Film stock?

fstop said:

Consumer cameras have the meter biased for print film, so shoot print film.

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It has more to do with the photographer!
The trouble starts the moment an inexperienced photographer puts slide film into a "consumer grade" camera, failing to grasp one important principle. All slide film for direct reproduction purposes (projection, gravure/reprographics) is best exposed in 0.3 stop increments. The vast majority of cameras of the 70s had metering stops in half to whole stops; this is too much for slide film (the Ektachrome films of that era, even Kodachrome 25, 64 and 200). Now, pro-level cameras frequently allowed changing the metering steps from 0.5 to 1 or 0.3, 0.6 etc, and any number of variations in combination with, or isolation from, changes to EI (via ISO dial). So it has nothing to do with what the camera has loaded (until the advent of DX coding, cameras didn't know and didn't care what was dropped into them!) but the knowledge of the photographer and the film he is using at the moment, and the rudimentary meters in the cameras of the day: it was about adapting one film over another, based on its known ideal exposure (that means all parts of the photograph are evenly exposed: no bleached, featureless skies, dark dark splotchy shadows, no glaring blown out highlights). What is good for print film in terms of metering does not necessarily nor universally apply to slide film. Kodachrome films exposed at 0.5 to 1 stop were considered overexposed. Ektachrome was no better. Today's Fujichrome slide films are ideally exposed in 0.3 step increments in small formats (35mm) and this moves to 0.5 steps for larger formats (MF, LF), any such changes to stepping based on the photographer's experience and knowledge of the film's response to scene contrast.

A lot of pros used AE 1s, along with Navy and at one time the New York times, for critical work with transparencies I always used a hand held incident meter. In today's world unless you are projecting with a slide projector there is really little reason to shoot with slide film as there are no direct print color materials produced, all slide to prints must be digitized. On the other hand color negative to print can still be all analog. My thoughts concern 35mm, but apply to M and LF as well.

Trix is for kids! try some Tri-X 400 instead

miha said:

If this is true, set the meter a third of a stop higher and voilà, your Canon turned professional!

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This is why true professional cameras do not have light meters. Apart from the Leica M5 of course as it has a spot meter and only professionals know how to use that..
Pro cameras are designed to lay all blame on a lousy exposure on the amateur user..

Seems as though all my problems can now be traced back to my lowly AE 1.I wish someone had told me about the 1/3 -1/2 stop problem before now.

Alan W said:

Seems as though all my problems can now be traced back to my lowly AE 1.I wish someone had told me about the 1/3 -1/2 stop problem before now.

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Slide film could be used in the old/ancient cameras (the AE 1, AE1+P does not fit that category!) with noticeable overexposure — you had to expect that; to magazines/publications, overexposure of slides could be corrected (to a point, and as a compromise!) much easier than careless underexposure, but the very long standing print industry preference was for correctly exposed, nicely composed slides (not negatives!) that spoke directly of the accompanying text — definitely not snapshots . When I worked as a sub-editor 30 years ago (1982 to 1985) to a bicycle touring magazine, 70 to 80% of slides submitted were rejected on arrival, with the take-up then having to come from established known regular contributors with a consistently high quality of well exposed work. (I do recall though one regular contributor who shot all his work with an Olympus XA and Kodachrome 64, and exposures were always bang-on, earning him $60 for each of his submissions, and that was serious money back then for freelance writers/photographers). It was always the amateur photographers and their clunky K1000s and Minolta SRTs who just did not adequately grasp the need to carefully expose slide film; most treated it as just a rich-man's version of negative film, often submitted with accompanying gilded chapter and verse on "pro-shooter" status. The number of rejection slips was staggering.

The moral to this story? I think beginners are wise to stick with negative film because of the generous allowance it provides against over- and underexposure. Build skills. Explore limits and circumstances, and later get your freak on and take a roll of E6 for a whirl, taking notes of each and every exposure so you can check off your efforts when peering at those lush colours on the lightbox.

