It had to be tried!

These look pretty much OK, and perhaps it's just the inherent contrast of transparency film compared to negative film? Hard to say really, since it's early days and there won't be many comparisons with other makes of slide film. I used to really like Fuji slide film, but never really took to the colours that Velvia came up with, and I was a bit disappointed with the Sensia I shot in May and scanned on a Minolta 5400 film scanner. Onward!
 
excalibur2 said:
You could lighten up the shadows a tiny bit in Photoshop?
Click to expand...
Yes, I could; that was just a quick scan and tweak to test the scanner on a couple more shots. However, there's a limit to how near a good quality high-res lab scan I can get with a sub-£300 home flatbed scanner and my limited post processing skills!

The point of my post was to indicate that I've not found any real issues scanning my slides, whereas, it seems some others genuinely have. The question remains, why?
 
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Mr Badger said:
The point of my post was to indicate that I've not found any real issues scanning my slides, whereas, it seems some others genuinely have. The question remains, why?
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Well I can't remember any problems scanning Kodachrome but others have.....but I do come across some negs (some old non Kodachrome pos) that I called unscannable as even can't get the overall colours right in Photoshop......but then I'm not an expert.
 
excalibur2 said:
Well I can't remember any problems scanning Kodachrome but others have.....but I do come across some negs (some old non Kodachrome pos) that I called unscannable as even can't get the overall colours right in Photoshop......but then I'm not an expert.
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Try turning ICE on and scanning a 70s Kodachrome slide... it comes out looking very odd!

As for scanning early 70s (and possibly earlier) Kodachrome slides, I've had problems with some of them. Colour and 'density' have taken some time to sort out in post processing, but I've not had similar issues when scanning Kodachrome slides from the early 80s onwards. Ektachrome from the early 80s onwards always seemed easy for me to scan too.
 
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gazmorton2000 said:
I think Kodachrome is the only slide film that would draw me in if it were ever re-released. I have tried Provia and a little Velvia but I still favour colour negative.

I am watching this thread to see how your Ektachrome shots turn out. The examples I have seen online do look amazing, but I am still not up for really investing in it myself just yet. I was tempted for slide for Vietnam but chose to go colour neg and little B&W.
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That's the thing. Colour neg is a lot better now with Ektar, Portra and Fuji Pro being light years ahead of the neg films that where available when people were shooting Kodachrome for colour.
When the end process for a lot of people now is a scan it's hard to justify the cost of slide film unless you are going to project.

That Analogue Wonderland are discounting makes me wonder how well Ektachrome is selling.
 
excalibur2 said:
You could lighten up the shadows a tiny bit in Photoshop?
Click to expand...

My (admittedly limited) experience of scanning transparency has been that there's only a fairly minimal amount of lightening you can do with the shadows. After a bit all you're doing is brightening them without resolving any detail (because it isn't there), so you just get washed out shadows instead.

Ste_S said:
That Analogue Wonderland are discounting makes me wonder how well Ektachrome is selling.
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Given that there's a 120 format version due for release, you'd expect that Kodak are happy with the sales. It might just be that they're discounting to complete with other retailers (especially given 7dayshop's offers).

I've still got 4 rolls of 120 Provia and a roll of 135 Velvia 50 in the fridge to shoot, but if I don't get a better hit to miss ratio on the results of those I suspect I'll stick to reversal negative film in future once they're gone. I don't think my wallet can cope with the trial-and-error costs. :)
 
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Ste_S said:
That's the thing. Colour neg is a lot better now with Ektar, Portra and Fuji Pro being light years ahead of the neg films that where available when people were shooting Kodachrome for colour.
Click to expand...

Forgot about that good point as I usually bought Kodachrome for use on holidays esp in Ireland for scenery......some of those lovely shades of green needed something better than neg film 40-50 years ago. Agfachrome was quite good at the time and did try a few rolls (maybe it was cheaper), but Agfachrome can fade over time and a lovely shot I took showing shades of green has faded a bit now and needed a bit of work in Photoshop after scanning.
 
FishyFish said:
My (admittedly limited) experience of scanning transparency has been that there's only a fairly minimal amount of lightening you can do with the shadows. After a bit all you're doing is brightening them without resolving any detail (because it isn't there), so you just get washed out shadows instead.
...
I've still got 4 rolls of 120 Provia and a roll of 135 Velvia 50 in the fridge to shoot, but if I don't get a better hit to miss ratio on the results of those I suspect I'll stick to reversal film in future once they're gone. I don't think my wallet can cope with the trial-and-error costs. :)
Click to expand...

From memory, there actually IS more info in the shadows on the slide, visible on projection... but our feeble scanners don't have enough punch to see it, so it doesn't get registered in the scan. Commercial scanners can do a bit better. (Also, IIRC shadows in Kodachrome could be even denser...)

