Slide Film

[CMoore]

Why was 35mm slide film made.?
Was it "just" so it could be projected as a large image, or was it "better" than color negative film of the day for some reason.?
Thank You

 

[Sirius Glass]

Mainly projection. Reproduction was minor.

 

[georgegrosu]

In cinematography, the reversible film was used to make films that did not require more film
copies and shorter production times.
At us, reversible film was uses mostly in television.
Is filming, going to the development lab, the same day she was mounted film and get in the air.
The reversible color process ensures better color reproduction than the color negative / positive system.

George

 

[wblynch]

The first amateur color photos were slides. Color film had not advanced far yet and getting color prints was expensive and troublesome. There weren't automated color print mini labs and few local labs could even do them. This was in the days just after the Depression and World War II. It wasn't until the late 1950s or more like the early 1960s that color prints started to take off. Most families only took one or two rolls a year. Saving color for holidays or special occasions like Easter Sunday.

This was also the time that family slide shows took off and all the stories that go along with them.

But we are lucky that so many color photos were taken on slide film at the time, The Kodachromes, especially, have held up and we have some amazing archives of the time that might not otherwise have lasted but in black and white.

 

[CMoore]

Interesting info...thanks for the replys.
I Appreciate It

 

[MultiFormat Shooter]

Color slide/transparency film was used by professional photographers for magazine and catalog work, calendars, books, and pretty much anywhere you'd be making a large number of copies of the image in question. It was easier to integrate into analog printing and color separation processes. Negative film was used when a relatively low number of copies, of a given image, would be made, such as weddings, family portraits, youth sports teams, etc.

 

[georgegrosu]

The negative / positive color system involves making the color negative and then the color positive.
The reversible system produces the positive image in a single process.
For the negative / positive system you need two photosensitive materials (negative and positive - paper) and two process of treatement.
With the reversible color system you need a film and a process of treatement.
A friends of my, photographers, told me that the photos for magazines / catalog were made on color slides for good quality.
It seems that the reversible system is more advantageous than the negative / positive system.

George

 

[MattKing]

The biggest reason for use of slide materials in the commercial world is that the art directors could see what they were presented with.
The second reason is that a slide presents its own reference - if you make a proof run, you can easily compare what came off the press with the originating slide.
Technically speaking, a negative/positive system has a greater capacity for accuracy and control, so if you are making small quantities of final product, then that approach is advisable.
And it is certainly easier to pump out high volumes of quick prints in a negative/positive system.

 

[CMoore]

Color slide/transparency film was used by professional photographers for magazine and catalog work, calendars, books, and pretty much anywhere you'd be making a large number of copies of the image in question. It was easier to integrate into analog printing and color separation processes. Negative film was used when a relatively low number of copies, of a given image, would be made, such as weddings, family portraits, youth sports teams, etc.

Yeah, that's right.
I remember, circa 1980, when i bought Kodak Slides, it said "Professional" on the box.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

Using slide film now is easier for me since I scan at home. I can tell immediately which of my bracketed shots are the best exposed. When I scan, I can shoot for what was in the original. I don;t have to guess as you do when looking at negatives.

 

[georgegrosu]

Mattking say:
"Technically speaking, a negative/positive system has a greater capacity for accuracy and control,
so if you are making small quantities of final product, then that approach is advisable. „
After me:
The quality of color reproduction depends on the distinctive performance in terms of color separation,
color gradation and synthesis. Separation and color synthesis depend on the performance of the material used, while gradation depends on the process.
For the color separation to be ideal, only the light radiation for which it was designed (indigo, green or red)
must be recorded in each layer. In fact, photosensitive layers do not provide a strict selection, with additional sensitivities.
Colorants that are formed in chromogenic development also have a different color from the ideal color.
They have absorptions in unwanted areas and in the process of color synthesis "impregnate" the chromatic nuances of images.
The influence of these phenomena is greater in the negative-positive processes when the separation and synthesis processes are repeated.
In contrast, on color reversible processes, due to the exclusion of the color negative phase, this influence is minimal.
That's why reversible color processes provide superior color reproduction.