Poisson Du Jour said:

Slide film could be used in the old/ancient cameras (the AE 1, AE1+P does not fit that category!) with noticeable overexposure — you had to expect that; to magazines/publications, overexposure of slides could be corrected (to a point, and as a compromise!) much easier than careless underexposure, but the very long standing print industry preference was for correctly exposed, nicely composed slides (not negatives!) that spoke directly of the accompanying text — definitely not snapshots . When I worked as a sub-editor 30 years ago (1982 to 1985) to a bicycle touring magazine, 70 to 80% of slides submitted were rejected on arrival, with the take-up then having to come from established known regular contributors with a consistently high quality of well exposed work. (I do recall though one regular contributor who shot all his work with an Olympus XA and Kodachrome 64, and exposures were always bang-on, earning him $60 for each of his submissions, and that was serious money back then for freelance writers/photographers). It was always the amateur photographers and their clunky K1000s and Minolta SRTs who just did not adequately grasp the need to carefully expose slide film; most treated it as just a rich-man's version of negative film, often submitted with accompanying gilded chapter and verse on "pro-shooter" status. The number of rejection slips was staggering.

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Most of the professionals I knew who shot slide film used exposure bracketing whenever possible, then selected the best frame from each bracket after the film was processed. Perhaps this is what the contributor with his Olympus XA did to guarantee a high success rate concerning exposure.

TheRook said:

Most of the professionals I knew who shot slide film used exposure bracketing whenever possible, then selected the best frame from each bracket after the film was processed. Perhaps this is what the contributor with his Olympus XA did to guarantee a high success rate concerning exposure.

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He is still around, still riding (after having both hips replaced with a snazzy titanium job), still writing books and still photographing — albeit with a digital camera I gave to him as a birthday present in 2013 after his fourth XA was trashed in an accident with a truck (his eyes, as mine, are not so good for accurately focusing the XA now, but I get by with care). His use of the +1.5 backlight control on the XA was key to a great many of his shots, especially his many atmospheric (and contrasty!) forest scenes with sun streaming through the trees, all on Kodachrome.

Yes, bracketing too, was very common if pros were shooting with e.g., the end intention of printing to Ilfochrome Classic ('Ciba'), as they would then have a series of the same scene to proof (sometimes a series of 6) on either of the two contrast grades available, before committing just one to an often huge print costing around $700 (from 35mm). I certainly bracketed (auto-bracketing on the EOS 1N). I do not bracket transparencies at all in medium format.

" most treated it as just a rich-man's version of negative film"

Slide was substantialy cheaper than print film. Kodachrome 64 had better color saturation when under exposed.

fstop said:

No its not age, I did testing in the late 70s with brand new cameras and my finding were consumer cameras were weighted toward print film

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So how did that work with all the fully manuals then..........

fstop said:

Slide was substantialy cheaper than print film.

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Really? From the first time i went out to buy 'special' film (1994) until now (2016), slide film has always been priced higher.

AgX said:

Welcome to Apug!

The Canon AE-1 is a japanese camera. You thus should use japanese film stock.

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Best advice so far. Also, the Canon AE1 comes in two versions: Black and white. So black&white film is most suited to it.

monkowa said:

Trix is for kids! try some Tri-X 400 instead

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Tri-X 400 is for amateurs!! Pros use Tri-X Professional 320 (TPX)

flavio81 said:

Really? From the first time i went out to buy 'special' film (1994) until now (2016), slide film has always been priced higher.

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I can identify with that too. Kodachrome in the professional emulsion was hugely expensive in the 1980s and 1990s ($18 a roll with mailer), so too was Fujichrome's offerings that I started using in 1994 -- I often asked if there were 12 or 24 exposure rolls available instead of the common 36 exposures!) . If I thought slide film was expensive way back then, what do you think I have to say about the pricing today -- without processing included!? Print film though is cheap and cheerful, which is the reason I happily run through a couple of rolls of it through my pinhole on day outings, as opposed to maybe just one roll of slide film. So there most definitely is a price difference between slide and negative film, always has been and always will be.

flavio81 said:

Really? From the first time i went out to buy 'special' film (1994) until now (2016), slide film has always been priced higher.

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In my youth, I mostly shot Kodachrome.
Each roll included processing and mounted by Kodak, at no extra charge.
The resulting slides were projected, and I therefore didn't have any further cost.
I used to pay between $10 CDN and $12.00 CDN for a 36 exposure roll.

Harry Stevens said:

So how did that work with all the fully manuals then..........

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Do you mean meterless or manual?
ASA film speed dial set exposure meter.
What started the SLR boom in the 70s was in camera metering.

In 1980 you could buy a roll of 24 exposure Kodachrome 64 for under 3 bucks and developing was under 5 bucks.Much cheaper than prints at that time. slide film is still cheaper to buy and process.