Henning Serger
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- Aug 31, 2006
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The answer to this is easy, unfortunately the solution is not. The answer is to lower the price of E-6 films. At $15 a roll, I have been forced to cut back on how much I buy. Even Agfa is rising fast. The solution however is not so easy. Ferrania might be able to provide competition and force the prices down some. Anyway, good luck Ferrania!
Is that really the main problem?
I dont think so. At least not in the main markets (in some smaller countries it looks a bit different, that's right).
1. The costs per shot with colour reversal film are lower compared to instant film.
But instant film has strong increasing demand!
Despite the relative high costs per shot.
2. Shooting colour reversal film is in most cases also cheaper than shooting colour negative film.
Because:
With a developed transparency film you already have finished pictures in excellent quality you can look at.
Reversal film can be
- simply held to light to be looked at
- viewed with a slide viewer enlarged
- presented on a light box with an excellent slide loupe (e.g. the loupes from Schneider-Kreuznach, Rodenstock, Emo, Leica etc.); that delivers an enlarged picture with outstanding optical quality and an almost three-dimensional look
- projected with a slide projector with excellent projection lens for the absolut best and unsurpassed quality.
But with negative film only a developed film is useless:
With negative film you need prints. And prints in really good quality do cost, which add up in the end to more than the reversal film and development. At my professional labs I pay 30-45 Cents for 10x15 or 13x18cm higher quality RA-4 prints from 35mm.
And 80 Cents to 1,5 for prints from 120 format film.
Processing costs are almost the same here for C-41 and E6. The difference is negligible.
For (very) big enlargements slide projection delivers an unsurpassed quality.
And at extremely low costs:
A projected slide on a 2 m x 2 m screen cost me in the range of only 30 Cents to 1 per shot depending on the film (35mm or 120) and slide mounts.
A quality print of the same size (from negative film or digital file) cost me more than two hundred Euros.
I am shooting both colour reversal film and colour negative on a regular basis. I permanently see the costs. My costs for colour reversal are lower in total.
Some of you may say you can scan only and look at it at a computer monitor.
But why using a high-quality, high-resolution medium like film (no matter whether reversal or negative film, BW or colour), and then using the viewing medium with the absolut lowest quality?
That does not make sense at all:
LCD monitors are unable to show real halftones. The colours cannot really match the real, natural colours. And the resolution is extremely low with tiny 1 - 2 MP.
Absolutely the same is valid for DSLRs: It does not make any sense to spend very big amounts of money for a 12, 24, 35 MP camera, and then only using the tiny fraction of 1 - 2 MP of it using the computer monitor for looking at the pictures.
Complete waste of money.
Only viewing the picture on a computer monitor, no prints, nothing bigger and tangible?
From both a quality and cost perspective it is completey stupid.
3. Very high value of reversal film: Best versatility.
It is indeed one of the unique strengths of reversal film that its versatility / universalism is unsurpassed.
No other photographic medium can offer so much different options of using it.
And this has been also one reason (there are of course some more) for reversal film being the dominant medium in professional photography.
Reversal film can be
- simply held to light to be looked at, you already have a finished picture in excellent quality
- viewed with a slide viewer enlarged
- presented on a light box with an excellent slide loupe (e.g. the loupes from Schneider-Kreuznach, Rodenstock, Emo, Leica etc.); that delivers an enlarged picture with outstanding optical quality and an almost three-dimensional look
- projected with a slide projector with excellent projection lens:
That delivers a breathtaking, unique and unsurpassed quality with bigger enlargements at minimal, negligible costs. The colour brillance, sharpness, fineness of grain and resolution performance of slide projection with excellent projection lenses cannot be achieved by other means (we did all these tests in our test lab)
- direct prints on paper with Ilfochrome: yes, it is still available because some professional labs have bought huge stocks from the last production run and still offer Ilfochrome prints
- direct prints on BW paper with the Harman Direct Positive Paper (fibre base)
- direct prints on BW paper with the Imago Direct Positive Paper (Melinex base, same base as Ilfochrome has, with its outstanding brillance)
- scan and print on RA-4 paper, or display film (for poster-sized slides on big light boxes, looks stunning), or inkjet paper
- you can cross process it for funky colours.
I really like and use this unique versatility of reversal film. Gives me freedom and lots of creative uses.
And not to forget concerning value:
ISO 100/21° colour reversal films like Kodak E100G, Elitechrome 100, Sensia 100, Astia 100F, Velvia 100, Velvia 100F, current AgfaPhoto CT Precisa and Provia 100F all deliver a bit finer grain and significantly better sharpness and higher resolution compared to Reala, Ektar, Portra 160, Pro 160 NS.
Weve very intensively tested all these films in our optical test lab over the years (Ive reported here several times about the results).
So you get lots of excellent quality, versatility and value with reversal film.
But lots of photographers, especially young beginners, dont know it yet
(for example the Lomo marketing people completely failed here with their extreme one-sided concentration of cross-processing only).
Best regards,
Henning