I scanned through some of the replies so this may have already been mentioned. I’d like to go to a digital SLR someday but until then I still continue to use my Canon EOS. I seldom use anything higher than 100 speed film just because of the graininess.
What I’ve been doing is having my pictures put on a CD rather than getting prints made. It’s not true digital photography but you can work with them in Photoshop, Corel or whatever graphics editing package you have if you need to do any touch-ups.
What resolution do you shots come back at? Are they decently sharp? Are there any wierd color casts? Is the service available for larger formats (120 and 4x5 especially)?
Part of the problem for me shooting film anymore is that I absolutely despise the time it takes to scan images well, but enjoy the workflow of digital modification, and ease of sharing digital photos. For some reason, slides are really hard for me to scan, though I never have problems with negatives (other than the time commitment). Having a CD available when I pick up the negs would be really useful.
I doubt that a volume commercial operation would do medium format or larger scans because of the labor involved. If you’re an advanced amateur you might also be dissatisfied with the quality of the results.
What kind of slide film are you trying to scan? Most consumer scanners are designed for E6 films.
You know I never asked what the resolution is when I dropped my film off. I looked at one of my pictures using Microsoft Photo Editor. Said the resolution was 96 pixels/inch. Overall, I’ve been rather pleased with the film to CD processing.
Surprisingly, the best results I’ve had are from Wal-Mart. Everything I’ve had processed by them has turned out well. I’ve also taken film to a local CVS pharmacy for processing and they’ve been hit and miss - some pics turned out great while others were fuzzy.
Here’s some pictures so you can judge for yourself. All were shot with 100 speed film.
Yes I have a 3.2 Olympus & the crispness when you make a print from the digital is way better then print or slide negatives. The color & clearness of prints from digital cannot be compared to print or slide photo. [:o)][:p][:)]
Mostly E6. A lot of Provia 100F and some Astia 100 and Astia 100F. I think part of my problem stems from the fact that I don’t take the film out of the mount. On a couple of the photo boards I’m, I’ve heard that this really makes a difference when scanning slides.
Thanks for the thoughts and the links to the pictures. I’m not sure if this is what I need for printing pix digitally, but it might be useful for sharing shots on the web a bit more easily. Might have to try it one of these days.
Thanks again!
I’m not sure that “most railfans use slide film nowadays,” but maybe you could say “serious amateur photographers who aren’t into digital tend to prefer slide film.”
Slide film is not inordinately expensive if you order it from the jillion camera stores that advertise in Pop Photo (actually, bowing to reality, the magazine’s full name is now POPULAR PHOTOGRAPHY AND DIGITAL IMAGING).
Not only the Nat Geo, but the Triple-AAA travel magazines and, I believe, Kalmbach, prefer slide submissions. Your camera’s DX decoding feature can read the ISO of a slide film just as easily as a print film. It’s true that slides lack some of the “exposure latitude” of modern print film, meaning that they don’t deal as well with under- and overexposures, but they make it up in clarity of reproduction and ease of having prints made. Not going through an “internegative” stage means less loss of detail is involved.
Paul Simon was in error: It’s Ektachrome that does a better job with “the greens of summer.” Kokachrome’s emulsion is better at portraying the magenta end of things–yellows, oranges and reds. Fuji and Agfa make some creditable slide films, too. You can tell a slide film because its trade name will end in “-chrome,” unlike the “-color” of
most color print films.
This is not to say that C-41 isn’t a triumphant technology. Kodak has a new black-and-white print film that can (nay, MUST) be developed with the C-41 process. But it’s a true black-and-white, not blue-and-white as with Ilford and some of the earlier emulsions.
You must be talking to some old heads about the slide-print question. This debate, of course, predated people even dreaming of something called digital photography.
There were several reasons slides were prefered. One, many older railfans liked to show off their work, so the slide show became a popular medium for this. Second, Kodachrome was the first film of any type to have a rated image life of over 90 years (the accelerated ageing tests of the day were only rated at 90 years for accuracy). Many Kodachrome slides taken in the '40’s and '50’s still have clear pictures with good color. I’ve never heard of any such tests being done on other brand films, so I’ve stayed with Kodak for that reason.
