SDN Photography Talk Thread

[aerius]

Ironically, this is the season when I load my camera with Portra 160NC, Reala or E100G in order to show the senescence in naturalistic and GRIMDARK colors.

You need to break out the Tri-X for proper GRIMDARK.

I'm thinking about running a roll of Neopan 100 through my camera after all the leaves fall off the trees, there's a cemetary and some abandoned buildings I've scouted out which should look pretty cool in B&W. I'm just hoping it doesn't rain too much since walking through mud isn't my idea of fun, I'm not that dedicated of a photographer.

[Marcus Aurelius]

Ironically, this is the season when I load my camera with Portra 160NC, Reala or E100G in order to show the senescence in naturalistic and GRIMDARK colors.

You need to break out the Tri-X for proper GRIMDARK.

Nah, B&W makes everything look romantic, unless you can get young Orson Welles looking sardonic in your shots. Color film with natural color response is much more GRIM. It's too bad Agfa pro films are now gone. Optima and RSX were even more natural looking1 than E100G, Reala or even Astia, which has been discontinued as well

Good luck for your gothic scenes project in any case. Beware of the zombies.

1 Of course that is also the reason why they didn't sell nearly as well as the more saturated films by Fujifilm and Kodak. Velvia will probably be the last slide film made and Ektar 100 the last pro color negative.

[Marcus Aurelius]

On a related note, I just bought a lot of film. Sensia 100, Reala in 135 and Astia. All discontinued recently by Fujifilm. The supplier I use no longer had Sensia 400 available, so it's going to have to be Provia 400X, which is silly expensive, from now on. Astia may not be discontinued entirely, but at least it will no longer be available in Europe in any format. Fujifilm is funny like that, they sell a lot of different films in different areas. Unfortunately ordering films from Japan is very difficult unless you know someone who lives there. Reala was discontinued in 135 (35mm) only, for some reason.

Oh well, there is always Portra 160NC, or you can overexpose Superia 200 by 1 stop, which gives pretty good results, even though not as natural as Reala. E100G is a reasonable replacement for Astia. Provia 100F is almost the same emulsion as Sensia 100, but much more expensive. Fujifilm says that there is almost no market left for amateur slide films. Strangely though Kodak still makes them. I did not buy any Portra 400NC or 400VC, since I couldn't spend that much, and I mostly shoot Superia 400 for color negative anyways at that speed.

A year ago it looked like color film still had a lot of life left, but this recent round of discontinuations is a little worrying. On the other hand there are also rumors and even semi-official statement from Kodak that film sales are no longer declining rapidly, but then again such rumors have been floating around for at least two years. A year or two from now we will know better.

[J]

Hmmm, that's weird...all those Fujifilm films are still available in Canada as far as I know, the local camera stores are all well stocked with them, though like Velvia, at rather exhorbitant prices. There seems to be an unwritten rule where colour slide film must sell for at least $15 per roll unless it's about to expire.

---

Anyway, we went camera shopping today so we could handle various micro 4/3 and other mirrorless large sensor cameras. Just for fun we brought along our Olympus Pen-FT to see how the new digital offerings compare against the RealRawTM classic. In a word, plasticky, the Pen E-P2 looks nice enough but feels like a cheap toy next to the original and the GF1 is even worse. And they have too many buttons & menus. The Sony NEX cameras were a disaster, it felt like I was holding a toy camera and the controls were convoluted and unusable. It's really thin & small which is nice but the lens is huge and the aesthetics are horrible. We both agreed the design team was on crack.

On a brighter note the Samsung offerings were quite nice, particularly the new NX100, this camera was a joy to use with its simple buttons & control dials for everything. There's dial on top for shutter speed and one on the back for aperture, spin'em till the exposure needle in the screen is good and that's it, it's so easy. But it's really plasticky. And my husband as usual lamented the lack of an optical viewfinder.

