 year old Kodak projector?

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You could find a film recording service to make slides from your digital files. In the movie business you would call this a film-out. The concept is not new, for either movies or photos. This is a recently launched turn-key service that does film intermediates for movie productions, in case you are not familiar with this kind of thing:

 

SHIFTai

 

Edit: FWIW I used to love shooting slide film. I loved the feeling every time I opened a new roll of Ektachrome. I kind of want to get back into it. Kind of! I'm more than happy to admit that I'm delusional, if I actually am. ;-)

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8K projectors seem to exist; 10K+x€. Do you really need one? I 'd rather have a giant flat screen monitor or TV. But yes, 4K might be sufficiently 35 mm film equivalent.

I 'll never understand why projectos came without movements, to get the entire screen into focus.

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Slides were my belovéd medium, but even without the click-click and Uncle Gust's snore in a warm dark room, I now generally prefer a digital or digitized image on a honkin' big hi-res monitor.

 

Those were the days my friend......

sneaking-out.jpg.26c3726ce827241bd21c6162a4c883a5.jpg

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When my dad first bought us a color TV in 1969, he told me about flying spot scanners that would display slides on TV.

It seems, though, that they were not affordably priced for home users. As far as I know, they still aren't.

 

But we can scan them, store the digital image, and display it on our LCD (or other) TV,

or computer screen. Or with a video projector.

 

I am not so sure what to do to make the image look more slide-like. Add rounded corners?

Dust particles? Dye clouds?

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-- glen

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Here are samples of what you can do by showing slide shows with digital pictures on your smart TV. Music, narration, titles, credits, etc can be added. I use Adobe Premiere Elements video program to create these. The scuba show is from scanned film. The rest are digitally captured. Most are 2K which show great on my 75" 4K TV that will uprez it. You can now download 4K to Youtube. The thing is you can add short video clips to the stills as Fire Academy show contains. That was actually shot with my Samsung cellphone. It's in 2K

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDzogShfhgCHh2rVvEsFOJQ

 

If you go to this one, and select the Regency Car show is in 4K and the Fire Brigade is 35mm BW film scanned, also in 4K. Don't forget to set the shows to the highest resolution if your bandwidth can handle it, otherwise select auto. All of these show on your monitor as well. But you really should look at them on your TV if you want to see if you will be pleased. Let me know what you think.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGsByP1B3q1EG68f4Yr2AhQ

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A decent 4K monitor or TV screen is about 10 times brighter than a projected image. So it needs no fully darkened room, nor any faffing about with beaded screens or the like.

 

So why would anyone mess about with a video/digital projector these days? Just plug a USB stick containing the scanned images into your smart TV and sit back with the remote-controller.

 

A 55" 4K TV also costs a lot less than a 4K capable digital projector these days.

 

And IME it takes uncomfortably close scrutiny to see more detail in the average 35mm slide than you can perceive in a half-decent scan shown on a 4K screen.

Edited by rodeo_joe|1
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I’m a long time slide shooter. I just love the way they look when projected onto a nice screen. Having said that, it’s getting harder and harder, not to mention MUCH more expensive to continue shooting slide film. I was wondering if there are any digital projectors that can compete with a slide film projector?

 

Specifically is there a digital projector that can take a photo shot on a Nikon D850, or Olympus OM-D E-M1 that is as good as a 35mm Fuji Velvia Slide projected by my 30 year old Kodak projector?

 

Several things are obvious. You need to accept that your capture/display flow will likely be 100% digital. E-6 processing is vanishing as we text. Transparency film is obscenely pricey most places in 2021. If you can't let go, then know that scanning transparency material(and often-necessary processing)still leave you with digital files.

Projection is arguably out; display on a monitor is 2021 reality.

 

Friends and I finally ended early last year a long-running "Jurassic Slide Night" where we met up quarterly to futz with Ektagraphs, Cabin 120 projectors, saggy screens and enjoyed a few hours of beers and 35mm and 120 slides. We're plotting a digital version if/when we can safely hang out again. Move with the times? Necessary.

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I have learned not to bore others with my slides, but I love to sit in the living room and look at my slides while my wife watches TV in the den. Last night I enjoyed images from 50 years ago. I won't argue about which is better. I do post scanned E100 on classic manual cameras' film camera week.
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You need the occasional upside down/sideways/reversed image..

There are 8 different ways to put a slide into the projector, only 1 of which is correct.

 

The big advantage of digitizing your slides is that you edit them to make corrections for cropping, exposure, white balance, and even dodging and burning. Of course that assumes that your initial exposure was not perfect.

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You need the occasional upside down/sideways/reversed image..

 

I used to know stories about professors would would find slides added to their presentations as a joke.

 

Usually completely unrelated to the subject at hand, such as the presenter in a compromising position.

-- glen

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For myself, who shot mainly slides during the film era, my way of coping with slides that would require "corrections for cropping, exposure, white balance, and even dodging and burning", was to send them to the "circular file". We called it editing then, but now it would probably be called "curating". It worked.
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Robin Smith
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For myself, who shot mainly slides during the film era, my way of coping with slides that would require "corrections for cropping, exposure, white balance, and even dodging and burning", was to send them to the "circular file". We called it editing then, but now it would probably be called "curating". It worked.

Slide shooting really hones your SOOC. Getting it right in camera makes shooting other formats and film types better.

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I think there were slide copying adapters (lenses) that allowed for zoom and pan, such that you could crop.

Also, changing the light with filters, one could do color balance.

 

I never thought about this before, but they could put color balance filters in slide projectors.

I never saw one that did that.

-- glen

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For myself, who shot mainly slides during the film era, my way of coping with slides that would require "corrections for cropping, exposure, white balance, and even dodging and burning", was to send them to the "circular file". We called it editing then, but now it would probably be called "curating". It worked.

Indeed. To those who say that processing is essential to photography, maybe have a word with photographers who shot slide film. The Image Bank would not accept anything else, AFAIK. Never mind those who, today, shoot JPEGs exclusively because they don't have time to apply arbitrary adjustments to RAW files.

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To those who say that processing is essential to photography, maybe have a word with photographers who shot slide film.

And then many, if not all of Ansel Adams' most famous pictures would have been rejected by Image Bank, or ended up in the round filing tray.

 

There's nothing special about Barnack's randomly chosen 2:3 aspect ratio, quite the opposite, and many of those overlong images would definitely benefit from a crop. The world doesn't come in 2x3 chunks. Anyone that thinks otherwise should study a copy of "Pictures On A Page", written and compiled by a former picture editor of The Observer newspaper. It's a masterclass on how a hurried snapshot can be turned into an eye-catching and memorable image.

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And then many, if not all of Ansel Adams' most famous pictures would have been rejected by Image Bank, or ended up in the round filing tray.

They would have been greatly admired and appreciated, then rejected. The Image Bank is not a fine art repository - and yet, and I only speak for myself, I find their old 1990s catalogues equally inspiring as the work of Adams or HCB or Horst.

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