using slide film on 35mm

I'm going back to film, after some time of using digital. I'm aware

that slide film and Medium format is probably the best combo you'll

get. As I hear, Slide delivers vibrant strong colors.....on medium

format. But is it worth it to shoot it on a 35mm? Also, are

enlargments the same price, or is it more expensive to enlarge slide

film from a 35mm?

 

Thanks!

There is nothing wrong shooting slides in 35mm format. But IMHO, 11x14" is the biggest size I am happy with for 35mm film. If you want bigger and demand quality, go 120.

I use a variety of slide films both in 6x7 and 35 mm formats, as well as 400UC and digital (D200). For me, I find the choices of different looks and colours with different slide films interesting and I also like to project slides, which is pretty much 35 mm only territory (well, you can project medium format if you have the projector but ...)

 

Good enlargements of slide film are typically made by scanning the slide on a good film scanner and then making e.g. a pigment inkjet print of the scan. You get generally best results by doing everything yourself but there is something of an investment in getting the ability to do this. Commercial lab scans vary so much in price and quality that they're not worth it unless you're doing an image of which you will be making dozens of prints which you have buyers for, or you have unlimited funds.

Nearly all commercial printing is accomplished by scanning the processed film and printing the image file. Slide (reversal) film is no harder to print than negative film, all else being equal. However, mounted slides are probably more costly to print than negative film in strips or rolls, due to handling.

 

Scanning is the rocky part, and you can do a much better job yourself with a film scanner than you can expect from an underpaid (or underqualified) drugstore technician. Scanning is also a very time-consuming activity, with a host of problems establishing and maintaining color accuracy. At this point in time, scanning film seems like a waste of time. Prints from a modern DSLR with a 6MP or larger sensor are superior those from 35mm film, no matter who or how scanned.

 

In the "good old days", slides were printed photographically on reversal paper. The results were usually mediocre to poor compared to prints from negative film. Kodak ceased manufacture of reversal paper some time ago.

Scanning takes sliughtly (but not much) more time than converting similar sized digital RAW files in my experience. Going through 100 15 MB raw files, converting them and selecting a few good ones for processing and printing takes a lot more time than going through a similar number of slides on the light table. I don't see the time benefit here going to digital. There is a benefit in that there is no need to have the film processed, so you get to the printing stage quicker, which is a real benefit. And yes, digital color is more accurate, but that may or may not be what you want.

 

Scanning is used when your images are slides to begin with, and when you want to make prints or submit it for printing. Digitally captured images look totally different and while it feels awesome at first, the plasticy look quickly gets tiring. Also, even 35 mm slide film with wide angle photos is of lot higher quality than e.g. 10 MP DX format digital. Same with night photos, fireworks, whenever really long exposures are needed. Saying that scanning is a waste of time is basically that you don't consider every possible subject but only most common ones and most common requirements and quality standards.

The question is, is a drum scan and Lightjet print of a slide as good or better than an optical enlargement from a negative...because both types of processing are available when using mail or shipping.

 

On the first case the slides are processed and if a winner is found it is sent in or taken in for a drum scan and Lightjet or Lambda print.

 

In the second case the negatives are processed and low resolution scans or 4x6 machine prints are made. Then the winners can be sent in for an optical enlargement.

 

And here I am refering to the higher-end of quality...

 

Of course Ilfochrome positive-to-positive optical printing is available for slides and drums scans-to-Lightjet prints are available for negatives.

I shoot 35mm slide film for direct viewing by projection. Compared to standard television there is no comparison. (When visiting recently instead of the old fashioned slide show, they had pictures on CD and viewed them on their TV. Granted HDTV would yield sharper display, but still not equal to 35mm slides.) I still have nearly a brick of K64 in the freezer, but I'm realizing that the newer Fuji emulsions have even smaller grain, better resolution and sharpness than K25 used to. Enough of an improvement that you can compare new Velvia 100 Pro in 35mm to old Ektachrome in 120 easily. But I kind of got used to Kodachrome's color rendition and like it for use in my stereo camera as well.

If you are going to print, why shoot slides? Prints ultimatly cost more, the film costs more and like mentioned earlier direct prints from slide film are harder to print without excessive contrast, and handling costs for scanned slides costs more.

Of course, with any fine grained film, 35mm requires more care if your trying to challenge 120 film size quality. Lenses have to be better, keep them clean and with 35mm projection- keep the projection lens clean.

Obviously, the new films in 120 are going to beat the socks off 35mm technically, ... I'm just comparing 35mm now to where 120 was 15 years ago.

Someone said, if you are going to print why shoot slides ?

 

Well, most negatives are now scanned at low resolution to a digital file and then printed with a laser printer to make a C print. The difference between shooting slides or negatives for prints would just be pricing package. I took a look at a major lab and found 4 x 6 prints from slide film to be 13% more expensive. Of course the slides are still available for projection but the negatives have less contrast and will probably machine print better.

 

Now there are probably four places in the country that will make a custom optical enlargement from a negative. So the question at the high end is slide-film-drum-scan-Lightjet-print versus negative-film-custom-optical-enlargement...

Both slides and negatives can be scanned at high resolution, which is 4000 ppi with a Nikon film scanner. Drum scans can capture a greater dynamic range than CCDs, which may be important with slides. However, the optical resolution is often less (the outputs are resampled to the final print size, whereas the ultimate optical resolution is somewhat of a mystery.)

 

On the whole, prints from scanned images are sharper than optical prints. The latter are subject to many disturbances, including film flatness, focusing errors, curvature of field and vibration during long exposures. (Been there, done that, ain't goin' back).

 

Secondly, the commercial digital printers, like the Fuji Frontier, scan at up to 5000 ppi for printing. The resulting prints are sharp enough, but suffer from unskilled color correction and other effects. The digital images put out on CDs are dumbed down to 1200x1800 pixels, oversaturated, smashed into grade 8 JPEGs, then called "high resolution". Any resemblence between a picture CD and a real scan is purely coincidental.

When on a long trip in the mountains shooting medium format (120) on Velvia 100, it

would be a bit odd for me to do hand held digital shots on the side. The magic would

disappear! For more improvised shooting in the mountains I use standard format (135)

film, often Provia 400. And Fuji is even bringing us an improved version later in the

summer! Thank you Fuji ...

 

http://studio135.net/

As with most human endeavors, it all depends who does it. As for slide film, they did away with internegative film and reversal processes years ago, so now you're committed to scanning. A fluid mounted drum scan is the gold standard. From that, you could have a high resolution negative made or you can go directly to a digital print which is probably going to be best in most cases.

"Secondly, the commercial digital printers, like the Fuji Frontier, scan at up to 5000 ppi for printing."

 

I have never heard this claim made before. A 5000dpi scan in 8bit is nearly 100Mb, and in 16bit, nearly 200Mb. You can get scans at this resolution on some of the Konica-Minolts scanners, but I can't imagine a commercial minilab working with files of this size.

A Frontier or any other minilab wouldn't know what to do with a 5000ppi scan. We make such scans on a drum scanner for professional and commercial use, but a minilab typicaly can't print anything over 12x18 anyway and on-board scanners typically don't even do enough for that. Usually, a 17MB file is the max, not 100MB. Also, remember that not all pixels are created equal and size isn't the only thing that matters.

 

john