35mm Slide Projector

wiltw said:

Photography's dirty little secret...

• It used to be common for photographers to gather and projected images to one another, showing slides with superb resolution and color rendition.
• Today, photographers have 36MPixel cameras that they view on 2Mpixel monitors and project at the same resolution (1920x1040), so one cannot visually distinguish a 4Mpixel camera from a 40Mpixel camera.

No wonder everyone is satisfied with their smartphone photos, and camera sales are falling!

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Oh Well they now have 4K monitor which is a bit over 8MP. Any way the 36MP camera does capture more details than a 35mm Kodachrome slide but they simply can't display it in whole while a slide project can project all the details in the slide.

+1, but the 36MP camera does not capture 36MP of resolution. It has 18MP resolution in the green channel, and 9MP resolution in the red and blue channels (unless it has a Foveon sensor). Digital cameras have to interpolate to give you the full color image. The 35mm frame captures 25MP equivalent in each of the red, green, and blue channels, for a whopping 75MP resolution in marketing-speak. So IMHO 35mm film still trounces 36MP cameras in terms of resolution.

ME Super said:

+1, but the 36MP camera does not capture 36MP of resolution. It has 18MP resolution in the green channel, and 9MP resolution in the red and blue channels (unless it has a Foveon sensor). Digital cameras have to interpolate to give you the full color image. The 35mm frame captures 25MP equivalent in each of the red, green, and blue channels, for a whopping 75MP resolution in marketing-speak. So IMHO 35mm film still trounces 36MP cameras in terms of resolution.

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Whatever, I am no expert just my own experience using my own camera, my own lens, my hand holding capabilities etc... basically my own skill as a photographer I found the 16MP camera gets more details than a 35mm slide.

ME Super said:

+1, but the 36MP camera does not capture 36MP of resolution. It has 18MP resolution in the green channel, and 9MP resolution in the red and blue channels (unless it has a Foveon sensor). Digital cameras have to interpolate to give you the full color image. The 35mm frame captures 25MP equivalent in each of the red, green, and blue channels, for a whopping 75MP resolution in marketing-speak. So IMHO 35mm film still trounces 36MP cameras in terms of resolution.

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That is an excellent point, that many folks (including posters on this thread) will never be able to understand. The whole d^%$#@l "revolution" relies on the fact that most folks have no appreciation or even concept of image quality.

There is just one clarification needed to your point. A 35mm frame can capture a lot more that 25MP of image quality/color channel. Check out this posting at www.thermojetstove.com/Tonality that shows at least 100MP on Kodak VS. Considering that Kodak never claimed this to be a "grain free" film, one should expect even greater detail from Fuji's products.

AgX said:

As said, I rarely see a Kodak Corousel projetor. Here they typically were used in a commercial surrounding.

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Were they Carousels or Ektagraphics? Here, the Ektagraphic was the commercial grade version of the Carousel.

lxdude said:

Were they Carousels or Ektagraphics? Here, the Ektagraphic was the commercial grade version of the Carousel.

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The newest line of Kodak projectors are the Ektapro. They were made in Germany and seems very good.

I have a Leitz Pradovit RC that I bought new in 1973. Haven't used it a lot, but I just bought 3 bulbs for it from Bulbs Direct (though they won't be available much longer).

lxdude said:

Were they Carousels or Ektagraphics? Here, the Ektagraphic was the commercial grade version of the Carousel.

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I meant either type.

I have a Sawyers that uses universal 100 slide magazines, payed $5 for it at a yard sale, bought a pile of mags for it at $1 each. I bought a sweet Da-lite screen for $5 at another yard sale.

Rick A said:

I have a Sawyers that uses universal 100 slide magazines.

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There are very differrent magazines called "universal"!


The european "Universal" ones are straight and take 36 or 50 slides.

(They are shown here: http://mediafix.de/diamagazine-welche-verschiedenen-typen-gibt-es/)

Two slides????

I may have misunderstood your post, is yours one of the very old (and collectable) Leitz etc. projectors? Most "new" ones used round Kodak Carousel mags or straight Leitz 35 or 50. Try the nowadays cheap Leitz projectors with their very sharp Colorplan lenses or their shorter and longer varieties for different locales . You will not be disappointed.

p.

I have 8 Kodak Ektagraphic IIIb's for sale, with Golden Navitar zooms. They're the usual carousel (size wise as well) but dynamite pro projectors.

ph said:

I may have misunderstood your post, is yours one of the very old (and collectable) Leitz etc. projectors? Most "new" ones used round Kodak Carousel mags or straight Leitz 35 or 50. Try the nowadays cheap Leitz projectors with their very sharp Colorplan lenses or their shorter and longer varieties for different locales . You will not be disappointed.

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Yes, from what I have been able to learn, my current Leitz projector is from ca. 1937. It holds two 35mm transparencies that alternately "slide" into the light path.

AgX said:

There are very differrent magazines called "universal"!


The european "Universal" ones are straight and take 36 or 50 slides.

(They are shown here: http://mediafix.de/diamagazine-welche-verschiedenen-typen-gibt-es/)

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The Sawyers I have accepts the round or straight magazines.

