Digital to slide

[henrymudd]

I would like to know what experiences you folks have with copying a

digital files to 35mm slides. I currently use Velvia, E100VS, and

Provia 400F. I have a pocket 7 Mega pixel camera that I would like

to make slides from. Is it worth the effort?

[phil_jarrett]

If you want to get the best digital files from your slides you should scan them, either with a flatbed or dedicated film scanner. Obviously if you don't want to splash out on a scanner or pay someone to do it for you, you can use your digital camera to make copies. You'll need a slide copier attachment for the lens - I don't know what camera you've got, so I can't suggest one for you - remembering to use a small aperture to get sharp corners. I'd suggest that if you want to make high quality prints then selecting the ones you want and have them scanned and printed professionally. However, it's more likely quicker to use the slide copier to make lower quality back-ups of your slides.

 

For example, I've just finished scanning some medium format slides for an advertising job at A3 output size - each slide is represented by a 190MB file. Considerably higher quality and resolution than any digital file from a camera.

[stephen_schoof1]

I think he wants to make slides from his digital files, not vice versa.

[discpad]

Are you imaging these slides for projection, or for juried art competitions?

 

Generally, I use Provia 100 or EPP for projection, for adverts in movie theaters between films; and Astia for juried competitions.

 

I have a pair of film recorders plus a pair of Jobo ATL-3 processors for this duty.

 

Cheers! Dan

[craig_shearman1]

The key question is what is your end use? I would assume that you want to be able to project the images with a 35mm slide projector. There's no need to get slides from digital files in order to print == you can print directly from the files and making a slide then printing from that would just put you another generation away from the original. As for projecting, that's most directly done with a video projector and the price of those is falling rapidly.

[g._armour_van_horn]

I think it works fine, if I do say so myself. But then, I'm in the business. Please visit my <a href="http://www.domainvanhorn.com/van/digital_to_slide.html">digital to 35mm slides</a> page. If you decide to proceed, enter "PhotoNet" on the order form for 25 cents per slide discount, or use the three-slide test for $5.

 

<p>My film recorder is an 11 megapixel device, and it seems to do a really good job of getting the most out of even 2 mp original files.

 

<p>Most of my work is done for artists who need projection slides for jury competitions.

 

<p>Is the process perfect? Well, probably not. Any translation step in photography is going to lose some quality. However, as the vast majority of digital projectors are only 1024x768, the quality is hugely better with a slide, particularly on a portrait image where the long dimension of your image is going to be scrunched down to 768 pixels at the most.

 

<p>When my wife wants to enter one of her works as a slide, I shoot it with the F3, but when she wants to include other artists' work in a lecture they send her digital files and I make slides from them. Converting for digital is very convenient for a number of applications, but it isn't going to really compete with film.

 

<p>I've been using mostly Sensia in the film recorder, although I'm going to try some Astia shortly. But I would think that if you sent a digital image of a garden to the recorder with Velvia loaded it's very likely that you would get the response you would expect with shooting Velvia to start with. I'd be willing to give that a try if someone wanted at least half a roll done.

 

<p>Van

[edgar_njari]

I don't get it. If you want slides, why not put a slide film in a camera and expose it, is metering for slides that hard to you?

[discpad]

Edgar wrote: "I don't get it. If you want slides, why not put a slide film in a camera and expose it, is metering for slides that hard to you?"

 

Actually, metering can be tricky for consistency between a shot of an entire painting on a black wall vs a detail: If they don't match exactly, then the judge will start wondering "which one is more accurate."

 

(Tip of the hat to Van for this one).

[discpad]

Van has a nice page on preparing digital files for film recorder (slide) output at:

http://www.domainvanhorn.com/van/hints/file_prep.html

which has some great tips (and, as a competitor to his, I'll be using!)

