Cheaper Slide Film

Hey guys, I was wondering what slide films I can find for cheap would be. I have E6 Chemistry and I need to use it up, what would be the most/best film for the money?
PS. If anyone is selling any, let me know.

Bcarlsonmedia said:

the most/best film for the money? ... PS. If anyone is selling any, let me know.

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Best for the money? Try Ektachrome 100 or Fuji Velvia/Provia/Astia.

Cheapest? Try Ektachrome 100 or Fuji Velvia/Provia/Astia.

The only ones in existence? Try Ektachrome 100 or Fuji Velvia/Provia/Astia.

Is anyone selling any? Try B&H, Adorama ...

Thanks... I just ordered some Elite Chrome... it was cheap enough, and should work fine for a first slide film.

I have a lot of Sensia 100 in my fridge. PM me if you are interested.

The cheapest slide film I've seen is Rollei CR200 in 100ft package. Never bought it (yet).

Buying films in "large" packs (something like 20 cartridges at a time at least) on the internet, preferably when they are near their expiry date, or just expired, provided they are properly stored by a reputable seller, and then refrigerating them makes film quite inexpensive.

Fabrizio

Funny timing, this was just posted on RFF:

Hi,

for those who want "the best bang for the buck":

The new AgfaPhoto CT 100 Precisa.

This new version is made by Fujifilm (the former was from Kodak).
This new version has been intensively tested by lots of film experts.
I have tested it also, and compared it to all other ISO 100 color slide and color negative films.

All who have tested this film so far came to the same conclusion, that this emulsion is almost identical to Provia 100F. It is either the Fuji Trebi 100 (Japanese amateur version of Provia), or Provia 100 batches, which are not 100% identical to Provia QC norms.
No matter what it is, it is very hard to distinguish the results of CT Precisa from Provia 100F.

This film has finer grain, and much better resolution and sharpness than Reala, Pro 160C, Ektar, Portra 160.
It also surpasses Efke 25 and Ilford PanF+ in detail rendition.
That are not only my results, but also the test results of scientific tests from other experts (e.g. Antora, Garnier, Mueller, Serger, Ventzke, Petrovic).
It's not surprising, because reversal film has been the prefered film in professional use for decades because of its better detail rendition (and because you always have an exact color reference for the scan and print).
Color reproduction is very neutral and accurate with this film. It has not the warmer tendency of most Kodak films.
If you want that, it is very easy, just use a Skylight 1A or 1B filter.

This excellent film is offered extremely cheap: In dm drugstores the double pack with two films is offered at only 6,45€!!
Much cheaper than any other top quality ISO 100 film.
You can also order it at our 'usual suspects' like www.fotobrenner.de, www.fotoimpex.de, www.nordfoto.de, www.foto-r3.com etc.

Cheers, Jan

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This isn't spam, I have no relationship to any of those companies or the OP on RFF. I haven't even tried the film. I've been pretty much using Provia and Velvia exclusively since I got into film a few years ago.

The best price I've found is Fuji Provia 100 from B&H.

"This film has finer grain, and much better resolution and sharpness than Reala, Pro 160C, Ektar, Portra 160. It also surpasses Efke 25 and Ilford PanF+ in detail rendition."

"It's not surprising, because reversal film has been the prefered film in professional use for decades because of its better detail rendition (and because you always have an exact color reference for the scan and print)."



Shenanigans.

Yeah, that's balderdash that a 100 slide film has finer grain than Ektar. The others strike me as quite questionable (what do they mean by "detail rendition?" Sharpness/resolving power?) too but that one is absurd.

OTOH if it really is Provia 100 just less expensive it could be a good deal. Too bad the real Agfa color films, both pos and neg, are no longer available. Oh, and Astia. And now E100G. And Ilfochrome. And...and... Sigh.

The guy posting it has an agenda, to promote product. Propaganda.

also 'and because you always have an exact color reference for the scan and print' tells the whole story.

All the films mentioned far outresolve any flatbed scanner, which is what is typically used (I rate my V500 at about 26 lp/mm after testing).

Athirill, I respectfully disagree.

Any slide film will show less grain, when scanned, then negative film, in my experience. I don't say that that will result in less perceived graininess when actually printed on paper, but at the scan stage you bet negatives give an impression of more grain. I never scanned Ektar though, and I mostly scanned Ferrania negative film which is high-grain even for a negative, but, in general, everybody agrees that negatives tend to show grain more when scanned, which is also what I gather from things I see on the internet.