In your last para above, did you mean to write "stick to negative"?
 
Slide film is certainly more unforgiving when it comes to exposure error, get it a bit out and you won't get a good slide let alone a good scan from it. That's the reason I used a Canon EOS 30v camera to try the new Ektachrome; it's got a 35 zone metering system on it, one of the most advanced ever fitted to a film camera, so I could pretty much rule out getting the exposure wrong in all but strongly backlit situations (which I avoided!).

I'd also avoid trying to shoot slide film on a day with patchy cloud and strongly sunny intervals... compose the image and select the exposure and the sun suddenly goes in or comes out full blast. A sure-fire way to louse your exposure up. I know some cameras select the exposure at the moment of pressing the shutter, but even so, why take the risk?
 
Mr Badger said:
I used a Canon EOS 30v camera to try the new Ektachrome; it's got a 35 zone metering system on it
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Same for the much cheaper EOS 300...I used it recently for just reading night shot exposures when using another camera without a light meter.....once they were common to see at the bootie (without lenses) and picked up my 300 for £2 and 300v for £5 (with a few goodies thrown in).
 
Bump...

I've picked up a copy of Vuescan this week and have re-scanned my roll of Ektachrome. The scans are probably still not perfect, but they're head and shoulders over my original, distinctly green-looking scans with nasty crushed shadows and weird colours. Here are new versions of the ones I originally posted above...

1

Sheffield Steam Rally 2019 rescans-11 by fishyfish_arcade, on Flickr

2

Sheffield Steam Rally 2019 rescans-9 by fishyfish_arcade, on Flickr

3

Sheffield Steam Rally 2019 rescans-13 by fishyfish_arcade, on Flickr

4

Sheffield Steam Rally 2019 rescans-7 by fishyfish_arcade, on Flickr

5

Sheffield Steam Rally 2019 rescans-6 by fishyfish_arcade, on Flickr

6

Sheffield Steam Rally 2019 rescans-8 by fishyfish_arcade, on Flickr

7

Sheffield Steam Rally 2019 rescans-14 by fishyfish_arcade, on Flickr

8

Sheffield Steam Rally 2019 rescans-12 by fishyfish_arcade, on Flickr
 
I suspect that this thread is going to be fairly immaterial owing to the current price of Ektachrome E100, which is currently pushing £20 a roll, plus postage then processing and mounting.

So even with the 'process paid' package deal that AG photographic is offering https://www.ag-photographic.co.uk/kodak-ektachrome-e100-35mm-36-with-processing-4292-p.asp , with postage it's going to cost you around £30 a roll for a set of mounted slides, and that's without any scanning. Add a high resolution 80mb scan to that (it's got to be a high res scan to get the best out of this film) and it's going to cost just over £1 a shot for 36 exposures.

While it's nice to have a set of slides again, I've not exactly been blown away with this film. I'd rather have the original Ektachrome 100, which I used to shoot quite often in the early 80s, this new stuff seems just a bit flat to me, and for the price I want to be impressed not feel slightly underwhelmed. As for the original stuff, here's a home scanned example from around 1980:

 
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Mr Badger said:
I suspect that this thread is going to be fairly immaterial owing to the current price of Ektachrome E100, which is currently pushing £20 a roll, plus postage then processing and mounting.

So even with the 'process paid' package deal that AG photographic is offering https://www.ag-photographic.co.uk/kodak-ektachrome-e100-35mm-36-with-processing-4292-p.asp , with postage it's going to cost you around £30 a roll for a set of mounted slides, and that's without any scanning. Add a high resolution 80mb scan to that (it's got to be a high res scan to get the best out of this film) and it's going to cost just over £1 a shot for 36 exposures.

While it's nice to have a set of slides again, I've not exactly been blown away with this film. I'd rather have the original Etachrome 100, which I used to shoot quite often in the early 80s, this new stuff seems just a bit flat to me, and for the price I want to be impressed not feel slightly underwhelmed. As for the original stuff, here's a home scanned example from around 1980:

Click to expand...

Well the total cost would scare quite a few\many..so who is 35mm Ektachrome aimed at? If pros then I would have thought many use digi now.
Anyway I preferred Kodachrome in the old days, a bit cheaper was Agfa and Perutz but in using the films 50-60 years ago have found today:- Kodachrome is still perfect, Agfa colours have faded slightly and Perutz is crappy erm it loooks like Perutz was an old German company and maybe Agfa took them over?
 
FishyFish said:
Bump...

I've picked up a copy of Vuescan this week and have re-scanned my roll of Ektachrome. The scans are probably still not perfect, but they're head and shoulders over my original, distinctly green-looking scans with nasty crushed shadows and weird colours. Here are new versions of the ones I originally posted above...

