Any way to make GOOD slides from C41?

One of the things I NEVER liked about C41 is the lack of slides to project. For me, there is nothing quite like good chrome projected on the wall. It just brings the shot to life i a way a print NEVER can. But making good prints from slides can be quite a difficult thing to do. Anyway, I tried sending a roll of C41 to Dale's Lab, which advertises a process by which slides can be made from negatives. However, the results were quite unacceptable. Is there anyone else out there who might be able to make slides from negatives that can even hold a candle to slides from the cheapest E6 you can buy? Or am I better off just carrying two bodies if I want both prints and slides?

Excellent prints can be made from transparencies, so if you want both slides and prints I'd suggest shooting slide film...

At one time there were labs offering a print+slide service using color negative movie film. It works well for slides as it is designed to be copied onto movie print stock. There's nothing stopping you from doing this today if you spool the film yourself, and can find a lab that will process short lengths of movie film. (It is not C-41.)

Kodak Vericolor Slide and Print films

I don't know if Kodak still manufactures Vericolor Slide Film and Vericolor Print Film. They were C-41 process films which were designed expressly for making colour slides and transparancies from colour negatives. In both cases, you would have had to establish a proper colour balance for each negative printed; like regular colour printing, they usually required yellow and magenta filtration.

Both films required careful attention to dust control, especially when making contact transparencies from large format originals on the Print Film. An advantage was that, with the proper equipment, you could crop and otherwise manipulate the final product, and they could be processed in a regular C-41 line, without any special adjustments..

If these films aren't available, or you don't want to go to the trouble of colour balancing an enlarger or duplicating set up, you could try making (or having made) a print, preferably on glossy or semi-matte paper, and copy it onto slide film. Most camera original films will give too much contrast and saturation for a good reproduction, so the best choice is a film like Kodak's EDupe film. Again, as it is a laboratory film, it will have to be colour balanced, and is designed for tungsten illumination, although you can filter it for daylight or electronic flash. For tungsten illumination it usually requires yellow and cyan filtration.

If EDupe is unavailable, or hard to find, a good, neutral film like Kodak EPN (is it still made?) could be used, although you may want to opt for a slight increase in exposure, coupled with pull (or drop) processing, to bring the contrast down a bit. A half- to full-f/stop usually works out well.

Yes, you are better off carrying two bodies and just shooting slides! Or just shoot astia and bracket; the [slightly] underexposed frame gets used for projection, and the [slightly] overexposed one gets used for printing...

Here is one nutty idea though. I just got some maskless c41 film from Rollei/Maco called "digibase". Ohne Maskierung! Comes in 35mm and 120. Maybe you can generate some kind of semidecent slides from that just by straight duping in c41.

I don't think that (apart from very expensive hand-made transparencies from individual negatives) you're going to find a satisfactory and economic way of getting good slides from negs. Especially if you are used to slides on reversal film, which is made for the purpose. C-41 is designed to give paper prints, and the contrasts and densities are different.

I remember, in my uni days, having lecture slides made from negs, using the Kodak factory service which was available then. While they were entirely adequate for the purpose, they were not up to a good reversal original.

keithwms said:

Here is one nutty idea though. I just got some maskless c41 film from Rollei/Maco called "digibase". Ohne Maskierung! Comes in 35mm and 120. Maybe you can generate some kind of semidecent slides from that just by straight duping in c41.

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I doubt that any c41 negative (masked or not) film would produce dmax high enough to make satisfactory slide. It seems to me that there aren't enough of dye components in them.

I did shoot some negs and developed them in E6 - there is no real black there. I've also never seen anything like decent black on normally processed negs or even unbleached negs.

And that is only for start. Next you need to get colors and contrast at least halfway right.

Domin said:

I doubt that any c41 negative (masked or not) film would produce dmax high enough to make satisfactory slide. It seems to me that there aren't enough of dye components in them.

I did shoot some negs and developed them in E6 - there is no real black there. I've also never seen anything like decent black on normally processed negs or even unbleached negs.

And that is only for start. Next you need to get colors and contrast at least halfway right.

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I agree, density is not going to be optimal, not to mention the lack of detail per grain. But.... maybe, just maybe the result could be roughly acceptable for some purposes.

Obviously the best option is to shoot slide in the first place. And to someone coming from a print-film background, I would recommend astia.