My biggest personal complaint with digital cameras is the fact that they’re automatic and you can’t override the feature (unless you want to spend $1000+ for one, even then I’m not sure), so I’ve done limited digital photography. Forget doing a grab shot with one of these, they have to think about taking the picture for a few seconds, so any action has passed by the time the camera finally gets around to taking the shot. I’ll probably be staying with my Canon SLR for some time yet until they solve this problem at an affordable price.
Editors and ADs preferred reversal media because the print proofs could easily be compared with the originals. Even more important, during the editing process the results of shoots, which commonly resulted in hundreds of shots, could be reviewed by simply putting them on the light table. An experienced editor or AD could pick out the best images in a minute. That is not possible with negatives. The gamut of the print medium is just too limited to fully reproduce the full gamut of colors present on slides or negatives to make the subtle differences between the two important. Generally editorial staff couldn’t care less otherwise about the technical differences between negatives and transparencies.
As I said earlier, the writing is on the wall for analog. Many magazines and newspapers here have either fully switched or are switching to digital.
Just as there are people who prefer vinyl record albums to CD’s, or film to videotape, I’ve a hunch there will be “holdouts” who prefer to shoot emulsion rather than digital.
I don’t plan to be among the Last Guard but there are still some very good reasons not to go whole-hog digital. As Mr. Diehl so correctly points out, it takes a digital camera quite a while (a second or so) to compose and take the shot. This can be as ruinous in railfanning as it is in any other kind of action photography, such as sports.
One reason that newspapers are going digital is because the rest of their printing process has. In addition, they can send a digital image over the phone - impossible with film. Even if they wait until they get back to the office to download the images, the time comparison is huge - mere seconds for digital (and it’s ready to use) vs however long it takes to develop, stop, rinse, then dry the film, then transition it to a format the printer can use.
While magazines don’t have the same deadlines, they often have wider ranging contributors. Packaging up several digital images with a word processing document and emailing the bunch to the home office is faster and cheaper than snail mail, and if it gets lost, you know it immediately and a phone call remedies the problem.
I used print film for years, trying different brands and speeds in 35mm and 120 formats and putting the results in albums. Then the albums just began to occupy too much space. For that reason, and because I joined a railway society and now give occasional slide shows, | changed to transparencies. Those little plastic boxes need less room and the big projected pictures are impressive. I resisted digital, pouring scorn on the results from the early cameras. Then this year my wife bought me a Canon A95 compact. Only 5 megapixels but the quality is astounding. Using my very modest HP 5150 printer and cheap "compatible cartridges, I have just printed some pictures taken on the same Welsh railway last weekend with my Mamiya 6X6 and the A95. I had the 120 film developed and scanned. The prints from the two cameras are practically indistinguishable as regards quality but, of course, the very short lens of the A95 gives a lot more depth of field. I now wonder if I shall ever again carry that big Mamiya around. I need to use my 35mm cameras as long as I do slide shows or until an affordable digital projector comes along. Questions in answer to original question: 1. Do you want to do slide shows? 2. Do you already own a computer and printer? 3. Do you have the space to store decades of prints / albums? If NO, YES, NO - then get a digital camera. It does not have to be new or the latest model or have quadrillions of pixels. It does not even have to be an SLR as the viewing screen gives the view through the lens anyway and if you do not have interchangeable lenses you will at least keep your CCD sensor clean. These things depreciate rapidly so you can probably pick up a really good second hand Canon G2 or similar for not a lot. You have already worked out what to do if the answers were YES, NO, NO or NO, NO, YES! Have a great time whatever you use.
Not an issue with the “Pro” cameras such as the Nikon D2H or the D2X, which I haven’t tried yet, or equivalent Canons. Even a high-end consumer camera such as the D70 has no noticeable latency. I know what you mean, however, I’m fairly confident those features will trickle down to many consumer cameras within two years.