Why did studio photographers use slide film back in the day?

[koraks]

Thanks @eli griggs and yes, I understand the attractiveness of slides in that they're so easy to judge. But to play the devil's advocate - a contact sheet of CN negatives allows the same, and doesn't take that much more time to make. It might have helped, but I'm sure it was the whole package of characteristics that made slide king in those days, not just one aspect. And yes, I do agree that the package related to the entire production chain!

 

[brbo]

This is not to nitpick, but your summary just didn't match my own experience at all. Back in the 1990s, our family switched from shooting slides to color negative because ...well, long story, but we wanted prints. Immediately, everything went grainy as heck. We used to project slides a couple of ft. across without very apparent grain and now we were looking at 5x7" prints that were decidedly grainy.

My findings about slide vs. negative mirror yours. That's when we are talking about grain in scanning.

I can't see grain in prints from negatives at such small sizes, though. I'm looking at a print (8" on longer side) from 110 film and obtrusive grain is not the first thing to come to mind (maybe because the first thing I think about is how poor a photographer I am ).

But, I can see grain with naked eye from Lomochrome Color '92 even on prints smaller than 10". Maybe all negative films in 90s were as bad?

 

[koraks]

Grain is a funny thing, @brbo. While it's unrealistic that one could ever see actual grain (sized at approx. 10um or so on the film) in as small a print as a 5x7 from a 35mm frame, the grain does seem to create something like an interference pattern that makes especially areas of even tone gritty. I'm pretty sure it's not the direct visualization of the grain itself, but a compound effect - and it's certainly gone if enlargement goes down (i.e. you use a larger piece of film to make the same sized print).

I've got some 5x7" prints from Vision3 250D here on my desk and they prove the point, for me at least. They're nice, but they don't have, and actually cannot have the smoothness of the 7x9" print from the (very expired!) Kodak Vericolor 4x5" negative I made the other day. That one does look as smooth as the Velvia 100F slides - as long as I don't enlarge too much beyond this point. With a good loupe, I can already see the grain appearing in this print, and it's only about a 4x (surface area) enlargement.

 

[Helge]

Also slide had, a somewhat deserved, reputation of keeping colour better over time. Not a problem for a magazine, but a problem for a photographer trying build up general and reusable work.

Slides fine grain as compared to CN is solely because of the second saturating exposure that brings all grain of the positive image “into play”.

Comparing the sharpness/resolution of CN and chrome is difficult and fraught with misunderstandings. But overall it could be said that slide has more inherent micro contrast.
It has to, because it is in itself a display medium.

 

[albireo]

Also slide had, a somewhat deserved, reputation of keeping colour better over time.

Off on a slight tangent, but what are current estimates for C41 negative durability? Eg are you aware of any figures describing time before fading starts, in average temp/humidity storage scenarios?

 

[Dazzer123]

Guys, i want to re-take my test shot tomorrow and to try and get a exposure better.

Please take a look at the first version below.

I'll get my middle grey reading from a grey card placed on top, but it's be roughly equivalent to the brushed silver / bronze top of the R2R machine.

I'm shooting Ektachrome 100.

My question: what reading should i get when spot metering (film plane) on the LED lights on the floor? I mean in relation to my middle grey reading. Their brightness is freely adjustable via an iphone app so i can dial them in just right.

In the version below i had them much too bright compared to the rest of the scene, so after increasing the exposure in post to correct my original under-exposure, they became all washed out.

In the 80's & 90's i think a lot of neon tubes were used in advertising so there must have been a rule of thumb for their exposure value to get the most vibrant colors from them?

Thanks!

 

[Craig]

I think what you would have to do was bring the brightness of everything else up to just above the neon, either with hot lights or strobe and in effect slightly underexpose the neon to get it saturated.

Don't forget, back in the day a lot of flash meters and Polaroid was used to judge when the lighting just right.

 

[MattKing]

My question: what reading should i get when spot metering (film plane) on the LED lights on the floor?

The reading that gives you the result you want.
That probably sounds flippant, but it wasn't intended to.
Spot meters aren't really designed for reading the light being emitted by a light source. They are designed for reading the luminance of light reflected off a subject.
The intention being that you take that reading and then adjust it, depending on what tone you intend the subject to have in the final print or screen image.

