Why did magazines prefer slides to negatives?

Rob Skeoch · Apr 13, 2020

The first newspaper I worked at used slides for all the colour work. You could make the separations right off the slide. For the most part we shot the colour stuff on medium format and the b&w on 35mm. Then I moved onto another paper and they shot colour negative for everything. For the colour work the prints had to be made the exact size they would run in the paper, so there was a team of colour darkroom printers working evenings to make the prints after the editor had selected the size. These exact size prints were be used to make the separations. They could gang all the prints together and then physically cut them apart and put on the page.
You could not use a negative directly to make a separation, and there were no negative scanners yet.

Pieter12 · Apr 13, 2020

"Pocket Pal" used to be a handy reference guide about printing in general.

StepheKoontz · Apr 14, 2020

Pieter12 said:
slides have a much larger dynamic range and can have more saturated and/or truer color.

I won't argue the color, slides have a very narrow dynamic range.

Luckless · Apr 14, 2020

Rob Skeoch said:
They could gang all the prints together and then physically cut them apart and put on the page...

Any chance you could expand on that? What kind of 'ganging together' for the prints were they using, and what benefit was that over doing them on individual prints?

Pieter12 · Apr 14, 2020

Color separations used to be quite expensive. Making one or several large separations vs many smaller ones saved quite a bit of money and time. Ganging slides or prints for colors separations allowed you to make one large set of separation film that would then be cut and stripped individually. It is a cost-saving measure, but does not allow for adjustments for individual images. It makes more sense for prints, since they can all be printed to similar contrast, etc.

MattKing · Apr 14, 2020

StepheKoontz said:
I won't argue the color, slides have a very narrow dynamic range.

Slides have a wide dynamic range - particularly when projected. What slides lack is latitude - the ability to faithfully record and render detail using a variety of different exposures.
Mostly a matter of semantics, but I think the difference is important.

DREW WILEY · Apr 14, 2020

Hardly a matter of semantics. Looking at something backlit using a slide projector or lightbox is one thing, getting it to reproduce well in print or copy is another. I can remember ordering some commercial prints from my slides when I was about 16. The slide shows were spectacular; the prints were awful. About 16 more years and Cibachrome became available, and I learned how to make my own prints from color chromes ten times better than any lab could. But I also put in the extra work necessary. When that medium became endangered, and then extinct, I spent more time mastering color negative printing, and again got results far better than one would ordinary expect from a commercial lab; but once again, more work involved too. Nowadays people just go around bragging how they can almost instantly do anything via PS and inkjet, and it sure looks like it too - garbage-in/garbage-out. Anything of real quality takes some serious commitment.

Alan Edward Klein · Apr 14, 2020

The 16x20" prints I made for hanging in my house 30 years ago came mainly from Velvia 50 medium format positives. The lab used an internegative (I think 4x5") and then printed on C paper or was it R paper? I still have two hanging but they've faded some. One of them looks like a 3D, I swear is looks like I pasted the leaves and stalks into the frame.

I'm thinking of have a couple of the Velvias pro-scanned and re-printed by a pro. What would be the best current method?

foc · Apr 14, 2020

I shot freelance for a local weekly paper back in the mid to late 1980's. I managed to convince them to accept colour prints for conversion to B&W reproduction.
The norm then was a glossy 10x8 B&W print and they wouldn't accept colour prints because of colour casts. Since I did my own colour prints (machine prints) I could make sure there were no colour casts but the repro camera operator at the paper was against it.
I asked him to let me make the halftone print from my colour print and then he could judge if it was acceptable.
The system they used was the Agfa repromaster camera, just like this.

He begrudgingly accepted my print and so I could submit colour prints but I also had to make the halftones for him.

athbr · Apr 14, 2020

foc said:
I shot freelance for a local weekly paper back in the mid to late 1980's. I managed to convince them to accept colour prints for conversion to B&W reproduction.
The norm then was a glossy 10x8 B&W print and they wouldn't accept colour prints because of colour casts. Since I did my own colour prints (machine prints) I could make sure there were no colour casts but the repro camera operator at the paper was against it.
I asked him to let me make the halftone print from my colour print and then he could judge if it was acceptable.
The system they used was the Agfa repromaster camera, just like this.
View attachment 243966
He begrudgingly accepted my print and so I could submit colour prints but I also had to make the halftones for him.

Sounds like a lot of effort! Why did you shoot colour for BW reproduction?

Did you want to have colour versions in your portfolio?

