Book or documentary recommendations for 4x5 Slide Portraiture?

[lf_dean]

Thanks! I'll check out the link later.

Why does the mug shot look like Nicholas Cage getting arrested by Ana De Armas.

It’s Nicholas Cage getting arrested by Holly Hunter in “Raising Arizona.”

[Certain Exposures]

It’s Nicholas Cage getting arrested by Holly Hunter in “Raising Arizona.”

Thanks!

[Drew Wiley]

The remaining chrome films are not ideal for portraiture, although one can balance studio lighting to tame ther excessive contrast. Duplicating sheet film is extinct; and quality duplicating a skill with a serious learning curve. Cibachrome is extinct and not ideal for portraiture anyway, though some of us, who knew how to handle its idiosyncrasies, did impressive portrait printing with it. Life is a lot easier shooting current color negative films and printing on those. But any kind of backlit transparency version like Fujitrans is available only on big expensive rolls hard to handle outside a dedicated commercial facility. Any kind of 8x10 color film is now going to cost you around $35 or even more each time you trip the shutter, factoring film development too. So it's not the kind of thing you can just dabble in.

You can't realistically just wiggle your toes in the water. Better to have some commercial service scan your color negs or slides, and then laser-output the final enlarged backlits to your specifications. Pricey?- yes; but so is DIY and its serious learning curve. Any alleged books about this are going to be way out of date. What are still valid are clues concerning studio lighting, etc,
The specific films, printing media, and methods of print exposure have all largely changed.