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Slide Film
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I have never shot anything using slide film before. Am thinking about giving it a go.
Any advice?
How expensive is it?
Any good films you’d recommend?You can’t go too far wrong with good ol’ Fujichrome Sensia – it’s a good general purpose slide film. As far as price is concerned, I don’t know – haven’t used it in a long time (my staple diet was Provia) – but have a look at http://www.7dayshop.com for pricing.
One thing slide film and digital have in common is that you’ve got to be careful with your highlights – so basically, expose for the highlights and you should be OK.
Hope you have fun with it!
Thanks ECP – hopefully get a chance to give it a go soon.
Excuse my ignorance but what do you mean expose for the highlights… does the film overexpose easily?
Yes it is very similar to digital raw with highlights and also latitiude (about 5 stops).
Essentially, yes. As always, there are exceptions. Much can depend on your subject and lighting.
When using film, whether slide or neg, it’s always worth sacrificing a few rolls when you start out with a new film you haven’t used before in order to get an idea of it’s characteristics. The problem with slide film is that it has a very narrow exposure latitude. Even changes of 1/3 stop in exposure can have a significant impact. If you overexpose slide film it’s a bit like blowing the highlights in digital – there’s nothing there to recover as you’re left with clear emulsion. I do think, however, that slide film is more forgiving than digital, so if you’re getting good exposures digitally, then you should have no problem with slide. If you want to read a bit more on this have a look at http://www.photo.net/learn/making-photographs/film and http://www.cs.wayne.edu/~kjz/KPZ/PhotoTechnique/ to start off with.
– Thorsten
Dave —
I have not got a clue what you are talking about. :)
‘digital raw with highlights and also latitiude (about 5 stops).’My digital camera is only very basic and I cannot shoot RAW. What do you mean by lattitude?
He’s talking about the range of brightness levels that a film can record. So on a dull day, slide film looks great as it compresses (increases the contrast) of the scene. On sunny days, it’s tricky to stop big shadows going black and clouds from going pure white.
1 stop of light is the difference between say.. F4 and F5.6 on your camera (if you have a spotmeter mode you can point at different parts of the scene and find out what the range is. Every time you change the camera by 1 stop it either doubles or halves the light getting in.
Si
Thanks for answering that Allinthemind,
Couldn’t have put it better myself.
Have fun with the slides – I shoot slides most of the time – apart from commercial work.
Fool around with it a bit, but remember to take notes of what you have done so you can remember the next time.
When shooting slides with my old Nikon D60 I set the camera at one half stop underexposed and this gives me great results – but it took a while for me to find the right balance.Try different films as well – as mentioned, Sensia is a great starting point, but Astia can give very subtle tones, and Velvia gives highly saturated and bold colours (never to be used for portraits !!).
Rgds
kevin
Sounds like slide film is better suited to dull days……
Great, thanks all for the advice & tips . Much appreciated!!
Looking forward to trying it out. Will post when I do it.I always use fuji
i started off with sensia, and then tried provia, provia has in my opinion, better tones, i have a roll of velvia 50 that i bought last november, it is still sitting in the fridge (always keep your slide film in the fridge, its sensitive to heat)
i never used any velvia but it is great for landscapes, brings out vibrant colours, not really reccommended for reproducing natural skin tones :wink:Hi all, been a bit slow to move on this
was going to get some
Fuji Provia 100F – 135-36
and a couple
Fuji Sensia II 200 – 135-36Don’t really know what the numbers mean!!
As far as Fuji (and a lot of other film brands are concerned) a number in the film title is indicative of the film speed or film sensitivity, so Fuji Provia 100F is the version of Provia that has an ISO of 100. The higher the ISO, the more sensitive it is to light, so you need less light to get the same exposure as the film speed goes up. There are other factors to consider as well, but you needn’t worry about these for some time yet as they are not important at this early stage.
The 135-36 simply means that the film format is 135 (or 35mm) and has 36 exposures on the roll.
– Thorsten.
Bought a roll of Sensia 400 in the local shop in the end… cost ?9.99 for one roll!! errrrrk!!
Was going to use it for a gig, but turns out I’m not going to bring the camera because I;m not allowed.For processing – do I just bring it into my local shop??
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