Bellini B&W "slides" for hybrid

Before asking my question let me say right off the bat that the B&W slides I've seen in photos of uncut rolls on various blogs by those really good at them (think dr5) are absolutely beautiful. No question about it. But it is an unusual if not dangerous process... and can be expensive and take real dedication.

So at the end of the day.... after picking my jaw up from staring at some of these, I'm really curious about B&W slides - the bother, the output and the net utility. And I wonder.... is all that extra effort worth it? Especially from the perspective of a hybrid process. Yes I find when I'm shooting color E6 can offer a very fine and sweet color slide for hybrid producers in color. So there is some net gain in E6 that just gives a wow factor, and I've utilized that to print some great images that I don't think C41 images would have generated without a lot more forethought and work. Certainly C41 does fine, but the extra kick of E6 can inspire you to actually pull all that potential into a print. Printing is hard - even with ink.

But the end of every day, as my photography coach used to say, "It's a printed image that's real photography. The rest are ideas."

So aside from the novelty of B&W slides.... net net is it worth the bother if you're using it as a medium rather than a projection tool? Most of the threads talk about managing to pull this off as a technical challenge and don't really get into the detail of ...well now that you CAN do this, do you WANT to make this you go-to default, and if so, why... or where would you recommend using it. Yes, I get the old days of inter-negative uses for reproduction. But these are the new days and most or at least many of us are using hybrid and ink printing.

Thanks!

I shoot slides for projection and occasionally print from scanned tiff at a lab - have no enlarger and don't want to add additional expense of copy film, but I do keep shooting film for 10 years now.

JWMster said:

absolutely beautiful

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There, you've answered your question!

Well done BW slide has a similar impact - the size of projected image with all that unexpected fidelity just makes me smile.

Today I shoot BW only and about 50 rolls a year. E-6 just outpaced my wallet some years ago, so I don't bother. But when I project images taken before 2016 when I switched to BW, they're absolutely, ridiculously marvelous.
But for the price of one E-6 film and processing you can get at least three great BW films and 5x Kentmere 100's... Reversal is cheap. 87 cents per film to be exact, all chemistry included.

I never grow tired of the BW challenge, the experiments, experience and that kick when it works out beautiful - Pushing, Pulling, Stand Reversal and all that sweet jazz.

And to see various films represented the best: with fewest possible medium translations, to see how they differ without paper or scanner+screen getting in the way - beautiful!

And projection evenings, fun times. And projection events...

JWMster said:

is all that extra effort worth it? Especially from the perspective of a hybrid process.

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When viewed directly or projected, B&W slides are indeed beautiful. But I don't see how B&W slides would be of any advantage if the film is then digitized. Quite the opposite. It's a lot more work and it's a lot easier to lop off crucial shadow and/or highlight information.

If you find it difficult to translate your vision to a printed photograph, I'd put my effort into that and the digital editing (assuming you inkjet print or have digital prints made) that will lead to a great print. Trying to substitute that competence by reversal processing all your film in the hope that this way, "the film itself will give me the final image" is inefficient, inflexible and ultimately counterproductive.

Reversal processed film is absolute magic, but that magic is mostly lost the moment the film goes into the scanner. At that point, it really doesn't matter much whether you start with positives or negatives, or (God forbid) files from your digital camera or phone (blasphemy!)

After having a few rolls of b&w negative film processed as positives (by DR5), I really do like the look of them! And I have been intending to try processing some b&w positives at home, but have not yet done so. Personally, I would want to start off with some kind of off-the-shelf chemistry kit, and availability of those kits in the USA has been sporadic, at best. However, I just checked Freestyle, and they are showing the Bellini kit, the Foma kit, and the Adox Scala kit are all three in stock right now!! (the Foma and Adox kits are flagged as "low stock")

I have never tried to make big inkjet prints of any kind, so I cannot comment on the suitability of digitized b&w positives for that purpose. But I have had several books printed by Blurb, and my digitized b&w positives reproduced well. I doubt if anyone can pick out which photos in my book were from positives, and which were from negatives. <link to book>

Shoot some slides, learn some skills, and have some fun!

koraks said:

But I don't see how B&W slides would be of any advantage if the film is then digitized. Quite the opposite. It's a lot more work and it's a lot easier to lop off crucial shadow and/or highlight information.