Which brings us to the Leica M9, no there's no way we're going to buy one but the store had one they were willing to let us handle so why not? At last, a camera that feels like a camera, with a real viewfinder so everyone's happy. It feels like a classic camera, but better, and everything is really simple & easy to use. I can definitely see where the Leica faithful are coming from when they preach the superiority of the M-system. But it costs more than my car. The camera with a couple lenses would pay my rent for a year, that's just silly.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

If you are considering using 3rd party lenses, don't bother with the Samsung. You cannot mount M-mount lenses on it, because there aren't any adapters available. The flange distance is far too close.

With the M4/3 and the Sony Nex, there are Voigtlander adapters for it and they are machined pretty well.

As for buttons and menus, the M4/3 cameras are pretty standard, and are already considered simpler than some DSLRs.

[Marcus Aurelius]

If you are considering using 3rd party lenses, don't bother with the Samsung. You cannot mount M-mount lenses on it, because there aren't any adapters available. The flange distance is far too close.

With the M4/3 and the Sony Nex, there are Voigtlander adapters for it and they are machined pretty well.

As for buttons and menus, the M4/3 cameras are pretty standard, and are already considered simpler than some DSLRs.

There is a new (v03) firmware for the Nexes, which is supposed to fix many of the UI gaffes. It can't change the physical controls of course, but at least the menu structure should be less complex and more logical, and there are more user customizable settings and buttons. Dpreview's take on the firmware seems to be quite positive:

Regardless of the small number of external buttons, the interface has been improved with firmware 03 so that most key shooting settings are easily accessible.

In addition the new firmware now gives you autofocus with some Minolta/Sony A-mount lenses, but since contrast detect AF is dog slow with SLR lenses designed for phase detect AF, I don't find that very significant. It of course works only with the recent lenses with a build-in AF motor; all the legacy Minolta lenses used a camera motor to drive the autofocus. You'll still need the adapter A-mount sold separately, of course.

About using full frame lenses (M, M42 etc.) on µ4/3: I know that is you're hobby, Fingolfin, but unless you're really into portraiture or wildlife photography, I can't see the point. A 50 mm normal lens on FF makes a pretty good portrait lens on 4/3 and a 90 mm portrait lens makes a pretty good medium telephoto lens and so on, but if you mostly shoot in the normal to wide angle range like I do, it does not make much sense.

[J]

If you are considering using 3rd party lenses, don't bother with the Samsung. You cannot mount M-mount lenses on it, because there aren't any adapters available. The flange distance is far too close.

Nope, not considering 3rd party lenses at all. The 30mm/f2 would be exactly what I want and the zoom will fill in for everything else.

There is a new (v03) firmware for the Nexes, which is supposed to fix many of the UI gaffes. It can't change the physical controls of course, but at least the menu structure should be less complex and more logical, and there are more user customizable settings and buttons.

We went to the Sony booth at the digital camera show today to try out the updated firmware, it's definitely better and easier to use but it's still a pain in the butt. All the stuff I'd want to change is still buried in the menu system and there aren't enough programmable buttons to set a button to each of my regular functions. It's super small which is nice, but the Samsung blows it away when it comes to usability, and it has faster lenses in the lengths I like.

[aerius]

So this was my first time at a camera show, and holy fuck I can't believe how many whiny bellyachers there are. Every single camera & lens manufacturer booth had at least one person at all times complaining about how their lenses and cameras weren't sharp, if I were one of the manufacturer reps I would go postal and start throttling people after an hour. It's not sharp cause the idiots don't know how to use a camera, you'd think that some guy with a D3 or 5DII would know basic camera techniques, nope. It's pretty sad because my wife took their cameras and made perfectly sharp pictures, the complainer said they were sharp, then he makes more pictures and complains some more about how the lens isn't sharp. You can't make this shit up. It was mindblowing, we just showed them that the system can make perfectly sharp pictures and they fuck it up and go into denial. Then after the dumbass left we chatted with the reps and had a hell of a good laugh about it. We agreed that these sad weirdos go to shows for the sole purpose of complaining about phantom problems.

