I heard some stuff about Slide film...

[niteschaos]

If negatives are so much easier to print, why do some people still ask for or shot slides? Are slides that much easier to store than prints?

[another view]

Slides are easier to scan and store than negatives - IMO. With slides, you can throw out the ones you don't want to keep, with negs you probably wouldn't cut out only frames 4, 18, 23 and 31 from a roll (for example). They're also less expensive for high quality processing.

The finished product I talked about above has something to do with it too - take a well-exposed negative to ten different really good labs and you'll get ten prints that all look different. With a slide, it's all up to you at time of capture!

[niteschaos]

That's what I was talking about at the beginning of the post. I want to be able to have consistent results from the lab. Dealing with negatives, you can go and get enlargements with different color and contrast than the original print they made themselves a week ago. So you are saying that for some, the narrow exposure latitude and grain at higher ISO speeds is worth having the creative the process end with the photographer?

[tijean]

Add this one to the "I think I read this one somewhere" file (an information pool much poluted since the advent of the internet), but I always thought that magazines use to only accept slides because they were easier to preview and store, in addition to having more color saturation than print films of the day. A printer (even pre-digital) could change coloration if they wanted but results tend to be more consistant because, unlike with a negative, they have a referance to work from. Slide films have a whole different set of characteristics than your standard print films. Maybe I should go back and reread the photo.net article on this one:

http://www.photo.net/equipment/film#Slide

[another view]

So you are saying that for some, the narrow exposure latitude and grain at higher ISO speeds is worth having the creative the process end with the photographer?

Well, sometimes... Depends on what I'm shooting. For example, I'd never dream of shooting slides at a wedding! Most of what I was doing on slides I'm doing on digital these days, but I still shoot slides in some cases. Generally when I'm doing personal work and I don't have to worry about correcting color balance (like inside a building with fluorescent lighting) then I prefer slides when shooting color film. They look different - hard to describe. Part of that is the color saturation, although Kodak 400VC neg film might challenge that, but then the narrow exposure latitude gives it a different look too. The inconsistencies from print to print drove me nuts. If I scan a slide and print it at 10 different places it should (theoretically) look the same. In reality there are minor differences but they're much closer than neg film would be.

BTW, if you need a high speed slide film I'd go with Fuji Provia 400F. At it's rated speed I can't tell the difference between it and Provia 100F. It also pushes one stop very well (that's 800 speed) and seen others push it two stops (1600!). It's an expensive film though.