Negative vs. Transparency - Pros and Cons | What's Your Favorite Type?

[Drew Wiley]

What can I say? I cut my teeth first shooting Kodachrome, then scaling up to chrome sheet film, then printing Cibachrome. I just took it for granted that exposures needed to be spot on. Just standard practice; otherwise, you ended up with nothing worthwhile. There were thousands of photographers, both pro and amateur who thought like that. Slides were routine with amateurs, and sheet film chromes the standard fare of commercial color work. Only portrait studios and wedding photographers used low-contrast color neg films with a degree of latitude. Tremendous latitude was built into amateur snapshot films like Kodacolor Gold, but the expectations were low too. I just kept working the strict way, and it has tremendously helped even my black and white work. And frankly, I can't afford to do it any other way. Large format film and excellent printing paper aren't cheap; how many misfires can one afford?

[BrianShaw]

I understood, Drew. But most of us can’t be you... yet we muddle along and make decent images occasionally nonetheless.

BTW... I started out with Kodachrome, then shot tons of Ektachrome but have always been happier and more successful with B&W and color neg. My favorite film seems to be everything you don’t like. Dang...

[Drew Wiley]

Can't be me? Why would you want to be me? Do you know how much money and time I wasted screwing things up in order to come to the point of understanding films like Ektar, or how to print them up to their real potential? I just wish someone had told me things in advance that I had to learn the hard way. But I guess when you do learn things the hard way you don't easily forget them.

[Bernice Loui]

Posted this before..

"Pro".... Back in the days when color transparency films were the daily film for working commercial and similar photographers was exposed within 1/3 f-stop or better. This was based on gray card test on a specific batch-lot of color transparency film processed at that specific E6 lab with controlled studio lighting, lens-aperture (yes, lenses have their effects on color balance), shutter, camera. Once the gray card test color transparency film was color densitometer tested. The required exposure correction and CC (Color Compensation) filters required to bring the color balance to near neutral would be applied to either the lens-camera or lighting as required or what is possible. The E6 processing lab would do their best to keep their chemistry and processing as consistent as possible to achieve consistent results.

Goal was to take out as many variable as possible to assure proper and consistent color balance and proper density (exposure) in the color transparency results.

Given all these supporting requirements are essentially gone today, producing GOOD color transparencies IMO, is not really possible.

The other "pro" market which was large at that time was Wedding Photography. One of the most common color negative films for this market was Kodak VPS. Eventually Fuji introduced NPS and NPH which proved to be that much better than Kodak VPS. While color negative films do have more exposure tolerance than color transparency films, getting the exposure and color balance correct at film exposure is equally important as color transparency films if good results are to be expected.

The business (The Rules) of proper exposure and proper color balance was know to any who were serious about producing GOOD color images. The belief that color can be "fixed" during the printing process is mixed at best as there are limits to what can and cannot be fixed after exposure and processing of color films.

Really GOOD color prints can be simply stunning. Difficulty here is achieving this standard and what the audience perceives and believes is a GOOD color print can be quite different.

The whole high contrast, over saturated, poke the viewers eyes out color might grab the views eye and mind for some short span of time, would color prints made in this form endure the test of time for holding emotional appeal to the given viewer?


Bernice

“...forget all that "latitude" nonsense and act like a pro.”

“Therefore what you call "safety factor, amounts to incompetence in this case.”

Gulp.

[manfrominternet]

ALL great advice!

If I'm shooting Todd Hido-esque night shots with Kodak Ektar 100, what is the reciprocity failure of said film? How should I meter a street scene with just a few neon lights and street lamps at night using that particular film either at 4x5 or 120 medium format (specifically 6x12 or 6x17)?

Many thanks again! You guys are a life and money saver. Coming from a pretty impecunious student, this means a lot.

[BrianShaw]

“Given all these supporting requirements are essentially gone today, producing GOOD color transparencies IMO, is not really possible.”

... and this is true for folks like me who only worried about half of those issues! I think I’ve only shot 2 sheets of E-6 in the past decade... mostly because of the demise of reliable labs.

[Corran]

The cheapest education will be a couple rolls of film, bracketed appropriately with your own equipment. I'm sure some of our members will be happy to fill many pages on this subject though.

Personally I think Ektar is a horrible film but that's just me.

[BrianShaw]

You are not alone...

[Bernice Loui]

Inspired to find this on the web:
https://www.photrio.com/forum/thread...closing.49163/

This post is an example of the volume of 4x5 E6 color transparency film was processed per month by a small customer. The BIG customers would flood The New Lab with so much film that the normal two hour turn around would drag out to 4-8 hours or the next day. There was a time when they were SO backed up with E6 film TNL ran more than one lab shift to keep up the demand for E6 processing.

"This is a sad day. Newlab used to be a beehive of activity in SF. I've just been shredding my old taxes and saw that I ran about 2,000 sheets of 4" X 5" E6 each month a few years ago, and I was small potatoes. Good luck to all the employees."


Those days are now long gone... It is also why I'm SO down on doing any kind of color transparency film today...


Bernice

“Given all these supporting requirements are essentially gone today, producing GOOD color transparencies IMO, is not really possible.”

... and this is true for folks like me who only worried about half of those issues! I think I’ve only shot 2 sheets of E-6 in the past decade... mostly because of the demise of reliable labs.

[Corran]

It's never been easier to get stunning color from transparency film. Plenty of modern photographers out there using that exclusively or at least for a major part of their output. Scanning + color correction in Photoshop is easy. Of course there is a limit to what you can do to the colors but correcting for slight color shifts caused by home development or expired films is not hard at all. Hybrid printing is the only game in town obviously and so this is just how it is in 2019.

I encourage those who think you "can't" shoot E-6 today and get good results, to perhaps actually look to what is being done today by passionate photographers who simply do it, and do it well.

While I'm not much into color, it just so happens I just finished 7 rolls of E-6 development a few minutes ago. All expired films, 35mm and 120. I'm sure you'll see some in the Image Sharing subforum.