And now, some pictures from the show:

The Olympus Pen family



Concept compact camera. No real details since it's still in development, but it's said to be in the Pen family





Fuji X100, the only one in Canada. They wouldn't let us handle it.





Pentax display case, they're the only ones with DSLRs in a colour other than black



Pentax medium format camera. They wouldn't let us handle this one either



A bunch of Zeiss lenses



Inside a Zeiss lens

[Marcus Aurelius]

So this was my first time at a camera show, and holy fuck I can't believe how many whiny bellyachers there are. Every single camera & lens manufacturer booth had at least one person at all times complaining about how their lenses and cameras weren't sharp, if I were one of the manufacturer reps I would go postal and start throttling people after an hour. It's not sharp cause the idiots don't know how to use a camera, you'd think that some guy with a D3 or 5DII would know basic camera techniques, nope.

There is sadly a certain type of people who think that if they buy an expensive camera, it should magically take good pictures for them all the time. Those people never use anything but the P mode and most of them probably don't know about program shift or manual focus override, either. In fact some of them are too stupid even to use the "stupid" or scene modes on consumer DSLR's... Basically they think that photo quality scales with camera price, even though someone who actually knows her equipment could take better photos with a cell phone camera.

The X100 is pretty sweet, but the announced price is a little steep for a fixed focal compact. I wonder when the Olympus Pen compact will become available, since it should be considerably cheaper. Apparently it even has a zoom lens.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

About using full frame lenses (M, M42 etc.) on µ4/3: I know that is you're hobby, Fingolfin, but unless you're really into portraiture or wildlife photography, I can't see the point. A 50 mm normal lens on FF makes a pretty good portrait lens on 4/3 and a 90 mm portrait lens makes a pretty good medium telephoto lens and so on, but if you mostly shoot in the normal to wide angle range like I do, it does not make much sense.

Well, the thing is that I acquired a rather bad habit of sniping photos from a distance, rather than close up. (I have been going around with a 90mm/f2.8 Leica Tele-Elmarit of late for an example) Wide angle shots are great for architecture and a few other purposes which I do with my 20mm lens, or my 7-14/f4. There is the upcoming Cosina Voigtlander 25mm/f0.95 which excites me but I am rather torn betwen sticking to the m4/3 or grabbing a 35mm M-mount lens. But that aside, one thing that bugs any of the new mirrorless systems is the lack of fast primes. So the alternative is to go with M-mount lenses which are small and have generally good optics. I am fairly OK with manual focusing and I plan to venture into rangefinder photography in the far future any how. Accumulating a stock of M-mount lenses will suit my purposes any how.

And if by any thing, I don't fancy Samsung because they are rather new to the field and there's no guarantee for their longetivity (hell, they were in the Pentax K system and they haven't really made lots of sales) and here they are with a new mount. I'd wait for a while while they fully develop the system and at least catch up with Sony in terms of noise.

With Sony, it's pretty much the same issue, and their history of screwing customers rather ruthlessly (like the DRM issue), makes me rather hesitant to fully support them. That and quite frankly, the rate at which they are developing the Alpha system is rather pathetic, if one draws from the fact that the Contax/Yashica system already has a decent catalogue of primes and zooms. Of course, there's no denying that there's a class of photographers who simply refuse to pay for the quality they want to get and having too many Carl Zeiss optics isn't going to be too welcoming to the bulk of mainstream users who continuously bitch about the lack of AF or anything.

As for the Olympus compact, I think it's going to be a LX3/5 clone, so don't bet too much on it. As it is, the LX3/5 sets the standard for the middle point and shoot category, unless one wants to fish out cash for the Fuji X100 or the Leica X1.

[aerius]

And if by any thing, I don't fancy Samsung because they are rather new to the field and there's no guarantee for their longetivity (hell, they were in the Pentax K system and they haven't really made lots of sales) and here they are with a new mount. I'd wait for a while while they fully develop the system and at least catch up with Sony in terms of noise.

