C-41 and Slides?

[kevinbell]

I know that prints can be made from slides but can slides be made from print film? Just was curious.

 

[Soeren]

C41 film has an orange-yellow filter in the emulsion and though they can be proccesed in E6 chemistry the results look a bit odd.
Kind regards

 

[Ian Grant]

The Cine industry uses a positive print film so yes it can be done.

Whether it's practical is another mater. Probably a better modern option is scanning and re-writing with a film writer.

Ian

 

[dmr]

Kodak used to actually have "Kodacolor Slide" branded slides that were made from color negatives.

I don't know if any labs offer a similar service today.

 

[railwayman3]

I have some slides taken by my late Father in the 1970's, made from 35mm colour negs by the Kodak (UK) service which was available at that time.
Presumably they were printed onto positive stock similar to that used for movie release prints.
The quality is reasonable (no real signs of fading) but nothing like as good his Kodachromes from the same time.
A pro lab might still offer the service if you really needed slides from negs?

 

[kevinbell]

Hmmm

Well I had read somewhere that this is possible and the reason I asked is the Cine industry. I've read some of their filmstock names and many of them say "negative" whereas we all are used to it being a "positive" for slides. I think it would be neat if they would come up with a product that did both. In other words when you get it developed you'd check "slides" or "prints". I guess they make C-41 that can be processed B&W looks like they could come up with something like I propose. This way film would be much easier to get versus ordering it the way we do now.

 

[Soeren]

I think Rollei has a film called Scanfilm?? that should be both Color and B&W and both pos and Neg. I also think Roger Hicks and Frances Schults did a test and found it not very good. But thats another story and not what youre after
Kind regards

 

[Ian Grant]

Kevin the link in my first reply should indicate what films are available. In the US there were companies selling Cine film in small quantities and they definitely sold the negative & positive films so that you could obtain conventional prints and get slides.

Ian

 

[Mick Fagan]

There was a commercial film from Kodak in 5x4 format which I used extensively years ago.

I still have about 5 boxes in the freezer. It's called, "Kodak Vericolor Print Film". The product code number is 4111.

This film is exposed under tungsten light, (an enlarger) then processed in the normal C41 process. It is a brilliant film, when clients requested colour transparencies (slides) that had to shot under different coloured light sources, or it was virtually impossible to get a reasonable colour balance using correction filters, one shot on colour negative, then manufactured colour corrected, density correct, colour transparency for the art director, or whomever wished to have film for whatever purpose.

This isn't exactly what you wished to know, but more or less this is how it is, and was done. I believe that most colour film cinematography is shot with colour negative, then the fully developed neg film is then sandwiched in a machine with colour print film, to make transparencies for film projection in a cinema.

You basically need to get some of that print film stock for your purposes. In fact I believe that this film is reasonably responsible for quite a lot of the profit that Kodak makes from their analogue film production.

Mick.

 

[srs5694]

AFAIK it's not possible to have a single film directly produce both negatives and positives -- that is, you process it and pull both negatives and positives from the tank. As others have said, though, it is possible to produce slides from negatives, much as you produce prints from negatives. Dale Labs and PhotoWorks are two commercial photofinishers that offer this service. In years past, they'd do it by contact printing a film strip or using a slide-copying setup onto a film made for this purpose. My hunch is they now do it digitally, but I'm not positive of that.

 

[kevinbell]

Slides from C-41

Well I was just "thinking" along these lines since I do only slides and print film is easy to find. That is why I asked. It's always easier to go to a local store than to order. No more slide film in stores anywhere in this area. I've been around my state and haven't seen any either. As far as I know slide film can only be ordered.

 

[srs5694]

It's been a while since I used Dale Labs or Photoworks, but a while back I scanned all my old negatives. I also scanned the slides I got from these places in the 1980s, and I discovered that the scans of the slides were substantially less sharp than the slides of the negatives. This isn't really surprising, but it leads me to recommend that you not try going the slides-from-negatives route if you mainly want slides for projection. (There may be exceptions if you need some particular feature of this combination, though.) The slides-from-negatives route seems appealing to me as a way to cut costs (it's cheaper than getting prints from all negatives) or if you mainly want prints but also want to do an occasional slide show.

That said, this is based on my experiences 20-25 years ago. It's conceivable (but unlikely) that with today's products and technologies you'd get better results using slides-from-negatives than you'd get shooting slide film directly. It could be worth shooting a couple of test rolls to see for yourself what you'd get.

