My first ever slide film

Alex_B · Oct 8, 2006

Since it's 10 years now since I exposed my first ever roll of slide film, I think I post a sample from that roll here

Don Simon · Oct 8, 2006

Nice! Were all the shots that well exposed? If so that's pretty impressive for slide film. I've got to admit I could never really get the hang of it.

P.s. I'm guessing that wasn't shot in Exeter?

Alex_B · Oct 8, 2006

That was not Exeter

, but on Lanzarote, a volcanic Island off the African coast.

Actually my first roll of slide film was an accident, as I don't speak spanish I bought it by accident and did not realise until I tried to get it developed

Of course some of the shots had blown out skies or plain black foregrounds as before I was only shooting negative which has a somewhat more extended dynamic range as we all know

ZaphodB said:
Nice! Were all the shots that well exposed? If so that's pretty impressive for slide film. I've got to admit I could never really get the hang of it.

P.s. I'm guessing that wasn't shot in Exeter?

mysteryscribe · Oct 8, 2006

The first roll of slide film I ever shot was kodachrome 25 indoors. the light was the same in all twentyfour shots and it happened to be right. (by accident I'm sure).. Over the years I tried to duplicate that kind of success with slide film without much luck.

As stated: if you expose for the ground the sky is too bright and if you expose for the sky the ground is black. If you try landscape going strickly by the exposure meter your shots are going to be very dark on the ground usually. Kodachrome slide film was wonderful stuff, but alas so hard to expose that I gave up on it about a hundred years ago. none of the other slide films is much better.

Now and then I had to make a slide show when I was in the business. I always bracked like you would not believe. One stop made all the difference between usable and trash... slide film with an auto strobe lighted work much better for me.

By the way your slides help up very well you must have taken better care of them than I did mine.

Alex_B · Oct 8, 2006

mysteryscribe said:
By the way your slides help up very well you must have taken better care of them than I did mine.

Anyway, that was some mass-consumer grade AGFA .. most likely 100. I have to admit that there was a bit of electronic colour restoration, but not much. This roll actually survived exceptionally well.

To me it is a mistery, since I have other rolls of film which have seriously degraded over just 5 years, being stored under exactly the same conditions. Maybe it is also a question of what the film experienced before being developed or even before being exposed (humidity, heat, ... ).

Anyway, one more from that first roll:

mysteryscribe · Oct 8, 2006

If that had been film the shy would be rich an there would be some detail in that tree... slide is tough stuff. But it looks good.

Since I havent fooled with slides in a while I was curious so I took that second image into an editor I have and was amazed at how much you can do with it. The balance is there (mostly) just had to tweak it a bit.

Alex_B · Oct 8, 2006

mysteryscribe said:
If that had been film the shy would be rich an there would be some detail in that tree... slide is tough stuff. But it looks good.

Since I havent fooled with slides in a while I was curious so I took that second image into an editor I have and was amazed at how much you can do with it. The balance is there (mostly) just had to tweak it a bit.

Well, feel free to edit

Anyway, that slide actually shows the sky as I remember it from the scene (humid grey blue and dull, actually rain in the background), and the only real light was on that village.

Of course I won't show where I failed utterly

Here comes another one, cropped and sharpened ... yes, I am digging out those old slides now.. there are thousands of them ... but this is probably the last for today.

Corry · Oct 8, 2006

Wow! Those are some awesome shots, Alex! I'm really liking that last one!

photo gal · Oct 8, 2006

Yeah that last one rocks!!! Nice series!! : )

mysteryscribe · Oct 8, 2006

I did NOT do this to make your shot look better because it doesn't I did it because I was curioius to see if slide, then digital editing might be a good way to go for special shoots. I wanted to see how much detail was in the slide film in areas that were just a little darker since exposuir is not consistant with slide film.

Alex_B · Oct 8, 2006

Last one for today ... promised

I know it is very dark and gloomy, actually, I already pushed it alot.

Alex_B · Oct 8, 2006

mysteryscribe said:
I did NOT do this to make your shot look better because it doesn't I did it because I was curioius to see if slide, then digital editing might be a good way to go for special shoots. I wanted to see how much detail was in the slide film in areas that were just a little darker since exposuir is not consistant with slide film.

Nice experiment. Yes, there is actually alot of detail in the dark parts. Maybe it should be redone with the original 16-bit scan. With 16-bits colour depth per channel there should be even more detail resolved than with 8-bit JPEG. At least from the scanning side ... not sure about the slide film itself though.

The 16-bit scans are on an external hard drive though, so I will not dig them out tonight.

mysteryscribe · Oct 8, 2006

Leads me to wonder about my own scanner and what I could do with a slide on it as opposed to a color negative. I never gave much thought to while capture as opposed to post capture corrections. Actually Im not sure I ever did a slide at all to be honest.

Alex_B · Oct 8, 2006

mysteryscribe said:
Leads me to wonder about my own scanner and what I could do with a slide on it as opposed to a color negative. I never gave much thought to while capture as opposed to post capture corrections. Actually Im not sure I ever did a slide at all to be honest.

Well, to me it seems, if you underexpose slightly, then slide film has a lot of potential when the image is corrected digitally later. I did scan about 6000 slides with a 35mm film scanner and results range from very nice to horrible, depending on film, exposure, age of the slides. But i haven't done the digital postprocessing for those 6000 yet

.
As the scanner tends to overpronounces the grain, I reduce the grain in a second step using software (The results of the scanner's grain reduction are rather poor, so I switch it off).

mysteryscribe · Oct 8, 2006

I have ten rolls of fuji 100 to 1000 iso slide film in the 120 format... I shot one roll it was a pain to get developed and it was underexposed at least half a stop as I used an averaging meter. I didn't even bother trying to fix it. Now Im wondering what I did with it. If I can find it, I might see if it can be salvaged in the editor.