Noise simply isn't going to be an issue for me since I shoot at ISO 100-200 nearly all the time. Noise? What noise? Samsung already has all the lenses I'd want, they have a wide-angle prime and a normal prime, and the normal's an f2, f1.4 would be nice but then it wouldn't be a nice compact pancake lens. The resolution is a bit disappointing at only 55lp/mm or so (a bummer coming from 80+ on my Pen-FT) but I seriously doubt I'll ever notice it unless I'm making good sized enlargements. Sony has a wide angle for their NEX system and bunch of zooms which I'll never use.

With Sony, it's pretty much the same issue, and their history of screwing customers rather ruthlessly (like the DRM issue), makes me rather hesitant to fully support them. That and quite frankly, the rate at which they are developing the Alpha system is rather pathetic, if one draws from the fact that the Contax/Yashica system already has a decent catalogue of primes and zooms.

My main problem with Sony is the undecipherable UI systems in all their cameras, I can pickup any Canon or Nikon camera and fudge around their menus well enough to do the basics, I picked up a Sony Alpha camera and couldn't even find the fucking on switch for over a minute. Nevermind trying to turn the screen on so I could use it.

---

Overall I'm not too thrilled with where the major companies are going, the only cameras I like were from Fuji, Olympus, Panasonic, and Samsung. The Olympus rep also said they have a pro version of the Pen system in development, that might be pretty interesting when it comes out. But of all the systems that are available right now, the Samsung suits me the best, now if only they could stick a built-in viewfinder on the NX100, I'd buy one so fast if they did.

[Marcus Aurelius]

But that aside, one thing that bugs any of the new mirrorless systems is the lack of fast primes.

Of course there can't be as many fast primes as in the classic SLR mounts yet, but Panasonic has the 20 mm f/1.7 and Samsung has the 30 mm f/2.0, which are both plenty fast for a large sensor (yes, even the 4/3 is a large sensor) digital camera, considering that you can easily use ISO 800 and in many cases even ISO 1600 without too much noticeable noise or loss of detail after a carefully balanced noise reduction. Really fast lenses are of course "nice", but they are not a necessity like with film (well, I occasionally shoot ISO 1600 color negative and it has plenty of grain, but it's still good for some purposes. Not 30x40 cm prints, though...)

As for the Olympus compact, I think it's going to be a LX3/5 clone, so don't bet too much on it. As it is, the LX3/5 sets the standard for the middle point and shoot category, unless one wants to fish out cash for the Fuji X100 or the Leica X1.

I though the Olympus compact was supposed to have a 4/3 sensor? That would be much larger than the 1/1.6" sensor on the LX3/LX5. I also would not dismiss the Canon S90/S95, which are excellent cameras and have a bit more reach than the LX5 (albeit less wide). They are also a bit cheaper and in my opinion provide a better bang for the buck than the Panasonics.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Noise simply isn't going to be an issue for me since I shoot at ISO 100-200 nearly all the time. Noise? What noise? Samsung already has all the lenses I'd want, they have a wide-angle prime and a normal prime, and the normal's an f2, f1.4 would be nice but then it wouldn't be a nice compact pancake lens. The resolution is a bit disappointing at only 55lp/mm or so (a bummer coming from 80+ on my Pen-FT) but I seriously doubt I'll ever notice it unless I'm making good sized enlargements. Sony has a wide angle for their NEX system and bunch of zooms which I'll never use.

If you plan to shoot in daylight conditions ISO100-200 is fine. Shoot at night at that ISO, you are going to be needing a tripod.

I though the Olympus compact was supposed to have a 4/3 sensor? That would be much larger than the 1/1.6" sensor on the LX3/LX5. I also would not dismiss the Canon S90/S95, which are excellent cameras and have a bit more reach than the LX5 (albeit less wide). They are also a bit cheaper and in my opinion provide a better bang for the buck than the Panasonics.

The Panasonics produce nicer colors compared to the S90/95 in my opinion. The rumor mill goes that the Olympus camera isn't using a 4/3 sensor and it features a zoom lens! I highly doubt it's a 4/3 sensor if there's a zoom lens in it. There's no way they can squeeze that into such a small package. It would have to be a fixed prime like the Fuji X100 or the Leica X1. There was a rumor that Panasonic was going to do a rangefinder like camera with a 4/3 sensor, but that didn't materialise.