 

[Ian Grant]

Could you explain:

It's been a while since I used Dale Labs or Photoworks, but a while back I scanned all my old negatives. I also scanned the slides I got from these places in the 1980s, and I discovered that the scans of the slides were substantially less sharp than the slides of the negatives. This isn't really surprising, but it leads me to recommend that you not try going the slides-from-negatives route if you mainly want slides for projection. (

Do you mean the scans of the negatives are much sharper than the scans of the slides made from the same negatives ?

Ian

 

[Photo Engineer]

Actually, negatives are generally quite a bit sharper than slides. This is due to the edge effects introduced by DIR couplres which enhance sharpness. Reversal films go to completion and therefore have less sharpness.

This high sharpness was developed for the motion picture industry.

PE

 

[DWThomas]

A few decades back there was a place in Seattle that heavily marketed a film that they would process to slides and prints, presumably using a cine-type process to get the slides. At the time, it seemed an attractive idea, but I tried a few rolls and concluded I could never get good slides and good prints at the same time. It seemed as though optimizing exposure for one resulted in less satisfactory results in the other. Adding in the factor of a week or more turn-around for processing (which could only be done by them), I soon gave it up and stuck with C-41 or E-6 processed locally.

DaveT

 

[MattKing]

A few decades back there was a place in Seattle that heavily marketed a film that they would process to slides and prints, presumably using a cine-type process to get the slides. At the time, it seemed an attractive idea, but I tried a few rolls and concluded I could never get good slides and good prints at the same time. It seemed as though optimizing exposure for one resulted in less satisfactory results in the other. Adding in the factor of a week or more turn-around for processing (which could only be done by them), I soon gave it up and stuck with C-41 or E-6 processed locally.

DaveT

That was Seattle Film works, and the film was re-spooled cine film.

That film had a rem-jet backing, so you would not be popular with any photofinisher who missed that fact and ran it through their C41 machines.

As cine film is optimized to print onto film, rather than paper, the contrast (in particular) is not well suited to paper prints. It works, and has a particular character, but isn't optimal.

The slides you would get from Seattle Film works were probably better, but they did suffer from the two stage, vs single stage process, when it came to sharpness.

Anyone here ever had to clean out a processor contaminated by unwanted rem-jet (PE, you are exempt from the question)?

Matt

 

[srs5694]

Do you mean the scans of the negatives are much sharper than the scans of the slides made from the same negatives ?

Yes. I suppose it's another question of whether slides shot directly would be sharper than slides made from negatives.

 

[srs5694]

That was Seattle Film works, and the film was re-spooled cine film.

Note that Seattle FilmWorks (SFW) is now known as PhotoWorks (one of the two outfits I referenced earlier). They're still in business, although they no longer deliver respooled ECN-II (cine) film; their house brand is now C-41 film -- Ferrania, to be precise, the last time I checked. Dale Labs, the other outfit I referenced earlier, offered similar services using ECN-II film in the 1980s, but switched to C-41 film in the 1990s, the same as SFW/PhotoWorks.

 

[Paul Howell]

I shot several rolls of Seattle Film Works in the mid to late 70s, dont recall why I even experimented with it, had a poor reputation even then. All of my Seattle Film Work slide film is badley faded. I have the negatives somewhere, at some point I intend to dig them up and see how they print. I dont recall if the negative film has a mask or not.

 

[Photo Engineer]

Yes. I suppose it's another question of whether slides shot directly would be sharper than slides made from negatives.

No, they may not be sharper. See my note above.

PE

 

[srs5694]

I shot several rolls of Seattle Film Works in the mid to late 70s, dont recall why I even experimented with it, had a poor reputation even then. All of my Seattle Film Work slide film is badley faded. I have the negatives somewhere, at some point I intend to dig them up and see how they print. I dont recall if the negative film has a mask or not.

My SFW and Dale labs slides from the mid-to-late 1980s still look fine. I heard somewhere or other that there were major improvements to the film used for the slides in the early 1980s. My negatives are also fine today -- and yes, they do have a color mask. I've even printed a few myself now that I've got my own darkroom. I got OK results, although I've not done enough to give a thorough critique.

 

[kevinbell]

fading

You know theres always the kodachrome versus ektachrome debate and the notorious so called fading to magenta or blue casts of Ektachrome. I honestly believe the reason a lot of the films fade is due to shoddy processing. If done correctly with fresh chemicals I bet it holds up much longer and better. Seems logical. Kodachrome was always a different beast and I think there was no way you could do a shoddy job with processing it and get away with it. I think it was way too finicky and HAD to be carefully handled. Maybe thats why it holds up longer, labs usually took more time with it and it took longer to process while Ektachrome (E-6) was more of a rushed film. I think any film processed carefully with good chemistry will proabably hold up decently. I could be wrong but I do think its in those rush jobs where the chemistry doesn't get done right, therefore it fades.

-Kevin