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I can think of 1 reason: reversal being a very fine grain process, rendering say Delta 3200 cleaner than some ISO 400 prints/scans I've seen.

Loss of details is a property of the film: if it has wide latitude as negative, it'll have it as a positive too. Add the influence of agitation on contrast and highlight/shadow relationship, and you can nail things down pretty good!
Not that I recommend this to anyone sane out there. There are fine-grain and sharper/less sharp developers out there to use instead of reversal.

It could actually be an interesting comparison: doing print from the same scene, same light, same film, but one treated and scanned as negative and printed from it, the other made from slide.

Just for the giggles.

Ivo Stunga said:

It could actually be an interesting comparison: doing print from the same scene, same light, same film, but one treated and scanned as negative and printed from it, the other made from slide.

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That's the $ 64,000 question, right? Aside from the fun and the "look at my cool thing... a B&W slide..." does it improve the process, or help sell the image (which it might back in the day?).

From the outside, the Bellini kit looks a step up with a fully chemical process rather than a mix with re-exposure. Just seems simpler. Did I compare prices? Um.... looks to me like the pricing isn't all that bad. Bellini prices are pretty decent, too. And B&W processing using packaged chems (ID11 and Iflord Fix) you end up that development costs are pretty much in the same ballpark... with some tweaks here and there. Re-use will get you better in B&W on $'s but maybe unsweeten some of the images.... theoretically. (I'm using ID-11 in 1:1 and single use these days until I use it up and then back to D23).

I used to get the Kodak Direct Positive kit when it was available. It could be used with Panatomic-X at ASA 80 or with Direct Positive film at 100 ASA. The main difference was that the Direct Positive film was coated on a clear base so they were somewhat brighter when projected. I used the kit with Panatomic-X.
Film has a much greater brightness range than paper and fir this reason, I thought the resulting slides looked better projected than printed. I am tempted to try making b&w slides again. Back when I did, I had heat seal slide mounts and used my mother's iron to seal them. Somewhere I have the list of chemicals needed to make up all the components of the Direct Positive kit but I don't know whether all of the chemicals listed are still available.

I love projected images and there is really nothing like it. It is true there is less latitude when shooting B&W reversal as opposed to negatives but I found some films like HP5 and FP4 when processed as reversal by DR5 scan very well. Even Tri-X reversal processed by DR5 scans decently but it is more contrasty and you can quickly lose shadows.

I am curious how the Bellini kits perform. I was shooting some rolls to try it but I found out DR5 is running a small batch again in November and I’m just going to send them there.

I shoot and develop a lot of B&W slides and like others love to project them. I also do scan them for printing. One time a few years ago I did take the same shot with the same film same lens but in different bodies for a simple test. like I expected the slide had higher contrast, less usable dynamic range, smaller grain and higher apparent sharpness. shadow detail suffered as expected. I develop my negs in Pyro-M developer. now days I would say I develop 90% neg and 10% slide. a 6x6 APX 25 or RR80 slide projected is a wonderful thing. but for scanning B&W slides it takes a little more effort to get great results. but once you get it dialed in its easy going forward.

I have to say that finding a very usable process for B&W slides did give me a breath of fresh air. I stopped for a while at least, looking for the magic B&W developer formula. like color film, one process for all the films reagrdless of speed. yeh fuji e-6 might take a 30 seconds longer than kodak, but its not like trying to find the developer magic bullet in B&W developers.

john

destroya said:

like color film, one process for all the films reagrdless of speed

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Exactly and I love it. It's the time, optimal agitation scheme and hypo concentration that changes from film to film.


A question of curiosity: Why everyone is playing a strange game of "shoot film X at EI Y" to use our services/kit? Why are people treating reversal differently than negatives, not applying the same development techniques to slides?
Aviphot 80, for example - it can be had with massive contrast and crushed shadows/highlighs (constant agitation will give you just that) or tamed nicely and latitude "extended" with reduced agitation frequency and pull development... It can be Semi-Stand reversed and even pushed for extra crushing contrast giggles.

Not just blindly shoot X at Y - as if everything is just a hammer and a nail.