filmscanners: Negs vs slides again: was Color Negative Film Poll

[Julian Robinson <jrobinso@pcug.org.au>]

>The bigger question is why shoot print
>film if you're going to scan the images?

This has been covered before, but I just decided to check my facts by 
looking at the characteristic curves for representative Kodak films.  These 
curves demonstrate admirably the main reason you might choose to shoot with 
negative film over slide... simply, you can capture a LOT more of the scene 
brightness range with neg film.

- Slide films capture a range about 5 stops max.
- Neg films capture a range about 11 stops!!

You can't print this whole range of 11 stops directly, but one of the great 
advantages of scanning is that you can process the image to restore as much 
of this range as you want if you are prepared to do a bit of work.  I do 
this regularly to improve reproduction of my high-contrast scenes.  It is 
precisely BECAUSE I am scanning my images that I choose negs.

At least if you have the info on film, you can access it somehow,  if not, 
(as in slides) it is gone forever.

I agree though that a well-exposed flatly lit scene on slide is a beautiful 
and satisfying thing, but most of real life is not flatly lit, certainly 
not limited to 4 or 5 stops range.  And I agree that grain is more of a 
problem with negs than slides, especially when underexposed when it can be 
completely unacceptable.

These other advantages of the slide probably make it the best choice in 
studio work where you have complete control over lighting, but for travel 
and other more spontaneous work, this amateur anyway would choose neg films 
every time.

Julian



At 23:05 21/11/01, Bernie wrote:
>The bigger question is why shoot print
>film if you're going to scan the images?  I shoot chromes for most of my
>color work.  You have an original image for reference, can use Ilfochrome,
>reversal or an inteneg, if you want to print conventionally and scanning is
>more straightforward with a slide.  Provia 100 and 400 are my favorites.