[Marcus Aurelius]

The Panasonics produce nicer colors compared to the S90/95 in my opinion. The rumor mill goes that the Olympus camera isn't using a 4/3 sensor and it features a zoom lens! I highly doubt it's a 4/3 sensor if there's a zoom lens in it. There's no way they can squeeze that into such a small package. It would have to be a fixed prime like the Fuji X100 or the Leica X1. There was a rumor that Panasonic was going to do a rangefinder like camera with a 4/3 sensor, but that didn't materialise.

Both cameras have different color options, so I don't know. Is there something else besides saturation level that you like about the Panasonic colors? The lens on the Olympus zoom is obviously a fully collapsing zoom typically used in compact cameras since the early 1990s. If it has a modest range and not terribly fast, say something like 28-90 mm f/2.8-5.6, I think that it should fit. They can use aspherical lenses to reduce the number of elements required for aberration correction in order to make the lens smaller, even if that increases the manufacturing cost a little. Of course such a lens would be a compromise, but a fixed prime is another kind of compromise.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Both cameras have different color options, so I don't know. Is there something else besides saturation level that you like about the Panasonic colors?

The colors look warmer but it might just be a camera setting as you say.

The lens on the Olympus zoom is obviously a fully collapsing zoom typically used in compact cameras since the early 1990s. If it has a modest range and not terribly fast, say something like 28-90 mm f/2.8-5.6, I think that it should fit. They can use aspherical lenses to reduce the number of elements required for aberration correction in order to make the lens smaller, even if that increases the manufacturing cost a little. Of course such a lens would be a compromise, but a fixed prime is another kind of compromise.

Well, if it's a collapsing zoom and a 4/3 sensor, it'd be comparable in size to the 14-42mm/f3.5-5.6 which is itself a collapsing zoom. Any faster will demand a bigger sized lens. I guess they could use aspherical elements, but the cost will shoot through the roof.

[J]

We just received our first roll of Velvia 50 back from processing and the experts weren't kidding when they say it's one of the most challenging films to expose correctly. About 1/4 of the shots were quite underexposed and pretty much ruined. Nearly all of those happened to be the frames where we didn't use our cheat which I'll now explain.

According to everything we've read, Velvia likes to block up in the shadows if you look at it wrong even though the camera's meter claims everything is fine. Where have we seen this problem before? Our little point & shoot digital camera. Aha! So we take our little compact and set the meter to center-weighted average to match our SLR then zoom it to make the framing match and take a picture. If there's blown highlights or blocked shadows on the compact then Velvia is going to do that too, either dial in a bit of exposure compensation or just not take the picture and save a frame of film. Velvia is said to have around five stops of dynamic range which appears to match what our compact has when the contrast & saturation settings up bumped up a bit. So get yourself a P&S compact and shoot slide films without fear!

Also, we've dispelled two Velvia myths so far; it's perfectly usable as a portrait film and also for action photos. My husband shot some wedding pictures (add about 1/3 of a stop and make sure there aren't any caucasians) and mountain biking pics as well, they all turned out fine and there's no sign of people with orange skin which is said to be a common problem when Velvia is used for people pictures. And if one must take photos of white people then do so during the "golden hour" when everything's a nice warm colour which then makes the skintones look natural and not out of place.

[Marcus Aurelius]

According to everything we've read, Velvia likes to block up in the shadows if you look at it wrong even though the camera's meter claims everything is fine. Where have we seen this problem before? Our little point & shoot digital camera. Aha! So we take our little compact and set the meter to center-weighted average to match our SLR then zoom it to make the framing match and take a picture. If there's blown highlights or blocked shadows on the compact then Velvia is going to do that too, either dial in a bit of exposure compensation or just not take the picture and save a frame of film. Velvia is said to have around five stops of dynamic range which appears to match what our compact has when the contrast & saturation settings up bumped up a bit. So get yourself a P&S compact and shoot slide films without fear!