Of course if you are shooting b&w then this is easy, you can shoot everything twice and send half the film off to dr5.

keithwms said:

Obviously the best option is to shoot slide in the first place. And to someone coming from a print-film background, I would recommend astia.

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The funny thing about Astia is that it doesn't seem to be a readily available film, at least where I live. Interestingly, most places here seem to carry Fuji products galore (at the expense of Kodak products, which I actually prefer). But Astia is notably absent. I can even get Kodachrome locally, but not Astia.

StorminMatt said:

One of the things I NEVER liked about C41 is the lack of slides to project. For me, there is nothing quite like good chrome projected on the wall. It just brings the shot to life i a way a print NEVER can. But making good prints from slides can be quite a difficult thing to do. Anyway, I tried sending a roll of C41 to Dale's Lab, which advertises a process by which slides can be made from negatives. However, the results were quite unacceptable. Is there anyone else out there who might be able to make slides from negatives that can even hold a candle to slides from the cheapest E6 you can buy? Or am I better off just carrying two bodies if I want both prints and slides?

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I think the highest quality option is going to be two bodies, although this may be one of those areas where you needs to drag out the D word. There are processes to print from slides, but while there were a whole bunch a few years ago, there might only be one or two left. If you can get a High Def projector, scan your negs to the highest sensible resolution, you might get an acceptable result, and get to use all the fancy fading effects, and can burn slide shows to DVD so Aunt Milli can view your work from home

I think the second best way (after shooting transparencies in the first place) is to write scanned files to slide film using some sort of digit processing (or whatever they call it) device. In my country, I can have image files written to film at moderately high resolution (4096 x 2731 pts) using CRT technology. There is a similar service in Dead Link Removed. From what I've heard, slides produced this way are quite convincing although I'm sure they're nowhere as good as real slides.

Kodak made a film for this sometime back. I was going to suggest using dupe film but the contrast would be low. I would try photographing the negs with proper filtration with a copy tube and then cross process the slides in either C41 or a modified developer with correct CD for better stability.

Digital duplication would work too. You scan the film and then print it to unexposed slide film using a film recorder. Ebay has cheap ones from a while back you could use.

tiberiustibz said:

Digital duplication would work too. You scan the film and then print it to unexposed slide film using a film recorder. Ebay has cheap ones from a while back you could use.

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The thing is, I am not really a fan of scanning. I would rather just take a shot with a DSLR than take a digital shot of a film image (which is basically what scanning is). And if I did go this route, I would shoot digital for prints and film for slides. MUCH better results than using negative film and scanning it to make slides. The bottom line: if I am going to get slides from negatives, I would like to stick with traditional (non-digital) methods.

One more thing. While looking at the new Ektar 100 on amazon.com, I noticed that, in the product description, they said to 'Make color slides and transparencies by printing the negatives on KODAK PROFESSIONAL ENDURA Transparency Display Material or KODAK PROFESSIONAL ENDURA Clear Display Material.' Has anybody here tried this? And who might actually be able to do this?

StorminMatt said:

The thing is, I am not really a fan of scanning. I would rather just take a shot with a DSLR than take a digital shot of a film image (which is basically what scanning is). And if I did go this route, I would shoot digital for prints and film for slides. MUCH better results than using negative film and scanning it to make slides. The bottom line: if I am going to get slides from negatives, I would like to stick with traditional (non-digital) methods.

One more thing. While looking at the new Ektar 100 on amazon.com, I noticed that, in the product description, they said to 'Make color slides and transparencies by printing the negatives on KODAK PROFESSIONAL ENDURA Transparency Display Material or KODAK PROFESSIONAL ENDURA Clear Display Material.' Has anybody here tried this? And who might actually be able to do this?

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First Google is your friend, it will point you to a page on the Kodak site that talks about the material, looks like it's a printing paper (RA-4 process) with a clear base, you might therefore be able to do it the old fashioned way, with contact prints, put a bunch of strips of negatives on the material, hit it with the recommended filter setting on the enlarger, and then process as a colour print, cut out each image and put in slide mounts. I would assume that because the material is intended to be used for illuminated displays that it's fairly contrasty. I have not tried it. I would send a nice email to Kodak to see if they have some samples where it has been done, maybe see if they can send you a sample of the material to try......