DREW WILEY · Apr 14, 2020

Alan, internegs are no longer commercially available. I make my own for RA4 printing, but it's quite involved. Old Type R prints were "reversal" made directly from chromes, and faded quickly. That method was largely replaced by the much better Cibachrome process, itself now obviously extinct. Velvia is difficult to print due to its high contrast, so a premium quality drum scan would probably be best. Then the output options are either inkjet or some laser printing device like Lightjet. Since I don't do digital printing, I haven't kept up with who is offering what, but Bob Carnie's lab up in Toronto, Elevator Digital, does high quality work. You might inquire about his pricing.

Rob Skeoch · Apr 14, 2020

Luckless said:
Any chance you could expand on that? What kind of 'ganging together' for the prints were they using, and what benefit was that over doing them on individual prints?

They were all glued to one page and then copied to make the separations. It was just a time saver and cheaper.

Down Under · Apr 14, 2020

During my newspaper days in Canada (1962-1973) and later as a magazine editor in Australia (1977-1980), we used color slides over negatives for sharpness and color quality and technical ease of reproduction. A few posters have already written good basic explanations of how the letterpress and offset repro processes worked (letterpress I think is still used in small publishing houses). As an editor with seven magazines to produce every month in Sydney, I wanted to get saturated colors and close to natural skin tones efficiently and quickly. Slides were best for our needs as they eliminated one one step in the process. Color negatives in the '70s had a magenta bias and also tended to pale and sickly greens and yellows, which meant fiddly adjustments in the in-house camera room.

B&W photographs for newspaper use had to be somewhat on the mid to dark grey side. The prints I sold to newspapers then would have been too dull (in greys, not subject matter!) to be acceptable to wedding or commercial-industrial clients.From 1962 I shot news photos and weddings in B&W with Kodak Verichrome Pan and the wonderful GAF/Ansco Versapan films. By 1970 color negative films were all the rage and only newspapers wanted B&W for anything.

One magazine camera operator we had prefered slides exposed for projection (= a third to half a stop under) for, he said, better color. His successor went the opposite way and wanted everything shot spot-on. I suepect the first op didn't care to do too much fiddly work to adjust contrast and tones, but the second did. Neither ever explained their choice(s).

I left publishing in 1980 and since then I've sold images to publishers and stock agencies only as a sideline, so I really don't know what the media now wants. I would think only digital color, which has really turned everything topsy-turvy in our world.

StepheKoontz · Apr 14, 2020

MattKing said:
Slides have a wide dynamic range - particularly when projected. What slides lack is latitude - the ability to faithfully record and render detail using a variety of different exposures.
Mostly a matter of semantics, but I think the difference is important.

A color negative has a much wider dynamic range i.e. the range of luminance recorded. With a slide it's almost impossible to hold shadow detail without blowing out the highlights, even projected. With negative film, you limit the dynamic range when printing to get enough contrast to not end up with a muddy looking print. Where you place that contract compression is where the latitude comes from.

MattKing · Apr 14, 2020

StepheKoontz said:
A color negative has a much wider dynamic range i.e. the range of luminance recorded. With a slide it's almost impossible to hold shadow detail without blowing out the highlights, even projected. With negative film, you limit the dynamic range when printing to get enough contrast to not end up with a muddy looking print. Where you place that contract compression is where the latitude comes from.

Ah, but what you are talking about is not the dynamic range of the medium, but rather its capacity to capture dynamic range.
You are really talking about the unexposed film, not the result (slide or negative).
If you hold up and look at a slide and a negative, the slide has wide dynamic range and the negative has very little.

athbr · Apr 14, 2020

On a similar note: Why does slide film have higher resolution and finer grain than print film?

If slide film records a negative image until the reversal process then couldn't one also make print film with the same fine-grain qualities?

MattKing · Apr 14, 2020

There are all sorts of very technical answers, but over-simplifying incredibly, what you see on the processed slide are the tiny spaces between the clumps of exposed silver halides.
The spaces are smaller than the clumps, and there are more of them.

markbau · Apr 15, 2020

MattKing said:
Slides have a wide dynamic range - particularly when projected. What slides lack is latitude - the ability to faithfully record and render detail using a variety of different exposures.
Mostly a matter of semantics, but I think the difference is important.

Dynamic range is actually a problematic term in photography. We rarely encounter pure black or pure white, either of which could serve as a reference for dynamic range, we are left with areas with and without discernible detail, or to use a zone system term, a textural range. Whatever you want to call it, everyone knows that with slide film, shadows turn black and highlights blow out much quicker than with neg film.

jtk · Apr 15, 2020

Pieter12 said:
Color separations used to be quite expensive. Making one or several large separations vs many smaller ones saved quite a bit of money and time. Ganging slides or prints for colors separations allowed you to make one large set of separation film that would then be cut and stripped individually. It is a cost-saving measure, but does not allow for adjustments for individual images. It makes more sense for prints, since they can all be printed to similar contrast, etc.