Also, we've dispelled two Velvia myths so far; it's perfectly usable as a portrait film and also for action photos. My husband shot some wedding pictures (add about 1/3 of a stop and make sure there aren't any caucasians) and mountain biking pics as well, they all turned out fine and there's no sign of people with orange skin which is said to be a common problem when Velvia is used for people pictures. And if one must take photos of white people then do so during the "golden hour" when everything's a nice warm colour which then makes the skintones look natural and not out of place.

Yep. Velvia has less than 1/2 stop of negative exposure latitude, so underexposing is really easy. It does have a little more positive latitude, so when in doubt it's better to expose a little more. There are many people who actually shoot Velvia 50 with the ISO set to 40 and Velvia 100 with ISO set to 80. However, if you do that you will then have to be certain not to overexpose or you will get blown highlights. Many people will also bracket if there is any doubt about correct exposure. Using a more modern camera with multi-segment (matrix/evaluative) metering will help as well, and of course the pro method of metering shadows and highlights with a spot meter and exposing according to that; naturally the main subject will have to be stationary for that to work in practice.

The fact that Velvia can be used to take portraits of non-caucasians is also well known (sorry for being a besserwisser spoilsport J), although I still don't know why anyone would like to use it for portraiture, other than experimenting of course, since almost any other modern film will work as well or better regardless of skin color. Well, perhaps if one was shooting something like really colorful African or Asian weddings or something, it might just be a good idea to use Velvia.

Just one more thought: have you checked the meter of the Pen FT against a know accurate meter? Many of those more than 30 year old CdS meters cells have bad calibration, which won't show when shooting color negative, but picky slide films like Velvia really need the meter to be accurate within 1/3 stops.

[J]

The fact that Velvia can be used to take portraits of non-caucasians is also well known (sorry for being a besserwisser spoilsport J), although I still don't know why anyone would like to use it for portraiture, other than experimenting of course, since almost any other modern film will work as well or better regardless of skin color. Well, perhaps if one was shooting something like really colorful African or Asian weddings or something, it might just be a good idea to use Velvia.

It was a Chinese - Pakistani wedding so plenty of bright colours on the womens' side since they were all in traditional clothing. The men opted for black & white suits, the contrast in styles was pretty neat.

Just one more thought: have you checked the meter of the Pen FT against a know accurate meter? Many of those more than 30 year old CdS meters cells have bad calibration, which won't show when shooting color negative, but picky slide films like Velvia really need the meter to be accurate within 1/3 stops.

We checked it and it's fine for the most part. In darker lighting it's a bit off so half a stop needs to be added at EV6 and a full stop when it's any darker than that. In daylight conditions where one would normally expect to use a 50 speed film the camera's meter works just fine.

[Marcus Aurelius]

We checked it and it's fine for the most part. In darker lighting it's a bit off so half a stop needs to be added at EV6 and a full stop when it's any darker than that. In daylight conditions where one would normally expect to use a 50 speed film the camera's meter works just fine.

OK. I should have realized that you would be knowledgeable enough to do that; I hope I didn't sound patronizing.

About ISO 50 film: Rockwell used to shoot handheld night shots with Velvia 50 using his 35 mm f/1.4, or at least I remember him claiming that

[J]

Not to worry, I probably wouldn't have thought to check the meter but my husband, being rather German, did.

About ISO 50 film: Rockwell used to shoot handheld night shots with Velvia 50 using his 35 mm f/1.4, or at least I remember him claiming that

Oh it's possible since I managed a mostly candle lit photo, though I can't recommend it even with a 40mm f/1.4 lens. Someone else can figure out the conversion to 35mm full frame film. It's probably a good thing I had a couple drinks in me by that point, just enough that I'm not nervous and thinking about it but not so much that my hands start shaking.

[Marcus Aurelius]

Oh it's possible since I managed a mostly candle lit photo, though I can't recommend it even with a 40mm f/1.4 lens. Someone else can figure out the conversion to 35mm full frame film. It's probably a good thing I had a couple drinks in me by that point, just enough that I'm not nervous and thinking about it but not so much that my hands start shaking.