 

[Helge]

Off on a slight tangent, but what are current estimates for C41 negative durability? Eg are you aware of any figures describing time before fading starts, in average temp/humidity storage scenarios?

C-41 and various other CN processes used to have much worse and uneven fading of some of the dyes than today.
Without knowing anything factual, I’d estimate that C-41 and E6 are about on equal footing with regard to archivability.
Dark, cool and dry and your film will last basically forever.

 

[Dazzer123]

The reading that gives you the result you want.
That probably sounds flippant, but it wasn't intended to.
Spot meters aren't really designed for reading the light being emitted by a light source. They are designed for reading the luminance of light reflected off a subject.
The intention being that you take that reading and then adjust it, depending on what tone you intend the subject to have in the final print or screen image.

Not flippant, but a little circular! Just kidding!

I don't see what difference it makes if the light is reflected or emissive, light is light when it arrives at the film plane, right? Not trying be argumentative, please correct me if i'm wrong!

 

[Helge]

Guys, i want to re-take my test shot tomorrow and to try and get a exposure better.

Please take a look at the first version below.

I'll get my middle grey reading from a grey card placed on top, but it's be roughly equivalent to the brushed silver / bronze top of the R2R machine.

I'm shooting Ektachrome 100.

My question: what reading should i get when spot metering (film plane) on the LED lights on the floor? I mean in relation to my middle grey reading. Their brightness is freely adjustable via an iphone app so i can dial them in just right.

In the version below i had them much too bright compared to the rest of the scene, so after increasing the exposure in post to correct my original under-exposure, they became all washed out.

In the 80's & 90's i think a lot of neon tubes were used in advertising so there must have been a rule of thumb for their exposure value to get the most vibrant colors from them?

Thanks!

View attachment 354292

LEDs and real neon (or the other gases used in neon tubing) are very different light sources. Neon is much more spiky in its spectrum.
There is basically no way of knowing exactly how your film is going to react.
If it’s dark, neon lights will always register. Do you want the neon to completely dominate or do you want it as part of a scene?
It’s easier to measure the background and decide how much you want to dial that up or down.

 

[MattKing]

Not flippant, but a little circular! Just kidding!

I don't see what difference it makes if the light is reflected or emissive, light is light when it arrives at the film plane, right? Not trying be argumentative, please correct me if i'm wrong!

The challenge with a light source within the frame is that it is difficult to visualize how it is supposed to look in the final result.
With something like a rock, you can look at it and say - it looks like it should appear about 1 zone brighter than a grey card, so I will take a reading off of it, and then give the film one stop more exposure than that.
But in your case, you have an adjustable light source within the subject - an adjustable "rock" as it were. And a meter that is designed to read light reflecting off a subject, rather than light being emitted by a subject - the meter has a built in 18% (or 14%, or 12%, or - depends on the meter) adjustment built into the calibration - the meter assumes that the subject is absorbing something like 82% of the light hitting it.

 

[Roger Cole]

the slide films were also of much better grain and so on compared to the colour Negative films of the day.

Well, Kodachrome was. I remember reading in Pop Photo that the standard for magazine reproduction was either a 35mm Kodachrome (120 Kodachrome did not exist though it later did, rather briefly I think) or an 8x10 Ektachrome. Anything else was considered inferior.

 

[Roger Cole]

When I joined Photrio I think the first thread I posted was the question: why do slide films deliver finer grain than a color negative film of comparable speed?

Nearly all answers fell into these two buckets:

1. They don't. Provia 100 and E100 aren't finer grained than Ektar.
2. We don't know whether it's true.

And yet again... I see several claims that slides are finer grained.

They aren't now. They were back then.

 

[Duceman]

Going through this thread, I'm reminded of a scene from "The Devil Wears Prada" (2006), which centers around the world of fashion via a fashion magazine, where Stanely Tucci's character is sitting at a light table, holding a loupe and viewing an assortment of positives from that day's shoot.

 

[koraks]

I don't see what difference it makes if the light is reflected or emissive, light is light when it arrives at the film plane, right?

You're right. Light is light.

But Matt is also right:

The challenge with a light source within the frame is that it is difficult to visualize how it is supposed to look in the final result.