1

Sheffield Steam Rally 2019 rescans-11 by fishyfish_arcade, on Flickr

2

Sheffield Steam Rally 2019 rescans-9 by fishyfish_arcade, on Flickr

3

Sheffield Steam Rally 2019 rescans-13 by fishyfish_arcade, on Flickr

4

Sheffield Steam Rally 2019 rescans-7 by fishyfish_arcade, on Flickr

5

Sheffield Steam Rally 2019 rescans-6 by fishyfish_arcade, on Flickr

6

Sheffield Steam Rally 2019 rescans-8 by fishyfish_arcade, on Flickr

7

Sheffield Steam Rally 2019 rescans-14 by fishyfish_arcade, on Flickr

8

Sheffield Steam Rally 2019 rescans-12 by fishyfish_arcade, on Flickr
Click to expand...

Those look really good, Nige. Did you calibrate the scanner with an IT.8 target?
 
Well, a bit like calibrating your monitor or printer, you can calibrate your scanner. AFAIK it doesn't work particularly well for colour film, because of the variability of the orang mask. But it can make a difference for slide/transparency/reversal film. There's an old thread about it from around 2012: https://www.talkphotography.co.uk/threads/it8-7-profiling-before-and-after.435085/#post-5719240 (although its impact is diminished as there are quite a few missing images), and IIRC it's mentioned in the big scanner thread.

You need to buy a "target", which has defined colour patches in a known pattern. If you have Vuescan or Silverfast AI Studio, they know that pattern, and when you scan the target in the appropriate way, they create an ICC profile file which (when later imported back into the same software) will allow the software to correct for any clour errors.

The usual recommendation for targets is Wolf Faust at http://www.targets.coloraid.de .
 
ChrisR said:
Well, a bit like calibrating your monitor or printer, you can calibrate your scanner. AFAIK it doesn't work particularly well for colour film, because of the variability of the orang mask. But it can make a difference for slide/transparency/reversal film. There's an old thread about it from around 2012: https://www.talkphotography.co.uk/threads/it8-7-profiling-before-and-after.435085/#post-5719240 (although its impact is diminished as there are quite a few missing images), and IIRC it's mentioned in the big scanner thread.

You need to buy a "target", which has defined colour patches in a known pattern. If you have Vuescan or Silverfast AI Studio, they know that pattern, and when you scan the target in the appropriate way, they create an ICC profile file which (when later imported back into the same software) will allow the software to correct for any clour errors.

The usual recommendation for targets is Wolf Faust at http://www.targets.coloraid.de .
Click to expand...

erm why not just use Photoshop?...mind you I would (one day) like to calibrate the scanner to my printer as what I see on the screen doesn't always come out the same in print.
 
FishyFish said:
Bump...

I've picked up a copy of Vuescan this week and have re-scanned my roll of Ektachrome. The scans are probably still not perfect, but they're head and shoulders over my original, distinctly green-looking scans with nasty crushed shadows and weird colours. Here are new versions of the ones I originally posted above...

1

Sheffield Steam Rally 2019 rescans-11 by fishyfish_arcade, on Flickr

2

Sheffield Steam Rally 2019 rescans-9 by fishyfish_arcade, on Flickr

3

Sheffield Steam Rally 2019 rescans-13 by fishyfish_arcade, on Flickr

4

Sheffield Steam Rally 2019 rescans-7 by fishyfish_arcade, on Flickr

5

Sheffield Steam Rally 2019 rescans-6 by fishyfish_arcade, on Flickr

6

Sheffield Steam Rally 2019 rescans-8 by fishyfish_arcade, on Flickr

7

Sheffield Steam Rally 2019 rescans-14 by fishyfish_arcade, on Flickr

8

Sheffield Steam Rally 2019 rescans-12 by fishyfish_arcade, on Flickr
Click to expand...

These look good! Is there any chance you could post a photo of the strips of film, more for my own curiosity than anythign as I lvoe looking at strips of slide, be they 35mm or 120.

I was also wondering about Ektachrome and how I haven't seen many posts on here of people having shot it. I have a box of 10 sheets here, two are loaded into the holder. I might try and get out somewhere and shoot them this week in the evening. :D
 
gazmorton2000 said:
These look good! Is there any chance you could post a photo of the strips of film, more for my own curiosity than anythign as I lvoe looking at strips of slide, be they 35mm or 120.

I was also wondering about Ektachrome and how I haven't seen many posts on here of people having shot it. I have a box of 10 sheets here, two are loaded into the holder. I might try and get out somewhere and shoot them this week in the evening. :D
Click to expand...

Thanks Gareth. I’ll post some shots later - I’ll have to lay them on the iPad.
 
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