Slide or print film? for scanning.

Many good points here. With C41 at least you have options - darkroom enlargement or scan, but with E6 slide there's not much. Both films have their usable fields. For landscape I just love slide films, for people I shoot color negatives.

Now, when the mighty Cibachrome is gone, the bottom line is how you scan your slides.

I always got goosebumps when looking my slides against the light table, but most shooters I know aren't mostly satisfied with the scans viewing them through the computer. It's nowehere near as good as viewing them with your own eyes.

Widely used consumer and prosumer scanners just don't take the "juice" out of them and if you want to score anywhere near only the very good prosumer scanners do with VERY good operator, or if you want the "real thing", only the high-end scanners with a skilled operator will do the trick IMO.

tsiklonaut said:

Many good points here. With C41 at least you have options - darkroom enlargement or scan, but with E6 slide there's not much. Both films have their usable fields. For landscape I just love slide films, for people I shoot color negatives.

Now, when the mighty Cibachrome is gone, the bottom line is how you scan your slides.

I always got goosebumps when looking my slides against the light table, but most shooters I know aren't mostly satisfied with the scans viewing them through the computer. It's nowehere near as good as viewing them with your own eyes.

Widely used consumer and prosumer scanners just don't take the "juice" out of them and if you want to score anywhere near only the very good prosumer scanners do with VERY good operator, or if you want the "real thing", only the high-end scanners with a skilled operator will do the trick IMO.

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Oh man, you're so right. Some people love projecting their slides, but I am crazy about simply viewing them on a light box, with or without a loupe--it takes you right back to the second you took the picture, as if you're actually viewing the scene through the viewfinder of your camera.

The best way to scan your slides is by way of a fluid-mounted drum scan. In my flickr travels, I've come across a couple of guys with their own ton-and-a-half drum scanners (possible exaggeration). The only downside is the cost. Otherwise, if you like the look and feel of film, it's the only thing second to viewing the original slides with your own eyes.

Drum scan and colourimetrics + high end printer (not ink jet) will give you just devo prints from either tranny or negs, but negs are inherently sharper and will enlarge much easier with less USM required (unsharp masking). You must have a well-exposed tranny/neg before starting (critically with tranny film); anything like dark shadows or blown highlights will be picked up by the scanner and cannot be corrected: "blows" and "blocks" are literally final, so spot meter sensitive films (like RVP, RDP3 etc.). There is typically an 0.3 to 0.5 stop loss of light in the end print so images slightly over-exposed often scan the best, but it's quite a balancing act. .

Trannies illuminated on a lightbox are a tour de force and the best way to knock the sox off clients coming in for stickybeak, that's for sure. But don't discount at all how well that beauty translates into a finished print, on the right media under the right viewing conditions (e.g. framed, under spots). There is a lot of skill involved in scanning and carrying through the beauty to print stage and it cannot be rushed.