 

That being said, there's one errata to the "Check the size" paragraph (below): In Photoshop, use Bicubic Sharper for downsampling; and use Bicubic Smoother for upsampling. Reference paragraph in

http://www.domainvanhorn.com/van/hints/file_prep.html

 

"One last step. We've found that though the system is very good at expanding images to fill the slide, sometimes oversized images have gotten soft when the system shrinks them to fit. Besides, images that are larger than needed take longer to transfer. Go to the Image menu and select Image Size. Again, if the dimensions aren't shown in pixels, change that. If the larger number is over 4096 or the smaller number is over 2730, we'll need to change them. Make sure that Constrain Proportions and Resample Image are both checked, and the mode is set to Bicubic. If the larger number is over 4096, change it to 4096. If the smaller number is still larger than 2730, change it to 2730. Click OK and save that file!"

 

Cheers! Dan

[henrymudd]

Yes I am projecting these slides, mostly vacation photos, on a large Delite screen with a Kodak projector with a nice 90 mm lens (can't remember now which make). The digital projectors are cost prohibative for me.

 

I do shoot lots of slide film as well. On a trip to Alaska in July I shot 1200 frames of slide film and about the same amount of digital. I have a little Casio EXLIM-ZX750 that I carry in my pocket. It is great for certain occassions when I may not have the F5 with me.

 

I am trying to figure out if it would be cheaper/easier to shoot everything digital (which would requier me to get a new camera) or shoot slides only, or shoot a combination as I am doing now.

 

I just got back 14 slides that I sent to "iprintfromhome.com" listed on this web site. They look wonderful under a loop. I haven't had the chance to project them yet. Assuming the quality holds up under projection, my last major excuse for not going digital will have been removed.

 

Out of all the slides from my Alaska trip, I have about 300 in a show. If I had done them all digitally it would have cost me about $750 for that number of slides (at $2.50 each). As it is it cost me about $470 for film and developing the 1200 slides in film format.

[g._armour_van_horn]

Larry, it's a tough balance to try to figure out. If you have a good digital and can shoot RAW, you don't have to bracket as much. On the other hand, when everything is perfect you'll get the best image on film. On the other hand, you only get one of them and if you scratch it you'll have to go back to Outer Mongolia and reshoot while, if you had shot digital, you could just call me up and order a reprint of that image or send your digital to anybody for a slide.

 

I could go back and forth with plusses and minuses for both approaches. In fact, I do it to myself. When I'm on the road (my wife and I like to get down to the Oregon coast every year for at least a couple of days) I'll have the F3, F4, and a Coolpix along. Is this shot worth getting out the tripod and picking the right prime for the F3, or is this a snapshot? If it's a snapshot, is it worth going directly to film? Or is speed of shooting important, in which case I have to go with film as the F4 will burn film faster than the CP5400 will burn bits?

 

It goes on an on. Maybe the thing to hope for is for someone to steal all but one of your cameras and make the decision for you. Not that I hope that happens to you, but sometimes I'm almost frozen with indecision - and lose the shot because I can't decide how to shoot it!

 

Dan, thanks for the kind words. I'll have to look at the paragraph again, my intention is for them to not do any upward interpolation as the Polaroid firmware seems to do as good a job as Photoshop can.

 

Van

[henrymudd]

You got it. For me on this trip it is even worse. I also shoot stereo (I have two Nikon F90x's wired together for that) and this trip I bought a pair of Nikon Action Touch underwater cameras, which I plan on using on snorkeling excursions. It would be nice if I could consolidate some of the gear. -Larry

[bill_tuthill]

ColorSlides.com produces slides from digital for $1.65 each.

I have never used them, nor do I know anyone who has, but this is

the lowest price I found on the web.

 

Digital projectors not only cost a lot, but have low resolution.

With the new 9 Mp cameras you lose lotsa pixels. ColorSlides claims

to take images up to 4096x2732.

[ovidiu1]

<p>Bill, just to clarify the web site is <a href="http://colorslide.com/">colorslide.com</a> and they charge $1.65/slide if you have more than 100 slides. Thanks for the pointer!