Duplicating Slides onto Print Film

13 May 2006

I am trying to find a way of "side stepping" the cost of making prints from slides. I thought if I duplicated the slides onto print film then made prints from that it would be cheaper ($1.65 vs. $0.35 per print). Has anyone tried this and had good results? Any suggestions and tips would be appreciated.

Regards,
Darwin

I haven't tried the approach you suggest, but I've heard it was one of several common methods a few years back in commercial labs. (I expect the big labs do it digitally today.)

Another inexpensive approach, but one that I don't think would be suitable for most slides, is to use conventional RA-4 paper in a reversal process: Expose RA-4 paper from the slide, develop in a conventional B&W paper developer (I used E-72), stop, rinse, expose thoroughly to light, and continue on with the conventional RA-4 process. I've only done this on a couple of slides as an experiment. The results I got are high in contrast and have some odd color shifts that I haven't managed to correct with filtration. Still, the results might be suitable for some scenes in which you want something that's a bit odd, so the procedure is certainly worth trying.