End use of colour slide film?

rayonline_nz · Dec 8, 2020

I have been thinking about slide film lately which is the type I have shot mostly with. I love the look of slide film on a lightbox but when it is printed or on a electronic form it doesn't quite look the same. Myself who takes an interest in it might spend some time with a lightbox and pour my eyeballs over it. In terms of the real world and when a lot more professional photographers used film, did they have end use other than making a print or putting it inside a publication? So I have thought about lately if this lightbox thing is a fun time hobby only and slide film and other film is really about making a print or printing it inside a publication or making a print on a brochure or billboard - in otherwords printing?

Thanks.

koraks · Dec 8, 2020

Well obviously a lot of slide film used to printed either on a pos/pos medium such as cibachrome or it was used as input for printed media (magazines etc). Nice, but evidently not very relevant for a home user. Nothing wrong with scanning and then printing but as you noted, the impression is much different from the original slide. You could print on transparency material and mount on a light box to get something more closely resembling the original.
And of course projection is nice, although something you don't typically do all that often. If your loved ones can bear to sit through a slideshow, it can be nice.

AgX · Dec 8, 2020

Slide film was designed to be projected.

That slides had been preferred by editors over negatives is a development within the publication industry and by no means technically reasoned.
We discussed this repeatedly.

That slide film looked at on a lightbox results in a different impression than looking at the respective print. is the natural result of the difference in chartecteristics of the materials, foremost the reduced density range of any printed matter.

rayonline_nz · Dec 8, 2020

Yes, I have been thinking about this lately. Many have said that slide film is one of the film that is more on the decline in terms of use and availability of labs. I have been thinking about if I am one of these weird clowns wasting my time and money but maybe it is a worthwhile hobby, haha. Clearly these days people are using a lot less film, let alone slide film. Even if we turn the clock back. While people at home did that slide projection show to their scared friends and family. All the professionals who did shoot slides did they really cared about how good a slide looked on a lightbox other than for the steps of reviewing? The paying wedding or corporate client just wanted an image be it printed and hung on the wall, on a brochure or publication or on the billboard, maybe on their webpage or in their annual report ......

Is this viewing the slide limited to the a camera nerd's man cave? How relevant is it for family and friends to say oh so awesome, then have a party together order in some pizzas and beers and have a slide show and have a blast!

Steve@f8 · Dec 8, 2020

I’ve just purchased Rollei Crossbird in 135 explicitly for cross processing in C41, plus some Fuji Velvia 50iso, and some of that will be processed the same way. It’s about having fun, right! I like the unreal colours and the unexpected.

Alan Edward Klein · Dec 8, 2020

I still shoot a lot of slide film. 35mm, 6x7 120 and now 4x5. I used to shoot 35mm slide film and project on a slide screen. But I no longer do that.. I've scanned the slides and made digital slide shows that I show on my 75" 4K TV. It still looks like slides. But I've added music, titles, credits, annotations, and sometimes narration. I copy the whole show on a memory card that I connect to the TV with the USB jack. Here's one I uploaded to Youtube you can show on your computer or TV. It will give you an idea of what it looks like. You tell me if it looks like slides? The originals were 35mm Ektachromes from 30 years ago..

BAC1967 · Dec 8, 2020

I still shoot slide film, mostly in my View-Master camera. I project the View-Master reels in 3D and use the handheld viewers. On a rare occasion I'll shoot a roll and project it.

Les Sarile · Dec 8, 2020

One of the most important characteristic of slide film over color negative - specially today were the majority of prints are from scans, is the accuracy of result. With slide film you have the reference right in front of you. With scanned color negative film you are at the will of scanner/operator and you may never know what it really should look like.

Alan Edward Klein · Dec 8, 2020

Les Sarile said:
One of the most important characteristic of slide film over color negative - specially today were the majority of prints are from scans, is the accuracy of result. With slide film you have the reference right in front of you. With scanned color negative film you are at the will of scanner/operator and you may never know what it really should look like.

I like slide film because it's easier to scan. Plus I know immediately if the exposure is right especially if I bracketed the shot. Scanning color negative film is inconsistent and frustrating. I don't really try to match the colors in the slide. Rather, I adjust white and black points and then that gets me to about 90%. I adjust after that by eye in post to what looks good to me, but don't check colors against the original.

Trying to match some Japanese designer from 40 years ago who developed the color palette for Velvia 50, or whatever film he designed, is his aesthetics. I'm not tied to it to match. So as long as it pleases my aesthetics, I'm happy. Of course, you're going to be limited by the film. That's why I like Velvia. But the final color match isn't required for my taste.

