You should try cross-processing chrome slide film in C41 clemicals (used for reg. film). It may cost more, but the results are pretty sweet. It's the only fun I've found out of chrome slide film.
I am not sure you are seeing the difference between the film since you are (evidently?) not doing the scans nor printing optically. While there is a difference between pro and consumer films, if you are getting a service bureau or minilab to scan the results the image processing done to the scan has more of an effect than the film used. You are at the mercy of the operator and the settings for dust removal, color correction and jpeg compression. A lot of the minilabs I have used have these things maxed and the results look very little like the film.
I have always paid the same per roll for e6 as for c41 process only-about 6 dollars a roll or less, so there should be no price differential between scan and process of either, although I have only had c41 done this way-30 a roll for slides sounds bogus-try getting them to scan the uncut roll first perhaps? There is no reason why it should be double.
Slide might be overkill on the web, but think about a lot of other factors like repurposing the film and storage. E6 is easier to scan if at some point you buy a scanner, and yields sharper and more color accurate results than C41. It's a pain to expose, but actually, shooting digital is exactly like shooting slide-there is little tolerance for exposure error compared to C41. There are plenty of links on the web to explain why this is.
Also shooting film vs digital has the advantage of producing the film itself, which will be around long after all the cd's are scratched and unreadable, ready to scan again with our new holographic laser imaging bionic eye implants. So much of digital will just disappear into the ether. So there is a definite value to the hybrid route for the foreseeable future.
So shoot print if you imagine possibly making prints in the future, slide if you want ultimate sharpness and saturation (good for graphiti I would imagine) and if you want party like its 1985 then yeah, try cross processing but you pay double for what you can do in pshop in about 5 minutes.
Nice set. I especially like the rhino art. Those film + processing cost sound outrageous!
To Robert's point- I had these done at Spectra, where they usually get it right. These were scanned at their highest filesize-- not perfect, but the best results I've seen from any lab below 14th street.
I guess what I mean is that scanning tends to make different films all look the same. Negative and slide have very different looks but this tends to get lost in scanning. There are some techinical reasons for this I could go into if you are interested.
This is true of all scanning, but I agree Spectra does a good job. I was thinking more of a minilab scanning solution like the Noritsu for example, which can do a good job and usually at a lower price.
For web, the scanning done by spectra is certainly more expensive than it needs to be, but you get a usable scan out of it for other purposes like digital cprints or inkjet.
I think there are good reasons to choose slide if that is the look you want, just like there are good reasons to choose negative, and I think because you are not doing the scans yourself the results are not indicative of the film choices made.
Not a few years ago photographers made entire careers based on film choice, but this is not really the case now, as digital encompassess and exceeds all those palletes with finer control and repeatability. But I think learning the differences is still important because they are expressive choices and affect the message of the work.
Sometime I use a minilab for my travel pics so I have the neg to scan myself, and have a cd for iphoto to email to friends and to perform editing, or make iphoto books. Its good enough for that and the web, and is 15/roll, no prints, just a cd. But all around, I agree with you, neg is fine, and probably E6 is going to go away first anyway.
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You should try cross-processing chrome slide film in C41 clemicals (used for reg. film). It may cost more, but the results are pretty sweet. It's the only fun I've found out of chrome slide film.
I am not sure you are seeing the difference between the film since you are (evidently?) not doing the scans nor printing optically. While there is a difference between pro and consumer films, if you are getting a service bureau or minilab to scan the results the image processing done to the scan has more of an effect than the film used. You are at the mercy of the operator and the settings for dust removal, color correction and jpeg compression. A lot of the minilabs I have used have these things maxed and the results look very little like the film.
I have always paid the same per roll for e6 as for c41 process only-about 6 dollars a roll or less, so there should be no price differential between scan and process of either, although I have only had c41 done this way-30 a roll for slides sounds bogus-try getting them to scan the uncut roll first perhaps? There is no reason why it should be double.
Slide might be overkill on the web, but think about a lot of other factors like repurposing the film and storage. E6 is easier to scan if at some point you buy a scanner, and yields sharper and more color accurate results than C41. It's a pain to expose, but actually, shooting digital is exactly like shooting slide-there is little tolerance for exposure error compared to C41. There are plenty of links on the web to explain why this is.
Also shooting film vs digital has the advantage of producing the film itself, which will be around long after all the cd's are scratched and unreadable, ready to scan again with our new holographic laser imaging bionic eye implants. So much of digital will just disappear into the ether. So there is a definite value to the hybrid route for the foreseeable future.
So shoot print if you imagine possibly making prints in the future, slide if you want ultimate sharpness and saturation (good for graphiti I would imagine) and if you want party like its 1985 then yeah, try cross processing but you pay double for what you can do in pshop in about 5 minutes.
Nice set. I especially like the rhino art. Those film + processing cost sound outrageous!
To Robert's point- I had these done at Spectra, where they usually get it right. These were scanned at their highest filesize-- not perfect, but the best results I've seen from any lab below 14th street.
I guess what I mean is that scanning tends to make different films all look the same. Negative and slide have very different looks but this tends to get lost in scanning. There are some techinical reasons for this I could go into if you are interested.
This is true of all scanning, but I agree Spectra does a good job. I was thinking more of a minilab scanning solution like the Noritsu for example, which can do a good job and usually at a lower price.
For web, the scanning done by spectra is certainly more expensive than it needs to be, but you get a usable scan out of it for other purposes like digital cprints or inkjet.
I think there are good reasons to choose slide if that is the look you want, just like there are good reasons to choose negative, and I think because you are not doing the scans yourself the results are not indicative of the film choices made.
Not a few years ago photographers made entire careers based on film choice, but this is not really the case now, as digital encompassess and exceeds all those palletes with finer control and repeatability. But I think learning the differences is still important because they are expressive choices and affect the message of the work.
Sometime I use a minilab for my travel pics so I have the neg to scan myself, and have a cd for iphoto to email to friends and to perform editing, or make iphoto books. Its good enough for that and the web, and is 15/roll, no prints, just a cd. But all around, I agree with you, neg is fine, and probably E6 is going to go away first anyway.
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