This is especially try with narrow-band light sources like LEDs which may interact with the spectral sensitivity of the film and the light meter in unanticipated ways. When shooting slide film, you may end up being slightly off as a result. But I wouldn't worry about it too much.

what reading should i get when spot metering (film plane) on the LED lights on the floor?

You're the boss! But in general, I'd try to stay within +2.5 stops from your middle grey reading for the brightest area on the floor that the light shines on, and then let the actual light source itself fall where it may. This is a bit haphazard when dealing with slide film, but because your light source is essentially monochromatic, it'll still look nice and colorful. If you were to balance your readings on the actual light source itself, you may end up with a somewhat unfortunately balance. You'd either underexpose the entire scene a bit, or you'd dial the LEDs down properly and end up with too little of a colorful effect on the surroundings to be worthwhile. So I wouldn't worry too much about slightly blowing out the light source itself. With white lights, the story would be slightly different, depending on the scene and the effect you're after.

I'll get my middle grey reading from a grey card placed on top, but it's be roughly equivalent to the brushed silver / bronze top of the R2R machine.

Careful with the brushed aluminum as it's highly reflectant so how it meters depends strongly on how it's lit - more so than the more matte surface of a good grey card.

LEDs and real neon (or the other gases used in neon tubing) are very different light sources. Neon is much more spiky in its spectrum.

Colored LEDs are also very 'spiky', i.e. narrow-band emitters. For photography, they're quite equivalent to neon. LEDs are just easier to adjust. The caveat is that dimmable colored LEDs tend to be PWM-ed and this can result in problems with short shutter speeds and low PWM frequencies. Sadly this is difficult to predict. With longer shutter speeds (1/25 and longer) it shouldn't be a problem.
White LEDs are a different story. White LEDs and colored LEDs should be considered separately, with white LEDs being more of a mixture of LEDs and fluorescents.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

One of the advantages of using transparency film, was colour accuracy. We did a real lot of product photography, 14 studios with often two photographers per studio, going hammer and tongs day in day out.

The film we used almost exclusively was Kodak EPN, which if my memory is correct, was designed to render colour as the human eye sees it. Most of our film was with medium format cameras, Hasselblad, Mamiya RB67 and eventually and thankfully Mamiya RZ67 with motor drive.

Apart from the fact the negative size was slightly different between the Hasselblad and Mamiya systems, 6x6 versus 6x7, there was a distinct contrast difference between the two manufacturers. The Mamiya lenses were slightly contrastier than the Hasselblad and dependent upon the product being photographed, the camera system lenses could be the decider of which one was to be used.

It was fairly common to use the flatter Hasselblad lenses to photograph fluffy white towels using a three and a half stop highlight to shadow subject brightness range. The exposure used was designed to make the transparency slightly too dark, then we would develop the film with a half stop push process to give a contrast kick to the final transparency. They made white fluffy towels look positively brilliant, yet at the same time held highlight and shadow detail wonderfully.

Doing stuff like that was only possible using transparency film and viewing the film on colour corrected light boxes with shrouds that eliminated room lighting.

For fashion photography, although we didn't do that much, we had had one very large studio running fashion stuff. For those we used the brilliant Rolleiflex 6000 series with motordrives and almost every conceivable aid a fashion photographer could wish for. The Rollei lenses were stunning and seemed to be a combination of Hasselblad flatness and Mamiya's contrast rolled into one beautiful range of lenses. Rollei transparencys when on the light boxes had their particular look, we often drooled over them.

One important aspect of transparency film usage, was with colour correction (CC) filters. You were able to use a certain CC filter and see the difference on the lightbox. However if you used a CC on a colour negative film, the CC filter effect would invariably be negated in the printing process.

Transparency film was king for almost all types of professional photography because the advertising directors, or whomever, would okay lightbox seen frames for reproduction immediately.

We used colour negative film for anything where the colour balance couldn't be controlled, or if a mural sized print was required. We made mural prints 1.8m high by 6m wide and often spliced these prints to mage billboard sized mural prints. Literally sewing them together using sailboat sail making techniques and machinery.

Great summary Mick. Question. What lens did you use for closeup work with the RB67 and why?