The crop factor of half-frame is about 1.4, so it would be roughly 56 mm equivalent. Pretty good if you pulled it off, since it would be even more difficult than with a 35 mm lens on full frame due to the narrower angle of view. I think, though, that is should be even easier with the stuff your husband likes to smoke than after a few drinks

[J]

Second roll of Velvia is done and in the lab. A few things I've learned & stuff, mostly stuff;

• The choice of film heavily influenced the subjects I chose. The original plan was to go out and shoot fall colours and I did do that, but every time I saw a bright red, orange, yellow, purple or blue object I sorely wanted to take a picture just because.
• I had no idea how much I was influenced by the default portrait/landscape orientation on my cameras. It was surprising how often I stuck with the default on my compact digital camera instead of turning it around 90° to get a stronger framing. With the Pen-FT I did a much better job of this.
• My favourite colour is orange. And I could probably take pictures of stuff against blue skies all day because deep blues are so amazing, I've never seen anything like this.
• Lighting changes surprisingly fast when there's fluffy clouds in the sky. I can't believe how many pictures I missed in the time it took for me to see something neat, run over to where I can frame it right and get the camera setup. I then had to wait for the sun to move behind or from behind a cloud before I could finally take the picture, sometimes this never happened.
• I want a wide angle lens for the Pen
• 78 pictures on a roll of 36, how's that for value?
• And instant diptychs if I choose to have the film mounted in full-frame slides, that should be pretty fun to try.

[Marcus Aurelius]

[*]My favourite colour is orange. And I could probably take pictures of stuff against blue skies all day because deep blues are so amazing, I've never seen anything like this

Here's some faux Velvia, although getting the sky as blue as the real thing would have required some work. This is just a straight saturation increase:

[muse]

Half frames are not very good for projection either, which is IMHO the best way to appreciate slides, plus you can annoy your friends and family with a traditional slide shows, no Microsoft products involved.

I'm convinced it's your fault that I had to sit through a slideshow yesterday, actually, two slideshows. After my sister was done with her two dozen or so slides, my parents dusted off their 1970s slides with pictures from their honeymoon. And they even had B&W slides. Black and white! Why? Why did you have to give people these horrid ideas?

Actually it was pretty neat, I was surprised at how good those old slides look on the screen, they were very natural and lifelike. They didn't feel out of date (other than the clothes, was fashion really like that?) and it was a neat window into the life & times of my parents.

[Marcus Aurelius]

Half frames are not very good for projection either, which is IMHO the best way to appreciate slides, plus you can annoy your friends and family with a traditional slide shows, no Microsoft products involved.

I'm convinced it's your fault that I had to sit through a slideshow yesterday, actually, two slideshows. After my sister was done with her two dozen or so slides, my parents dusted off their 1970s slides with pictures from their honeymoon. And they even had B&W slides. Black and white! Why? Why did you have to give people these horrid ideas?

I am evil like that, because I have a compulsion to advance film photography in all its forms. I have always been a sucker for lost causes I guess... B&W slides are pretty cool, by the way. There were once films designed for that purpose, but you can make slides even from regular B&W film using a special process.

Actually it was pretty neat, I was surprised at how good those old slides look on the screen, they were very natural and lifelike. They didn't feel out of date (other than the clothes, was fashion really like that?) and it was a neat window into the life & times of my parents.

I don't remember 1970s that well for being too young, but the early 1980s certainly were like that. Judging from films made in the 1970s I believe you parent's slides are probably accurate.

Slides are great if well preserved. Unfortunately many 1970s color slides, mostly Ektachrome ones, have been damaged by chemical degradation. Kodachrome slides on the other hand typically last for decades without noticeable changes. Future generations will mostly have to contend with digital images, which are either preserved completely intact or completely lost because someone forgot to take a backup or no one you know no longer has a computer that would read your USB stick, CD or DVD-ROM.