George

 

[RPC]

Mattking say:
"Technically speaking, a negative/positive system has a greater capacity for accuracy and control,
so if you are making small quantities of final product, then that approach is advisable. „
After me:
The quality of color reproduction depends on the distinctive performance in terms of color separation,
color gradation and synthesis. Separation and color synthesis depend on the performance of the material used, while gradation depends on the process.
For the color separation to be ideal, only the light radiation for which it was designed (indigo, green or red)
must be recorded in each layer. In fact, photosensitive layers do not provide a strict selection, with additional sensitivities.
Colorants that are formed in chromogenic development also have a different color from the ideal color.
They have absorptions in unwanted areas and in the process of color synthesis "impregnate" the chromatic nuances of images.
The influence of these phenomena is greater in the negative-positive processes when the separation and synthesis processes are repeated.
In contrast, on color reversible processes, due to the exclusion of the color negative phase, this influence is minimal.
That's why reversible color processes provide superior color reproduction.

George

If you are making copies in the form of conventional prints, color negative materials are superior to reversal materials because negatives are masked. The masking eliminates the unwanted absorptions you speak of; that is its purpose. Therefore they are not transferred to the print material.

If you print slides, the slides are not masked and the absorptions are transferred to the print material, which itself has the unwanted absorptions, and color is noticibly degraded compared to prints from color negatives. One sees the best quality from a slide by projection or viewing directly, but not when printed.

In addition, negatives are lower in contrast than slides and can record and reproduce a higher dynamic range.

For the above reasons, the cinema industry has always shot on color negative material for highest overall print quality.

 

[georgegrosu]

I was talking about the image made in the negative / positive system or the color reversible system.
The reversible color films were used in television (in Romania) to produce news that needed to be broadcast within hours of filming.
From 1980 to 1990, the Romanian TV company used the Orwo CHROME color reversible film UT 21.
News films were informative and less artistic.
In artistic films, where the image director can ask for a darker or lighter calibration on a scene, it is only possible in the negative / positive system.
At the color slide, what exposed that exits.
You can over-expose or expose with 0.5 diaphragm and come out altogether.
The negative color supports exposure variations.
And yet people say the color slides are special.

George

 

[trendland]

To a professional a slide gave the reference to a special intended color look within the past (before 1996).
Today an app will give the oportunity to create hundreds of looks within one computer session.But many results are just looking bad after some months. So there is a inflation of artificiell looks within one year.
In the past there have been "true colors" from slide films with little variations.That was a workflow wich is very modern today (these days)
because the creative hype with computer apps isn't such creative as some still beliefe and the reaction after a decade is "back to the roots". But it isn't possible with slide films in most cases because of the lost of a great variation of E6 emulsions (Kodak offered 14 different slide films in 2002) with other manufacturers there have been around 30emulsions with some difference in looks.
with regards

 

[georgegrosu]

Photo, like other genres of creation is an art.
Tastes are not discussed.
It is decent to listen and respect everyone's choice.
You're crying as before You had 30 color slides.
In 1990, we had only ORWO Chrom UT-18 and UT-21 (daylight) and
ORWO Chrom UK17 (inside), not always found.
The development of the slide takes over a month.
There were only two units that developed a color slide (Orwo Chrom only).
After 1991, several types of color slides (E6 process) began to appear in Romania.
Probably for these reasons I started looking for new solutions for the E6 process.
Now I make tests for the reversible color process on the Fuji color positive film.
https://www.photrio.com/forum/threads/fuji-positive-color-film-in-color-reversible-process.159437/

George

 

[FredK]

Slide film has a significantly higher contrast than color negative film. To achieve a good contrast color negative film, either the layer structures have to be intermixed with various sized grains or coated in multi-layers of finer, controlled grains - each with their own color sensitization. The technology to do that wasn't available in the 1910 - early 1930's. A slide film, like Kodachrome (the first slide film) used a single layer for each color record and the film could be put together much more easily than the later Ektachrome (and other companies chromes), and the color negative films. The emulsion's contrast could be more easily controlled with that single layer - each which was essentially a black & white emulsion spectrally sensitized to a specific color. It wasn't until the late 1930's that a coating machine was developed with enough coating stations to actual manufacture a color negative film in an economical and repeatable fashion where control of the multiple layers could be achieved. By that time, the technology for intermixing color couplers had also been developed and improved to the point where it could be used. This is why Kodak launched a color reversal film (Kodachrome) before a true color negative film.