 

[Helge]

Colored LEDs are also very 'spiky', i.e. narrow-band emitters. For photography, they're quite equivalent to neon. LEDs are just easier to adjust. The caveat is that dimmable colored LEDs tend to be PWM-ed and this can result in problems with short shutter speeds and low PWM frequencies. Sadly this is difficult to predict. With longer shutter speeds (1/25 and longer) it shouldn't be a problem.
White LEDs are a different story. White LEDs and colored LEDs should be considered separately, with white LEDs being more of a mixture of LEDs and fluorescents.

Atomic Spectra

 

[maltfalc]

Ah-ha, so it was also for the convenience of the people downstream in the chain, to easily and quickly view the image with the correct color.

Perhaps silly question: is there no way to optically view a negative with the correct colors, other than be printing through color filters in an enlarger? (i'm talking pre-digital)

using an analog video camera would technically be pre-digital, but if you want to do it without any sort of electronic processing, your best option would be firing a flash through it in a dark room to burn a nice bright positive afterimage into your retinas.

 

[DREW WILEY]

It's not doubt been pointed out now several times; but large format sheet film chromes were the reproduction standard for decades. Editors and stock photo agencies could just slap them atop a big light box and instantly see what was there. There was also the implications that serious equipment and professional skills were involved. Studios could adjust the lighting to rein in the contrast to reproducible levels; and field professionals knew how to pick the right scene contrast as well.

I started out with old Ektachrome 64, which seems "grainy" by today's standards. But right in this house I've got precisely printed 30X40 inch big Cibachromes on my walls enlarged form 4X5 Ektachrome; and it's hard to detect the grain even in those. So in magazine or book fashion, a non-issue too. Small format like 120 and 35mm was less acceptable unless for sports or journalistic purposes.

Subsidiary topic : chrome duplicates. Well, I know how to make very precise ones, almost indistinguishable from the original, were it not for the fact I went that route in order to incorporate all the contrast and hue corrections within the second version, making it a precision copy which was more printable. But you didn't get that from ordinary commercial lab services; too much work and expense. They were on the clock.

 

[wiltw]

I think the perceived graininess of slide vs negative film probably has something to do with whether you're seeing grain (or its descendant dye clouds) structure in the highlights vs in the shadows

Indeed, with color emulsions, what we see is NOT 'grain' because the grains are dissolved away during processing. What we perceive are the dye clouds that cluster around the grain site, and the dyes can 'clump' visually because they exist in 3-D space that may overlap one another visually.

 

[koraks]

@Helge I see what you mean now - by 'spiky' you refer to the various spectral peaks of Ne while LED typically only has one (and perhaps a very small secondary one). Yes? I referred to the width of the peak(s).

 

[Dazzer123]

Subsidiary topic : chrome duplicates. Well, I know how to make very precise ones, almost indistinguishable from the original, were it not for the fact I went that route in order to incorporate all the contrast and hue corrections within the second version, making it a precision copy which was more printable.

Can you explain this?

What was the process?

Why / how was it easier to nail the dupe?

 

[Dazzer123]

About the LEDs: thanks for the info, i guess i'll just play round with them, maybe choose like +3 for the light itself and see what happens with that.

I'm not too worried about how they translate onto film, i did a few test shots already with colored LEDs on various films and cameras, and as long as the exposure is ok, the color was also fine. I'm not looking for scientifically accurate color anyway, if it's a little off, who's to know?!

 

[DREW WILEY]

Traditional dupes involved a special low-contrast duplicating film, which was flashed in order to further reduce the contrast, to help match the contrast level of the original. It was a rapid and almost automated operation once provided by all major film labs. Those special films are no longer made.

The route I took was a far more precise, but a lot more laborious. I generally made duplicates via contact of 8x10 originals, but sometime smaller formats via either contact of enlargement, using precise punch and register gear with special contrast and hue correction masks in place. The best duplicating film I ever used was actually Astia 100F. I have a quite sophisticated true RGB colorhead ideal for this kind of purpose. (No - NOT LED- horror!), But with the demise of Cibachrome, I started making precision color internegatives from certain of my old chromes instead, for sake of current RA4 chromogenic printing onto Fuji Crystal Archive products. That's even more involved if one expects optimal results.