Why shoot analogue colour photos?

[Milpool]

It’s only analogous from the hobby enjoyment perspective. What is high end about reversal film? I use Ektachrome but I’d rather use the Portra films (actually I’d rather use a good digital camera).

This is akin to trying to explain the true value of an expensive high end audio system to someone who has zero interest in the hobby, and would never want spend the kind of money required to own it.

 

[Pieter12]

Does that mean that it's safe for the film to put it into checked baggage, or that the TSA has no problem with you destroying your film that way?

The TSA really could care less.

 

[Chan Tran]

For me, slides were something for very boring family parties, with awkward holiday snaps. I would love to understand why some people cherish that workflow so much.

When I began I shot slides because I didn't do the printing myself. Now that I no longer have a darkroom I shoot slides because I can't do the printing myself. So actually shooting slides is to reduce the workflow down to shooting and viewing and bypass the processing step. I pushed process the Ektachrome once back in the late 70's but no more as I hate the result. So I just have my slide film processed as per manufacturer intended. I view my slides with a projector just like I view my digital on the computer screen. I never show my photos to anyone unless I was asked to do so.

 

[Pieter12]

In the days of yore, I shot reversal film because it was cheaper, no prints to pay for, and quicker turnaround if needed. But if I wanted a print, it had to be special because it cost $$ (at least for me at the time).

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

Does that mean that it's safe for the film to put it into checked baggage, or that the TSA has no problem with you destroying your film that way?

I read it to mean they think developed film is OK to put in checked bags. They say that all undeveloped film should stay with you when you go through the checkpoints.

 

[dcy]

You would be surprised to learn how few photographers have actually produced an image on slide film, let alone viewed it directly.

I am of the age where slide film is a faint, nostalgic childhood memory. I remember my dad setting up the projector and me and my brother sitting in my parents' bed with them to watch the slides. If I recall correctly, the slides where not of a recent trip, but of our childhood, my parents' wedding, or further back in time.

I literally just realized right now that the must've been taken by my grandfather. I have no memory of him, but I know he was a photography enthusiast.

 

[George Mann]

What is high end about reversal film?

It is the only type of film that one can see all of its fidelity by viewing it directly.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

Scanning my slides has an advantage over slide projection. You can set up the whole show on a memory card that is already plugged into your smart TV's USB jack. Then, when unsuspecting guests are over, you can easily switch the Super Bowl show they're watching to your favorite vacation slide show without having to set up anything and prewarning them to feign a headache and have to go home early. Of course, you'll never get them to visit again. But that might not be so bad.

 

[dcy]

For me, slides were something for very boring family parties, with awkward holiday snaps. I would love to understand why some people cherish that workflow so much.

I look back at slide film with nostalgia. My most vivid connection to my family's past was recorded in slide film.

 

[Don_ih]

My mother once accidentally received a box of slides since she bought the wrong kind of film. I remember it happening and I liked looking through the slides. But we had no projector so eventually those slides were thrown out.

 

[DREW WILEY]

Oh Alan ... a well done slide projector show is just so much more impressive than looking at images over the web or on a TV screen. Everyone did it at one time. But then there were those dreaded three-hour long vacation picture sessions of every motel between Boise and New Orleans, and the visit to the Croquet Hall of Fame. Then that era ended, and you got stuck watching dreaded holiday gathering videos of the same kind of boring stuff instead.

We didn't have anything like a movie theater in the mountains; but sometimes lecturers would come through and give slide shows of their exotic place travels in the basketball gym. When my brother was a young commercial photographer, he had a pal who repeatedly won international slide show competitions, and actually made a good living at it; he was a Leicaphile. I did very carefully choreographed slide shows of my own Pentax shots; and those images were quite good. But it would be another decade and a half before I learned how to make actual color prints myself.