It would seem that no other technology has as much incompatibility between the Americas and Europe than slide projectors. Europe has several standards of theirs and North America has several standards of its own.

I notice even that Kodak Carousel projectors on the European market look completely different than American Carousels, and I'm guessing that a Kodak Carousel tray from Europe won't fit an American Carousel (and vice-versa).

I'm only knowledgeable in the American slide projector scene, so I don't know what works with what in Europe. The one exception on our side of the Atlantic was that a few camera stores did offer Leica Pradovit models and sold the Leica straight trays to fit them.

For those in Europe who might wonder what trays were being used over here:

Circa 1954-1963:
Two systems dominated.
The Airequipt Magazine was a straight tray made of metal (I think mostly Al, judging by the weight, for which each slide was placed into a metal frame, and 36 such framed slides slid into a metal tray. The Airequipt Automatic Changer started as an accessory that could be fit to many makes of projector, though Airequipt and others would later design projectors around them.
The common competitor was the "TDC" tray, a simple plastic straight tray that contained the slides individually in (usually) 30, 36 or 40 spaces, with no friction, meaning a tray cover held the slides in the tray, and one had to remove the cover carefully and place the tray into the projector, without turning the open end below the horizon, lest they all spill out. The advantages were that these trays were less expensive than Airequipt Magazines, and easier to load and unload. So many manufacturers adopted this design, that they came to be called "Universal" trays. Another quirk was that whilst most of these projectors moved the slides horizontally, a few (e.g. the Ansco Regent) worked vertically, thus one set of slides loaded into a TDC tray might produce sideways images when used with another projector.
In this era, there were several other straight plastic trays that looked a lot like the TDC, but were not compatible, but few projectors used these.

Early 1960's onward:
Kodak introduced the Carousel tray system, with an 80-slide tray atop the projector, like a Carousel, and kept that business pretty much to themselves. It was very successful, and Kodak would introduce another series of projectors that could use either 80-slide or new 140-slide Carousel trays (the first-generation Carousels, as the 550, were still limited to 80-slide trays, however).
Sawyer's answered with the Rototray, a 100-slide round tray that sits in the projector upright, as a Ferris wheel. In this design, thin metal clips hold the slides in place by friction, so no collar is needed to hold the slides. Since the design of the tray is similar to a TDC tray, extended to 100 slides, then bent to form a torus and joined at the ends to itself, Rotomatics (the Sawyer's projectors designed to use the Rotoray) were also able to project slides in TDC straight trays (unlike the Carousel projectors, which were not compatible with any tray, save the Carousel). Unlike Kodak, Sawyer's licensed the design to several other slide projector manufacturers, so it is almost as common as the Carousel.
Soon afterwards, several companies introduced other tray designs of their own, thinking they could make more money by limiting customers to purchasing only their own trays, but this left a lot a projectors that needed hard-to-find trays, and those competitors faded away quickly.

But the most widespread Magazine over here, that nearly all projectors of the last decades take, is the "Universal" magazine.

The only other modern magazines are the LKM and the horizontal round magazine (Carousel). But these are only used by specialists.

chip j said:

I have a Leitz Pradovit RC that I bought new in 1973. Haven't used it a lot, but I just bought 3 bulbs for it from Bulbs Direct (though they won't be available much longer).

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Oh dear. Why won't they be available much longer? Discontinued bulbs, or legislation? I thought here in the US there was an exception to the rules on light bulbs for specialty bulbs, which if say projector bulbs are most definitely specialty bulbs.

While the US legislation could stop the further manufacture of some of these bulbs (non-halogen types in particular), most have been discontinued already because the greatly reduced demand for projector bulbs.

The good news is that the shelf life of bulbs seems to be forever, or close to it, and popular auction sites are full of projection bulbs at prices that are low - often ridiculously so. Some bulbs seem to have a higher auction price as they are not very abundant (CZA, for example), but in many cases, there's a way around it (same example, use the abundant CAL in its place, with a little less brightness).

An interesting thing to notice is that the current going prices may be out-of-line with with their historical prices. Among the cheapest are the powerful bulbs used in 16mm movie projectors (CWA, CTT, for example), which had been very expensive. They had been hoarded by schools and school suppliers against future price hikes when the 16mm market was abruptly replaced by VHS video, dumping a glut of these bulbs on the market.

The difference between a Kodak Carousel and an Ektagraphic is that in the Carousel the slide just drops into position and in the Ektagraphic it drops into position and then is nudged sideways to always end up in the exact same place (a necessity for multi projector shows.) There are also Ektagraphic trays that have thinner dividers to handle slides mounted in thicker (like Gepe or glass) than normal (ie cardboard) binders. I would look for a late model Ektagraphic that uses halogen lamps (model ends in H.)

Thanks for that, outwest. I never knew the difference.

Ricardo Miranda said:

Why not buy another Leica projector? Something like a Pradovit P150?

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Nice choice. I have a pristine one I got a couple of years ago for only $29! It came complete with the case and wired remote. I've only used it a couple of times but it's very well made, small, and the slide trays are compact too.