The thing about exact colour reference may be improperly expressed but I think it's common knowledge. The publishing industry, before the advent of digital, preferred to work with slides because it's easy to have an "exact" match between the colour in the slide and the colour in the print: different technologies and different gamuts and different supports are involved, so when I say "exact" I mean there was less head scratching involved by the printer when he has to figure out a filtration.

That is: matching print with the slide, not matching print with the subject.

If you put a colour chart on the scene, and then you match the colour chart (the subject) with the print, I suppose that negatives are not more complicated than slides, and they can actually allow a more precise work.

If you don't put a colour chart on the scene (so we are not talking a tissues catalogue here, rather imagine the pictures published by let's say the National Geographic) you don't have an exact reference to the colour of the scene.
If you use negatives the printer has a large number of "filtrations" to chose from, and lots of head scratching to do.
If you use slide film, the printer tries to match the print to the slide and he has a very good and precise starting point to work from in adopting the colour rendition of the film to the colour rendition of the printing technology he uses.

I have never worked in the printing industry but that's what I read in print and what seems confirmed by the historical use of slide film by magazines like the National Geographic.

Fabrizio

PS I don't know if the guy has a "vested interest" because I don't know him personally. People tend to express opinions sometimes in a straight and squared way but that doesn't necessarily means, in itself, that they have an interest. Or should we say that Umut has a vested interest in Leica material?

Athiril said:

"This film has finer grain, and much better resolution and sharpness than Reala, Pro 160C, Ektar, Portra 160. It also surpasses Efke 25 and Ilford PanF+ in detail rendition."

"It's not surprising, because reversal film has been the prefered film in professional use for decades because of its better detail rendition (and because you always have an exact color reference for the scan and print)."



Shenanigans.

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Resolution is a tough one, especially if your comparing to B&W films, because there are literally thousands of developers that balance off resolution and sharpness in different ways, to give you what you want.

Exact colour reference is complex, because what the film renders, may not actually be correct in fact it's almost always incorrect, because no film has perfectly equal representation of the different colours. Even batch to batch with the same film, there will be mismatches in the colour balance, which is why professionals used to buy massive amounts of the same batch of film, because changing batches in a shoot would leave slightly different colour balance. Yes you can balance your scans and prints to the film, but is the film actually correct. It's one of the reasons I like B&W, I don't need to worry about colour balance

MF 60mm EDUPE slide E6

What about 60mm E6 ISO 60 KODAK EDUPE? Got like 4 cans (100ft/30m/~40rolls each) of it, more than I can ever use on my own. I am in Europe tho. Maybe You can look on ebay since EDUPES are cheaper.
What I have used from it is awesome in XPRO C41 and in E6 I just apply a B&W warming filter and gives me awesome color. Rolling Your own is always cheaper, either in MF or 35mm.
Just PM me if interested or Try ebay for CON US.

wogster said:

Exact colour reference is complex, because what the film renders, may not actually be correct in fact it's almost always incorrect, because no film has perfectly equal representation of the different colours. Even batch to batch with the same film, there will be mismatches in the colour balance, which is why professionals used to buy massive amounts of the same batch of film, because changing batches in a shoot would leave slightly different colour balance. Yes you can balance your scans and prints to the film, but is the film actually correct.

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If the printer can match the print to the film, he's a happy camper for most purposes. Films don't vary so much in colour rendition.
Imagine you have to print a picture of a certain temple in Bangkok. The wall is "reddish", somewhere between red and purple.
With a slide, if you match the red of the slide to the red of the print, you know that you were very close to the red of the temple. Nobody is going to phone you saying "hey, I know that temple, the colours are off!".

With a negative, if you don't have a "reference" (a colour chart or, let's say, a white object, or the blue of the sky) you have no clue about the colour of the wall. You can print the wall orangish, or purplish, or reddish, I really mean three different colours, and it would be perfectly plausible as a paint for a wall. Trouble is, somebody might phone you saying the colour of the temple in reality is really different.

You need really precise colour matching only when dealing with art reproduction, or printed catalogues. For this kind of work you need all the tricks of the craft: colourmeter, or known light temperature of the source, colour charts etc and the tricks have to continue for all intermediate steps up to the final print.

Mostly, books and magazines publish things for which an exact reproduction is irrelevant, but a "close enough" one is of paramount importance. Flowers, known colour of cars (think Ferrari), known objects (think Coca-Cola) must be rendered with that sufficient closeness or they immediately appear "false" to those who know them. Everybody knows the Coca-Cola red but when you have to print Milan cobblestones or a certain unknown flower you could filter it well off mark.

The quotation said that slide film gives an exact colour "reference" and I think it meant just what I expressed above, not the exact colour, but a fast and accurate enough colour rendition for most purposes and situations.

