Is that how you share your photographs with others? With a Paterson slide viewer? Upgraded with an LED bulb?
Which is why I advocate that people who prefer film make their own gelatin silver and chromogenic prints.
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Is that how you share your photographs with others? With a Paterson slide viewer? Upgraded with an LED bulb?Even half frame slide on a little Patterson slide viewer, upgraded (in luminosity) with a LED bulb is far superior to how photos look on an iPhone screen.
Which is why I advocate that people who prefer film make their own gelatin silver and chromogenic prints.People, including many here, don’t realize how much scanning, including good DSLR scanning, misrepresents film photos.
I have seen a few film slide shows in photo galleries over the years and they uniformly sucked. Has a photographer ever sold a fine art slide? And why suggest projecting digital photographs rather than showing them on a monitor? What does "affordable" have to do with it anyway? Is this a back door argument that film is cheaper than digital or something?...and shooting Medium Format color slide and projecting as a 6' image on a screen is so very much more impressive than looking at even a digital image with 4k digital projector...the affordable digital projector cannot even recreate what the digital camera captured with its sensor!!!
(You have to spend tens of thousands to get 8k projection...the cheapest Panasonic or JVC 8k is $11k)
What exactly sucked about them? Most likely it was not under optimal circumstances and not with optimal setup equipment.I have seen a few film slide shows in photo galleries and they sucked. And why project digital photographs rather than show them on a monitor?
Even half frame slide on a little Patterson slide viewer, upgraded (in luminosity) with a LED bulb is far superior to how photos look on an iPhone screen.
People, including many here, don’t realize how much scanning, including good DSLR scanning, misrepresents film photos.
What exactly sucked about them? Most likely it was not under optimal circumstances and not with optimal setup equipment.
You need it dark to get relative contrast up. And you need to have every slide refocused (a remote comes in real handy there).
You obviously have not experienced seeing medium format slides projected in their glory vs. 135 format slides...even veteran film photographers gasp at the impact of the MF slide projected.I have seen a few film slide shows in photo galleries over the years and they uniformly sucked. Has a photographer ever sold a fine art slide? And why suggest projecting digital photographs rather than showing them on a monitor? What does "affordable" have to do with it anyway? Is this a back door argument that film is cheaper than digital or something?
I’m far from “anti-scan”.Hasn't film been digitally scanned one way or another since the late 90's? I don't think the drug stores were doing optical prints anymore in 1998.
I dunno, I'd like to think that my DSLR work flow does an honest representation of my film.
I'd say to me these shots are undoubtedly film, even if scanned with a DSLR
And this one is a digital shot using a Jupiter-9 lens that's almost twice my age.
And this is a digital shot using a modern camera and modern lens (Canon DSLR, EF lens)
Prints from fine art slides has been sold of course.That's sort of the problem with slides, isn't it? Viewing in non-optimum conditions. Why would an artist want his photographs to be shown as a slide show in a photo gallery? Like I asked before, has a photographer ever sold a fine art slide? Is a print on the wall a bourgeois concept?
They're two completely different beasts, requiring two completely different approaches to viewing each - one is an installation in a well-lit room (premises that tend to make me feel uncomfortable), other is a preferably live performance in the intimate dark - two completely different settings, moods and experiences.That's sort of the problem with slides, isn't it? Viewing in non-optimum conditions. Why would an artist want his photographs to be shown as a slide show in a photo gallery? Like I asked before, has a photographer ever sold a fine art slide? Is a print on the wall a bourgeois concept?
The slide shows I have seen at photo galleries (and some museums) have been underwhelming. Unfortunately, that is the venue and the viewing conditions under which the artist elected to display his work. Had the artist elected a better venue and better viewing conditions under which to display his work, I am sure I would have had a better experience. He didn't. That is the reality. Maybe things will change. The impetus for change will need to come from the artists who want to display their work as projected slides. Maybe where you live artists who want to display their work as projected slides have already addressed the issue and have venues where the public can view their work under optimal viewing conditions, and the rest of the world needs to catch up. And then we have the separate issue of what the collector is actually going to buy and how he is going to display it.You cannot show a photograph on paper in the dark. Knowing this - why shit on slide shows brought to you in glaring, ugly light? Demand better, formulate your opinion only after such an experience. Otherwise it's a plain act of misinformation - based on a subjective experience and bias - not on observations of reality.
I’m far from “anti-scan”.
Scanning certainly has it’s place and can do things that are difficult, but not impossible with a darkroom print.
The problem is when it replaces real printing and the darkroom wet B&W and RA4 print becomes something very distant or even unknown to the average film photographer.
The problem is not really DSLR scanning though.
It’s all the people who only know film through shitty lab scans and flatbed, at best Plustek/Opticfilm scanners.
The film market desperately, desperately needs a good, small and affordable scanner, now!
Not in three or five years when momentum finally has caught up, too late.
