Why slide film instead of print?

[OptiKen]

Pardon my ignorance, but why would you choose slide film instead of print film for color prints?

 

[rowghani]

Pardon my ignorance, but why would you choose slide film instead of print film for color prints?

no pardon needed......i mainly choose it because I like to project my slides and therefore don't need to scan them or print them to view them.....also slide film in my mind has better colours but I'm sure you could scan colour negs and play around in photoshop to get that look......My only wish is that positive to positive printing was still available and I could print my slides in the darkroom. Hope that helps, but you should just give a roll of slide film a try and project them. carousels are being given away these days.

 

[AgX]

But the question was why to choose slide film with the intention to make prints.

 

[dE fENDER]

But the question was why to choose slide film with the intention to make prints.

Cause I can.

 

[Luckless]

Flexibility and having another tool at hand seems to be enough for some from what I've seen.

Personally I'm curious about playing with slide film for the purpose of producing projection slides (shocking I'm sure.) but I'm also interested in hybrid workflows for printing, along with maybe playing with internegative based printing. Will see how things go over the next few years, and I curious to see what others have to say on the subject, but for the time being I'm still busy playing with a focus on black and white.

 

[Sirius Glass]

After decades of shooting only slides, I moved to prints only when I started need prints for most photographs. Prints from slides are kinda sorta not so great. I have no reason to go back to slides.

 

[iandvaag]

From Grant Haist's chapter on reversal processing:
Fineness of Grain
The largest grains are the most developable. Thus these large grains are developed in the FD and bleached away, so that they do not form part of the final image (or do not form large dye clouds if color film is used).

Sharpness of the Image
The FD is a contrasty developer which promotes beneficial edge effects. Additionally, any direct positive process avoids any sharpness loss from neg-pos systems.

Absence of Fog
The FD is very foggy, so all fog is bleached away, leaving a virtually fog-free positive image.

Absence of White Dust Spots
Any dust of dirt on the film will produce a black spot on the film, which is much more discrete than a white spot that occurs with neg-pos processes.

Of course, there are disadvantages, and as you asked about color prints, I should say that I think if prints are your primary concern, negative film is superior. I'm not sure what method you are considering when you talk about printing slides: RA-4 reversal, tricolor carbon from separation negatives, or some non-analog process. IMO, there's currently not a truly excellent way of producing prints from slides. Slide film is contrasty and is hard to print. Color slide film doesn't make use of the colored couplers as a mask to compensate for deficiencies in the couplers.

//Warning: begin shameless proselytization

Why do I use slides? Stereo photography. There's nothing that comes REMOTELY close to the look of properly exposed Medium format stereo pair in a backlit handheld viewer. You will think you are actually standing where the camera was. I don't need prints for my final output, so that's something I don't need to worry about. I cannot communicate what an incredible experience it is. To embark on an incredible adventure, buy yourself a Russian MF camera called the Sputnik. Find out more (and ask questions) here: https://groups.yahoo.com/.../MF3D.../conversations/messages

 

[bdial]

These days a lot of color printing involves a hybrid process. Transparencies can be little friendlier to scan than negatives. OTH, if you're working 100% analog, transparencies make life very difficult if your goal is a color print.

I used to use slide film a lot because it was cheaper, and I rarely had anything printed.

 

[LAG]

...why would you choose slide film instead of print film for color prints?

To have a positive visual reference to start with

 

[AgX]

That was a benefit in times of the reversal processes for prints.

 

[Born2Late]

Projection!

 

[Ektagraphic]

The look. There is probably a much better way, or a word to describe this, but slide film's lack of forgiveness in exposure renders the shadows and highlights in a much more extreme way than a color negative film, and I really like this. Particularly shadows.

 

[Craig]

If my end goal was a print, then I would use negative film. Otherwise, I prefer slides for colour purity - there is no additional step to getting a positive I can view, whereas I don't know if the colour balance is right when making a print from a negative. A slide is a first generation image, a print is second generation.

 

[Sirius Glass]

Projection!

I find it inconvenient to send a slide projector to someone when they want to mount the photograph on a wall. I would have to have several dozen slide projectors in my home. For many the slide projector has gone the way of TV tray tables, TV dinners, and saddle shoes.