Fabrizio

PS I hope I didn't insist on the argument too much, I just wanted to express myself more clearly.

I just want to say I'm terribly sorry for the post I made earlier, it was not my intent to derail this, simply something I thought might be worth looking into.

Bcarlsonmedia,

I have some out of date, various minor bands 35mm slide film that has been refrigerated or frozen its whole life. PM me if you are interested and we can talk details.

Steve

Hey guys, just wanted to say it's very interesting reading where this thread has led to.
I'll just say that slides (in general, not all) tend to saturate one color more so than another.
But I like the look and I don't see a huge need to be technically correct, after all we are shooting for fun/creativity rather than being technically perfect.

Okay, so some of us have to be perfect because of jobs/other reasons . But for the rest of us let's have fun and get out and shoot!

BTW, Thanks for all the recommendations. I'm going to try out a couple types I bought. Elite Chrome and Sensia. Have any experience with these?

Elite Chrome and Sensia are both great films, I like them both better than any of the currently produced film stock... I want Astia back.

We don't need 3 Velvias.

EASmithV said:

Elite Chrome and Sensia are both great films, I like them both better than any of the currently produced film stock... I want Astia back.

We don't need 3 Velvias.

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+10000! (Ok, I never used Sensia; I'm agreeing about wanting Astia back and not needing three versions of Velvia.)

I could be happy with E100G too, which I like almost as well as Astia. Really good film - too bad about all the Kodak (for that matter I've always found E100VS more reasonable and less finicky than Velvia too.)

Sigh.

Diapositivo said:

The thing about exact colour reference may be improperly expressed but I think it's common knowledge. The publishing industry, before the advent of digital, preferred to work with slides because it's easy to have an "exact" match between the colour in the slide and the colour in the print....

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"Common knowledge" is very dangerous; it should ring a bell right away. That's because very usually, "common knowledge" is a synonym for "urban legends", just like in this case where, of course, it has SOME truth the myth is based on.

Publishing industry used extensively both slide and negative films. They both had their points and different purposes. But the myth slides were "preferred" live on because it is repeated everywhere as a "common knowledge", just like the Earth is flat, everyone KNOWS that!

In fact, slide films have huge inherent color errors and the whole media is based on those errors! By having distorted colors (due to both RGB curve shape mismatches and unwanted dye absorptions not corrected due to lack of masking), they look more interesting and "nicer" than neutral ones to many people. This is one reason why people use slide films, they give "good color", something you cannot get with neutral color negatives with built-in color correction, or neutral digital capture that may look "dull".

I think we should further define publishing practices.
If the published materials are commissioned, and the photographer can work with the printer, negatives are probably a widespread choice and the best choice where accurate colour rendition is desired.

I don't know which percentage of published pictures are sourced through agencies rather than commissioned. I suppose more than half though.

I tell you my experience with photographic stock agencies. Before the advent of digital (which, in the stock agency sector, was a bit late, in 2006 most agencies were still collecting slides from photographers) agencies would normally not accept negatives. Not a myth, but an industry need, as the printer, who didn't necessarily know the subject, and who never has the photographer near him, could have great difficulties in filtering a negative and, as said above, that could open the way to colour mistakes which were much, much worse than the colour mistakes in slide film.

Maybe the "myth" has been circulated by people, like me, who produces for stock agencies and so was "biased" toward slides anyway... but in any case, I think it cannot be denied that with a slide you always are "in the ballpark" for generic published material while with negatives you can easily be way, way off. This is not myth, and I suppose you agree with that.

I agree that people prefer "nicer" than neutral colours. Kodachrome and Velvia were certainly not designed for accurate colour reproduction. Generally speaking, I find the colour rendition of other slide films, such as Astia, or some Agfa slide film of the past, quite good and certainly adequate for most work even when "neutral" colours are desired. Personally I have never liked the "Velvia shock" and were not a fan of Kodachrome either.

Fabrizio

Sirius Glass said:

Bcarlsonmedia,

I have some out of date, various minor bands 35mm slide film that has been refrigerated or frozen its whole life. PM me if you are interested and we can talk details.

Steve

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1 roll Opticolor 200 24exp
1 roll Opticolor 200 24exp

from REI age unknown

Diapositivo said:

The cheapest slide film I've seen is Rollei CR200 in 100ft package. Never bought it (yet).

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I agree that this seems to be the least expensive E6 film you can buy new. Freestyle has the 36 exposure double pack for about 10 USD, and it comes in an awesome canister that holds two rolls.

This film is weird though; it's really yellow. I've read in other threads that it was originally an aero-reconnaissance film or something?