Les Sarile · Dec 8, 2020

Alan Edward Klein said:
But the final color match isn't required for my taste.

But at least you would know for a fact with slides but not so with color negatives!
With color negatives it is not uncommon to see threads asking what happened with the results from their color negative. Then it is disclosed that it is from scan - typically minilab as it is convenient and cheap.

Alan Edward Klein · Dec 8, 2020

Les Sarile said:
But at least you would know for a fact with slides but not so with color negatives!
With color negatives it is not uncommon to see threads asking what happened with the results from their color negative. Then it is disclosed that it is from scan - typically minilab as it is convenient and cheap.

I agree. It just adds to the difficulty when scanning negative color. Some people shoot with expired film, or the processing is screwed up, or they have a huge blue color cast because they didn't use an 81B filter, or whatever. So they spend hours trying to adjust the colors in post and never quite getting it. They just can't see the problems in a negative. Even so they post it on-line even if the human subjects look like they recently died and their skin turned yellow-green. I gave up on that which is why I like slides. But it does have it's problems mainly dark shadows and few stops of range, especially Velvia. But when you get it right, Velvia is just super.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/alanklein2000/50570908936/in/dateposted/

DREW WILEY · Dec 8, 2020

Ha ... just noted your post, rayonline. No, back when pros routinely shot slide film, it wasn't for sake of corporate website use - the web didn't exist yet! In fact, there was an era when it wasn't slide film in demand for publication, but much larger 4x5 chromes, more easily seen on a lightbox. Photojournalism magazines like Natl Geo were the exception. Now I don't even subscribe to that magazine anymore because their switch to mostly digital imagery looks so blaaah, and often concocted too. Getting really "alive" prints on a wall from positive originals takes some skill. Cibachrome is gone. But there are still all-darkroom methods if one is determined. For others, there are scanners.
I miss the days when I could pretty much know what to do right from the start, by how a positive image looked on the light box. Now I mostly work with large-format color neg film instead, and first need to run a few test strips to get the same level of confidence how to best proceed forward. But overall, color neg film is a lot easier and less expensive to print.

Les Sarile · Dec 8, 2020

Alan Edward Klein said:
But when you get it right, Velvia is just super.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/alanklein2000/50570908936/in/dateposted/

No truer words were ever spoken! Beautiful image!

YoIaMoNwater · Dec 8, 2020

Les Sarile said:
One of the most important characteristic of slide film over color negative - specially today were the majority of prints are from scans, is the accuracy of result. With slide film you have the reference right in front of you. With scanned color negative film you are at the will of scanner/operator and you may never know what it really should look like.

Alan Edward Klein said:
I like slide film because it's easier to scan. Plus I know immediately if the exposure is right especially if I bracketed the shot. Scanning color negative film is inconsistent and frustrating.

100% this!

Les Sarile · Dec 8, 2020

DREW WILEY said:
Cibachrome is gone.

That is one I wish I could have done. I believe as late as the 90s there was still a workshop being conducted where you could actually make your own cibachrome or ilfochrome print.

DREW WILEY · Dec 9, 2020

I've printed hundreds of Cibachromes in all kinds of sizes. I only did color shooting and printing the first decade, although I learned black and white sheet film development for sake of essential contrast and hue-correction masking. But Ciba was a slow medium requiring serious output via powerful commercial colorheads if prints were large. The bleach was also corrosive nasty stuff, although in small volume one-shot usage you could just drain the drum into a bucket containing a little baking soda, and it would instantly neutralize the sulfuric acid bleach. The present Fuji Supergloss medium has the same look as Cibachrome and is easier and more economical to use, and even better overall, but is geared to color neg film instead of chromes, and has to be purchased in big rolls. To darkroom use it for chrome images, an internegative has to be generated first, requiring an advanced skill set.

wiltw · Dec 9, 2020

Oh, the majesty of a projected medium format slide! Folks accustomed to seeing 135 slide would gasp at the visible improvement over what they were accustomed to seeing. Today, with digital, the most affordable 4k projectors are a paltry small fraction of the resolution captured in the digital camera.

And the right slide printed on Cibachrome was gorgeous to behold, but you could not reasonably print just any slide on Cibachrome unless you bothered with contrast masks. But trasmitted light was just about always better than the reflected light print -- even Cibachrome.

