Why transparencies???

Before you jump all over me, hear me out...

I am enthralled with the vivid colors and sharpness that only seem to be achieved with slide/transparnecy film. But when printing from transparencies, don't you lose a lot of the quality that you shot the film for in the first place?

After attaining some more experience with b/w, I think I will start playing with color again, and the thought of slide film both intriques and puzzles me? What do most of you Velviaholics do with your slides, once processed? Any recommendations to be made?

Most of my 35mm slides are for different free lance projects I do each year, and if printed correctly, can achieve great results, of course in the day of the Cibachrome, it was fantastic!, now with the new machines in many of the shops, it is pretty easy to get acceptable results for sale.

Dave

What do I do with transparencies?

Well, I have maybe the top 1% printed , and I find it much easier to evaluate the qualities of a transparency, and to choose betwen close similars, than with a colour negative or a a proof that no-ones going to colour -match perfectly and so may not look much like what I'm going to get using a different print method for my larger prints. Then after, I find it easier to assess whether my printer has done a good job.

I show some to my library, who I'm sure respond to transparencies on a light-box better than they would to a pile of proof prints. I project some, for myself, for photographer friends and the odd society.

I'm not at all sure with todays printing methods that you lose much from the tranny anyway, though since my prints are made on Crystal Archive its possibly a bit difficult to tell what the source material is.

I use them solely for stereoscopic imaging. All my other photography is black and white now, with the exception of snaps, for which I use digital. My stereo slides are much more vivid than printing and mounting as stereographs, which I also do, but not as often. I don't, by the way, use velvia, but rather Kodachrome and more often now, Ektachrome.

- Randy

joeyk49 said:

What do most of you Velviaholics do with your slides, once processed?

Click to expand...

99.9% of my slides and transparencies go into one of several containers I have and get shelved. Sometimes never to be seen again, even by me, in years.

I've got to start looking at them and printing some more of them.

Art.

The good ones I have printed. Int eh good old days (a couplr of years ago I could send my slide somewhere say "match the slide" and I would get an ilfochrome or ciba that did. Now, having just found a place local that I want to try I will do that again. Other than that I print some in that evil ink method. The light jet and chromira is too damn expensive. I refuse to pay for scanning, tweeking and printing. It might be worth it to some but not to me. I would rather pay for the printing only. The ink prints are done on my father's equipment and it disgustingly easy to do.

Slides do not have the degree of color correction that negatives have. Printing from slides involves loss of data in the toe and shoulder due to the nature of the process. Color negatives have an inherent greater tone scale which they capture with greater fidelity due to the long straight characteristic curve and the masking.

PE

joeyk49 said:

What do most of you Velviaholics do with your slides, once processed? Any recommendations to be made?

Click to expand...

I look at them on my light table and scan them later. Once scanned I mount the ones I want to use in slide mount with glass and store them in containers. The other shots usually gets dumped into the trashcan. If I shoot for a customer I save all the slides in a container or slide sleeves with the customers name on them.
I use slides a lot in competions in photo clubs as I like to blow up my work.

I get my slides printed at the local photo store. I know it is just a high res scan they do and print it, but they do it very good.

joeyk49 said:

Before you jump all over me, hear me out...

I am enthralled with the vivid colors and sharpness that only seem to be achieved with slide/transparnecy film. But when printing from transparencies, don't you lose a lot of the quality that you shot the film for in the first place?

After attaining some more experience with b/w, I think I will start playing with color again, and the thought of slide film both intriques and puzzles me? What do most of you Velviaholics do with your slides, once processed? Any recommendations to be made?

Click to expand...

If you had ever seen a slide printed on Ilfochrome/Cibachrome, particularly the low contrast version, you wouldn't ask <grin>. Now that the chemistry is again available I am happily printing my slides.

Regards,
Ed

Thanks gents.

Very informative...as usual...

Joe

As David said, projection is part of the fun. Nothing like loading up the carousel and looking at the shots larger than my TV screen.

I've worked with both slide and negative film (like everyone else I think...) and I print everything on my own. Printing from color negatives is more fun because you can use room temperature chemicals, whereas with Ilfochrome (was Cibachrome) you have to use a water bath (or the drift-through method), unless you have a processor.

I used to prefer slides because of the intense color, but lately I've been finding the more muted colors that you get from color negatives (along with a wider exposure latitude) and have been shooting only with color print film, though I shoot much more black and white than color...

joeyk49 said:

Before you jump all over me, hear me out...

I am enthralled with the vivid colors and sharpness that only seem to be achieved with slide/transparnecy film. But when printing from transparencies, don't you lose a lot of the quality that you shot the film for in the first place?

After attaining some more experience with b/w, I think I will start playing with color again, and the thought of slide film both intriques and puzzles me? What do most of you Velviaholics do with your slides, once processed? Any recommendations to be made?

Click to expand...

It has been some years since I worked with color transparencies. A great deal depends on what you want to do with transparencies if you decide to use that film. Transparencies shine when used for projection and in color separations for printing.

Transparency film has never had the ability to have the exposure scale that color negative film has. This can amount to two to three stops less. That in large part is why color transparencies have the vivid colors and the snap that you notice.

This means that prints made from transparencies need to have one of two compensations at the printing stage to realize their true potential. The first would be contrast masking (that is what Chris Burkett does) the second would be to produce a color internegative and then using the color internegative as the basis for the print. I have seen excellent prints made both ways.

When I shot color transparencies, I did print with both types of Cibachrome and found that contrast masking was absolutely necessary.

Chaska said:

As David said, projection is part of the fun. Nothing like loading up the carousel and looking at the shots larger than my TV screen.

Click to expand...

What do you mean....larger than your TV screen...don't we all have projectors hanging and blowing CNN up on the wall

I use transparency film for projektion only and its the only way I shoot color.
Nothing beats a good slide on the screen.
I also like the challenge, no postcropping etc, what you see is what you get and you better make the exposure right. Thats my media (besides B&W offcource)
Søren
5h to holliday

99% of my B&W is also slides - Scala. The only really B&W negatives I shoot are IR films.

Art.