Separations are/were made to precise size required by the graphic designer...their purpose was to produce half tone (dot pattern) plates that would then be used to apply ink to paper via the press. Could not be re-sized because of the dots. Separations were rarely made continuous tone (no-dot-pattern) . A very rare exception was continuous tone separations for dye transfer prints (no dot pattern).

Pieter's gang scanning method was useful (I did it on a couple of projects) and did not sacrifice quality ASSUMING the transparencies were excellent . If the transparencies were not what the designer/client/art director wanted it was smart to perfect them in duplication before scanning. Prints-to-size could be used instead of transparencies if the lithographer was willing.

Motorland Magazine (California Automobile Association) hired me almost every month for a food photo project (e.g. a picnic or holiday meal) that involved photos of people (e.g at picnic), location photography, and food photography. The art director also bought transparencies from other sources (such as Barry Goldwater and David Muench) . https://www.shoparizonahighways.com...goldwater-the-arizona-highways-collection-new https://images.search.yahoo.com/yhs...uench&fr=yhs-omr-001&hspart=omr&hsimp=yhs-001

That art director, like many, didn't know how to evaluate transparencies...if a 4X5 chrome that depicted a certain cactus flower and was composed well, he simply sent it to the lithographer...often getting very bad results. Why did my 4X5 chromes always look wonderful and those he bought from Getty (or wherever) so often look miserable when printed?

I explained that his originals, some shot in the 50s on Ektachrome E2 (two !) had aged terribly by the 80s. I could correct them in duplication...so he hired me for that as well as for shoots. He'd give me several bad transparencies each month, I'd make the dupes and supervise/evaluate the lithographers proofs. Made good almost-monthly money that way for several years . Suddenly, monthly magazine beauty became easy for him. A day or two of photography and half a day with the lithographer for me. I had fun with both roles.

DREW WILEY · Apr 15, 2020

There have been quite a variety of both slide and color neg films, so making generic statements about one versus the other can be misleading, like implying chrome film is finer-grained or inherently higher resolution.

StepheKoontz · Apr 16, 2020

MattKing said:
Ah, but what you are talking about is not the dynamic range of the medium, but rather its capacity to capture dynamic range.

That is what dynamic range is...

MattKing said:
If you hold up and look at a slide and a negative, the slide has wide dynamic range and the negative has very little.

Clearly we are not talking about the same thing. If I hold up a slide and a negative of a contrasty scene: in the shadow areas that are blocked up on the slide, I will see details in the negative, and the same for the blown out highlight portions of the slide, the negative will have printable information..

The below article matches my experience:

"What Is Dynamic Range?
Quite simply put, the dynamic range of film or a camera sensor is the difference between the lightest and darkest values that it can capture without losing detail in these areas and blowing out the shadows and highlights into oblivion. So, a higher dynamic range would mean a film can capture a scene with a bigger difference between its lightest and darkest values, and a lower dynamic range would mean it would probably wash out the highlights and shadows into white and black blobs when trying the capture the same image."

"Different types of films are also known to have different dynamic ranges. A particular film will usually come with its own data in this regard, but in general negative film is known to have a lower contrast and higher dynamic range, while slide films are known to have a higher level of contrast and present with lower dynamic range. In general, negative film can provide 8 stops of dynamic range, with slide film doing maybe 4 to 5 stops."

https://istillshootfilm.org/post/115292137585/the-real-dynamic-range-of-film

Rolfe Tessem · Apr 16, 2020

What has not been mentioned thus far is that until the latest generation, color negative films were vastly inferior to the reversal films available in the '60s, 70's and 80's. Kodachrome set the standard, and the various Kodacolor, Ektacolor, and Vericolor negative films couldn't hold a candle.

I think that with the current Portra and Ektar emulsions, the playing field has pretty much been leveled.

Rolfe

MattKing · Apr 16, 2020

StepheKoontz said:
Clearly we are not talking about the same thing.

Yes - you are talking about the capacity of the unprocessed film to capture and render dynamic range.
But the initial reference was to the dynamic range of the final result - the processed slide.

StepheKoontz · Apr 16, 2020

MattKing said:
Yes - you are talking about the capacity of the unprocessed film to capture and render dynamic range.
But the initial reference was to the dynamic range of the final result - the processed slide.

The final print of a negative can also by far exceed the dynamic range of a slide, which is only 5 or so stops. Depends on how contrasty the paper used is. I'm talking about modern films, negative film back in the 1960's wasn't nearly as good.

Pieter12 · Apr 16, 2020

When I first mentioned dynamic range, I was referring to an image viewed (and scanned) with transmitted light has more tonal range between the darkest and lightest areas as compared to a reflective light image (print).

Why did magazines prefer slides to negatives?

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