Yes, the offset press was usually sourced from a transparency, not so much from a color print. But the offset press had a narrower dynamic range than could be captured in a transparency, so something was lost in the offset press image, compared to the transparency. For studio shots, one would light to a bit flat contrast range, if you know the image was intended for the offset press.

iandvaag · Dec 9, 2020

My favourite "end use" of colour film is viewing stereo slides in a backlit handheld viewer. There's nothing else like it. You get to enjoy all the lovely qualities of looking directly at the film -- fantastic dynamic range, high resolution and great colours. I shoot medium format 3D, but the 35 mm stereo cameras are pretty inexpensive, so if you get an opportunity to try it out, I'd highly recommend it. As BAC1967 said, there's also Viewmaster which looks like a lot of fun, but the blank mounts are pretty pricey and hard to find. The downside of a handheld viewer is that only one person can view the image at a time, but it makes for an intimate experience between the viewer and the image. There are several traveling folios where you can share your work and see the work of others, which I find quite rewarding.

twelvetone12 · Dec 9, 2020

My favorite use of slide film is just on the light box with the lupe. I also did some nice scans and some very nice prints from those, and I was able to snitch a very last Cibachrome print in 2018 (which is stunning!). Some images (a few actually) also print quite well in RA4 reversal, which I do a lot and I have lots of fun doing (watching the colours appear in the color dev still feels like magic).

AgX · Dec 9, 2020

Les Sarile said:
One of the most important characteristic of slide film over color negative ... is the accuracy of result. With slide film you have the reference right in front of you.

Yes, this was one of the reasons for slides becoming the standard source.

However this common thought lacks the the insight that colours may be wrong from the start. Due to casts from wrong exposure. But also due to deficiencies in colour reproduction compared to masked films.
Also the huge difference in contrast between slide and print is overlooked.

With this in mind one hardly can speak of accuracy of result.

Les Sarile · Dec 9, 2020

AgX said:
However this common thought lacks the the insight that colours may be wrong from the start.

But at the very least you would know that it is the film and not the method of extracting the image from it.

Remember I specifically identified the problem of scanning and not just from the uninitiated because it is common to see questions asking what may have gone wrong. But for each one of those whos ask there are probably numerous who don't ask because they may not know any better or worst yet think it was somehow a failure on their part.

As an example two scans from the same frame of film of well exposed Kodak Gold 100, was a very common and I'm sure well used film in the US. The difference is so vast you'd think they were from different frames of films.

Alan Edward Klein · Dec 9, 2020

DREW WILEY said:
Ha ... just noted your post, rayonline. No, back when pros routinely shot slide film, it wasn't for sake of corporate website use - the web didn't exist yet! In fact, there was an era when it wasn't slide film in demand for publication, but much larger 4x5 chromes, more easily seen on a lightbox. Photojournalism magazines like Natl Geo were the exception. Now I don't even subscribe to that magazine anymore because their switch to mostly digital imagery looks so blaaah, and often concocted too. Getting really "alive" prints on a wall from positive originals takes some skill. Cibachrome is gone. But there are still all-darkroom methods if one is determined. For others, there are scanners.
I miss the days when I could pretty much know what to do right from the start, by how a positive image looked on the light box. Now I mostly work with large-format color neg film instead, and first need to run a few test strips to get the same level of confidence how to best proceed forward. But overall, color neg film is a lot easier and less expensive to print.

A lot of the photo magazines like Outdoor Photography switched over to a lot of Velvia 50 covers when the film came out, for the punch. I've been using it since.

pentaxuser · Dec 9, 2020

AgX said:
Slide film was designed to be projected.

.

That was certainly the usual way. Some were charged with murder when they had killed their relatives with boredom after trapping them in a house and showing them 48 hours of slides of their holidays . I always thought that the lethal weapon was repeated blows by the apparent same scene of the beach and sunbathers that such holiday slides contained

pentaxuser

Alan Edward Klein · Dec 9, 2020

pentaxuser said:
That was certainly the usual way. Some were charged with murder when they had killed their relatives with boredom after trapping them in a house and showing them 48 hours of slides of their holidays . I always thought that the lethal weapon was repeated blows by the apparent same scene of the beach and sunbathers that such holiday slides contained

pentaxuser

My relatives would suddenly get headaches and say they had to go home the minute they saw the projector or screen come out. They'd even skip dessert. Imagine that.

One advantage of digital slide shows on memory cards plugged into you smart TV, is you can just switch it on while they're watching football and before they know it they'll be watching my vacation to places they really never want to visit.

Helge · Dec 9, 2020

Apart from projecting, there are dedicated slide viewers that present a nice experience for casual viewing on the go.
Especially for medium format.
It can look almost 3D with certain compositions.
They are still made, and are not uncommon in vintage stores.

End use of colour slide film?

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