 

[Poisson Du Jour]

Printing from slides (aka transparencies) has its roots way, way back — decades ago. It was the chief means of printing to Cibachrome for many decades (right up to its end) and the stalwart slide films — Ektachrome, Kodachrome, Agfa and Fujichrome... others, were all used for this purpose, admittedly expensive and labour-intensive but no question of finished viewing quality. A strong colour gamut and the straightforward ease of mechanical and/or electronic reproduction e.g. magazine covers etc., were other prime movers. Very few magazines of the day would accept negatives with submissions because the editors would first need to proof them (print), meaning time lost in production and additional costs (which were often deducted from the amount paid to the contributor). Slides on the lightbox are the actual image for instant assessment: acccept/reject, page placement, sizing, etc. Once selected, there is cropping and colourimetrics and gamut conversion and production queueing. Dupes were very often preferred over originals in case of loss or damage (this was common).

Today there are still many, many photographers using slide film for the production of prints for exhibition through the RA-4 process (hybrid) and less commonly, through traditional wet darkroom production. Negatives still hold the edge for quite big enlargements, and these are favoured by wedding and commercial analogue photographers. What you use and prefer is often down to personal preference and how you were brought up in photography.

 

[Trail Images]

All my work was and is done with slide or transparency film. For me personally, it was always easier to look at an image on a light table and determine if it was worthy of processing to the print end over scanning a negative and finding out it fell way short of working. Basically all my stuff is hybrid work overall.

 

[ME Super]

For me personally, I like to project. And I don't mind using a hybrid process in order to get prints from slides. The prints I get these days from a slide using a hybrid process are way better than what I used to get from the local drug store back in the day using an analog process.

Negative film wins when you're in very contrasty situations for sure - it's lower contrast rendering can be quite pleasing in a print, but did you ever try to project a color negative? Blue suns! Yellow sky! Red grass and green people! And that's not the worst of it - there's that pesky orange mask. Great for printing, but terrible for projection.

 

[Craig]

And that's not the worst of it - there's that pesky orange mask. Great for printing, but terrible for projection.

Lets keep in mind the original question: "Why would you use slide film for making colour prints?" Not: "Why do you use slide film?"

There is no need for projection when the outcome is a print.

 

[wiltw]

Pardon my ignorance, but why would you choose slide film instead of print film for color prints?

Back when Cibachrome/Ilfochrome printing was still possible, I did it simply because of the spectacular colors and the longevity of the prints; color neg and RA4 could not touch it.

 

[RPC]

Back when Cibachrome/Ilfochrome printing was still possible, I did it simply because of the spectacular colors and the longevity of the prints; color neg and RA4 could not touch it.

The colors may have popped, but they were technically not as accurate as with prints from a color negative.

 

[faberryman]

I was never really happy with the results of printing slides on Cibachome back in the 1980s. The colors were bright, but it was such a high contrast medium and the finish was so plasticy. Did I mention it was really expensive too? I kept a few of mine; one has faded badly. The original Kodachrome slide from which it was printed looks terrific though.

 

[Poisson Du Jour]

The colors may have popped, but they were technically not as accurate as with prints from a color negative.

Depending on who was viewing what and their individual taste, people either loved or loathed the punchy palette of many emulsions that transferred to the print (and sure, Fuji's offerings were top of the pile). Not everybody (certainly none of my own clients) was fastidious about colours reflecting reality — their preference was for viewing impact: strong compositions, atmosphere and full colour saturation and presentation — the overall quality photographic viewing experience.

The colors were bright, but it was such a high contrast medium and the finish was so plasticy. Did I mention it was really expensive too?

Yep, real bright! And the two standard contrast grades severely impacted upon the type of photographs that could be reproduced well e.g. images awash in black shadows didn't come out as well as those images made in diffuse conditions with control of exposure; many photographers couldn't understand this. It was a major, enduring problem with small format (35mm) photographs. The larger the format (and the more competent the photographer), the better the corresponding exposure management. They learned from the established, big-spending "masters".

Modern day RA-4 hybrid prints are plasticy too.

I agree with Cibas being really expensive. $400 for an 11x14" print was pricey. But they would be sold for 3x that amount (matted, framed-to-spec, never raw). Other photographers shooting panorama ordinarily printed to mural sized. The production cost and labour was truly staggering. But these big, bold views of beauty spots sold for $20, to $30,000 (mostly to corporate buyers; galleries paid more).

I never printed from Kodachrome slides. I have printed from Ektachrome and then Fuji.

 

[kb3lms]

Stereo photography. There's nothing that comes REMOTELY close to the look of properly exposed Medium format stereo pair in a backlit handheld viewer. You will think you are actually standing where the camera was.

That sounds interesting. Might have to try that.

 

[rowghani]

What do you guys mean by ra-4 hybrid printing?

 

[Craig]

What do you guys mean by ra-4 hybrid printing?

Scanning the film to a file (or a digital original) printed onto traditional photo paper.