People, at that time, were hungry for color and launching Kodachrome ahead of the more complex color negative films was done. Processing it, however, was quite a challenge that required chemists to monitor the process around the clock.

 

[gr82bart]

Transparency film is 99% of what I use only. I hate developing and printing, so I started using it when I started photography at 14. I also love colour and was never so enamored with B&W like the masses are. If I need a B&W negative for contact printing, I used to use my Polaroid Daylab with Type 55 film. Now I will reluctantly scan it produce a digital negative. I like the fact I can see what I shot versus having to print it first. I also use slides to make ambrotypes with my enlarger. Plus, projecting using a Kodak projector today is novel hit among the crowds.

 

[Minoltafan2904]

35mm slides or transparencies, whatever you call them , were the standard for publishing in magazines etc.
If you wanted to have your images published in a magazine, they would always prefer slides over prints or negatives, because their machinery was specifically made for that.
And ofcourse you have the much superior sharpness, grain , resolution, etc, which is very noticeable when you go to enlarge a photo, professional wildlife and landscape photographers used transparency film 99% of the time.

 

[CMoore]

Transparency film is 99% of what I use only. I hate developing and printing, so I started using it when I started photography at 14. I also love colour and was never so enamored with B&W like the masses are. If I need a B&W negative for contact printing, I used to use my Polaroid Daylab with Type 55 film. Now I will reluctantly scan it produce a digital negative. I like the fact I can see what I shot versus having to print it first. I also use slides to make ambrotypes with my enlarger. Plus, projecting using a Kodak projector today is novel hit among the crowds.

35mm slides or transparencies, whatever you call them , were the standard for publishing in magazines etc.
If you wanted to have your images published in a magazine, they would always prefer slides over prints or negatives, because their machinery was specifically made for that.
And ofcourse you have the much superior sharpness, grain , resolution, etc, which is very noticeable when you go to enlarge a photo, professional wildlife and landscape photographers used transparency film 99% of the time.[/QUOTE

Two interesting perspectives...Thank You

 

[RPC]

Magazine publishers could handle both slides or negatives but preferred slides because of the viewable image. Slides shot right, had high quality in publications due to required masking and manipulations done at the publisher's labs. In general, however, negatives print more easily and with better overall quality than slides due to built-in masking, lower contrast, and higher dynamic range. I have printed both and found negatives much easier to work with in the darkroom to produce high quality prints.

A projected slide, on the other hand, has a beauty of its own.

 

[Sirius Glass]

Shooting slides makes one learn the get the exposure spot on and do all the composing and cropping before taking the photograph.




.

 

[AgX]

The matter is complex, but for substractive, tri-layer films it can be said

-) Colour transparency (slide) film was easier to design than negative film that has to be matched by a paper

-) It was cheaper for the consumer, as even with a more complex processing the stage of manual exposing and filtering a print and the related labour cost fell off. (Automatic colour printing emerged much later and meant high investment cost for the lab.) Also the cost for the paper and its processing fell off.

-) On the other hand the consumer had to invest in a projector (and maybe a screen). Large transparencies that needed no enlarging were the exception with consumers.

 

[halfaman]

The matter is complex, but for substractive, tri-layer films it can be said
-) Colour transparency (slide) film was easier to design than negative film that has to be matched by a paper.

But I was told once that chromogenic slide film was the most complex film to produce, more than the negative color film...

 

[MattKing]

If you want to get a sense of how important slide film was to my early life, here is a (digital) photo of the discarded slides after the first half of my current project of organizing and editing my late father's slides.
The "keepers" currently total to more than 1400 slides, and the discards weigh about 7 pounds:

 

[Photo Engineer]

While a professional can handle slide film with no problem, and the results are fairly accurate, color negative film allows for more leeway in exposure and with better latitude. Color correction is superb. That is why Hollywood uses a neg-pos system.

PE