But now, before the average film newcomer gets disillusioned and tired of what she/he soon will come to see as an expensive gimmick and fad.
Overpriced holders, cobbled together copystands, light table and macro DSLRS are never going to be the fast, easy and hobby priced solution that the market wants so much.
One of the most often asked questions on various groups is “what scanner?”. And the answer often is wishy washy and half-hearted recommendations.
Such a scanner would be very easy to throw together, by even a small electronics manufacturer with the last ten years development in good quality, mass produced mobile phone components.
An Imacon quality scanner for about 500 - $1000 would absolutely be possible with a little clever engineering.
Purrrhaps. Have displayed my work in fallout shelters, have been to local projection Open Air nights, have projected at such an event in a neighboring country too. There I saw an artist from France, doing wonderfully cinematic work with 2 projectors, manual transitions and so on, creating a spectacle and story of textures alone.Or maybe where you live artists who want to display their work as projected slides have already addressed the issue and have venues where the public can view their work under optimal viewing conditions
If you believe the internet, there are 335 drive-in movies still operating in the United States. I haven't been to one in fifty years. My guess is that most of them are using digital projection because that is how movies are being distributed. Of course, you didn't go to a drive-in movie for the quality of the projection, so that is not really an issue.You had drive-in Cinemas to begin with. Is that itch scratched?
Which is why I haven't gone to a camera club meeting in recent memory. Those are even worse because they are projecting digital images with affordable projectors. And the images aren't all that great to begin with. Then the guy tells everyone he has a BFA so he doesn't need to use a meter.A slide show shouldn’t really be people sitting down in a show and tell fashion, with a stiff presenter using five minutes per slide on inane, needless description of the photo.
There are no digital cameras that can convince me that I am looking at an image shot on film.
If you look at the amount of cheap “crap” that is made routinely for far smaller markets and customers bases, involving pretty high tech stuff like camera modules, controlled LEDs and custom software, a scanner involving those technologies should be very straight forward to make.I agree but who's going to do it? Kodak should but they won't given the R&D costs. In this day and age a companion digital scanner to film is a must. I'd love to shoot my film, dry it and then feed into a scanner, have the scanner make the basic call of post and leave the rest up to me. I don't truly enjoy scanning. I enjoy taking photos and doing a little after to finish them off.
I enjoy making wet prints in the darkroom but I don't have the space right now. I will at some point but not today. For now digital scanning is all I have.
Then I guess people would be up for a freestyle projection night, for example.If you believe the internet, there are 335 drive-in movies still operating in the United States. I haven't been to one in fifty years. My guess is that most of them are using digital projection because that is how movies are being distributed. Of course, you didn't go to a drive-in movie for the quality of the projection, so that is not really an issue.
Of course a good entertaining slide show can be done, but it takes a gigantic effort to edit it and accumulate enough interesting slides in the first place.Which is why I haven't gone to a camera club meeting in recent memory. Those are even worse because they are projecting digital images with affordable projectors. And the images aren't all that great to begin with. Then the guy told everyone he had a BFA so he didn't need to use a meter.
I gave my last slide show in the late 1980s. I had to get a fleet of ambulances to take the audience members to the hospital because they all fell into comas about twenty minutes in. Somehow I don't think showing medium format slides would have made much difference.
I will go along 100% with that
Let me elaborate. The reason I should be able to distinguish one from the other is they are different. Different as chalk and cheese. Usually digital colour has a higher saturation, the edges of the subject are usually clearer cut, often unnaturally s. There is usually an absence of grain..B&W is uncommonly smooth compared to 35mm Monochrome film. But the biggest give a way it looks too good to be correct/accurate.I can be fooled. I have been and I will continue to be. Granted the photographer is very skilled and a master at their craft.
If you look at the amount of cheap “crap” that is made routinely for far smaller markets and customers bases, involving pretty high tech stuff like camera modules, controlled LEDs and custom software, a scanner involving those technologies should be very straight forward to make.
Twenty year old consumer dreck, like the family of scanners the Kodak Scanza is a member of, where the aim was just to get uncle mcUncles old funky slides “onto the computer”, and 2 MP was deemed more than enough for that old stuff, is actually not that far of in fundamental construction from what one might imagine for a 135 and 120 scanner.
Only you could have a vastly better, non Bayer sensor, RGB backlight and better optics.
Let me elaborate. The reason I should be able to distinguish one from the other is they are different. Different as chalk and cheese. Usually digital colour has a higher saturation, the edges of the subject are usually clearer cut, often unnaturally s. There is usually an absence of grain..B&W is uncommonly smooth compared to 35mm Monochrome film. But the biggest give a way it looks too good to be correct/accurate.
It would of course exactly not be a plastic piece of garbage!Most of us shooting film still don't want compromised 2mp awful photos. We're shooting film for a reason. I'd end up sticking with DSLR scanning instead of paying $159.99 for a plastic piece of garbage.
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