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Old 27th January 2012, 07:42 PM
S Raff S Raff is offline
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Default Shooting with slide film recommendations

Lots of general photography books but I'm yet to discover one just for slide film?

Any recommendations?
Thank you
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Old 27th January 2012, 08:23 PM
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Don't know of one purely for slides.

positive film tends to be significantly more contrasty than negative film. That means it is suited to lower contrast subjects.
Basically you expose for the highlights. When it is used to print to ilfochrome papers you need very low contrast subjects. But when projecting or scanning you can get away with higher contrast subjects but not as high as negative film.
There are significant differences in the contrast range of modern positive films so check the datasheets to see the useable contrast range for your end use and meter accordingly.
As a very rough guide, treat each zone from the zone system as being half a stop and not one stop. So meter for highlight and open up one stop. That should put you in the ballpark.
Some cameras like contax have their in camera meters calibrated for postive films anyway.
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Old 27th January 2012, 08:48 PM
DaveP DaveP is offline
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You could try any of Galen Rowell's books, especially Mountain Light. He used exclusively slide film and talks a lot in ML about how to use it and meter for it. That was written at the time when he was using kodachrome, but the same applies for any modern slide film.

My own tip for metering slide film is you don't need to expose for the highlights, you need to expose for everything you're bothered about in the shot. Metering for the highlights is no good if everything else you want in shot is going to be five stops underexposed, because that means sold black. It helps to either be able to accurately know the range of brightness in your scene (i.e. use a spot meter) and either recompose or filter (grads) accordingly. Or get to know from experience what is likely to be too contrasty and shoot just with a normal averaging meter reading with the odd bit of bracketing.
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Old 27th January 2012, 09:09 PM
JimW JimW is offline
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Shoot the first couple of films with bracketing and a notebook. Like anything you may be lucky the first time out, but it will be the occasional happy accident rather than a consistent standard. With your notebook telling you all sorts of info about that particular shot, you will be able to narrow down the reason for your shots that were not so 'accurate'. For my personal experience, my notebook told me that my Bronica metered prism takes a few moments to settle down after it had been off the camera. It took me one film to establish that, and one more film to establish my own personal EI for the slide film I was using. For me, the notebook is indispensable for a new process. Much cheaper than a machine gun approach-for me.
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Old 30th January 2012, 10:22 PM
S Raff S Raff is offline
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Thank you all for the advise and book idea, any advise is always great and interesting to compare. I should of mentioned that I have used slide film a fair bit in various formats and the book hunting was more for stocking the collection on the shelf
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Old 9th February 2012, 02:23 PM
hectorpaljr hectorpaljr is offline
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If you have not come across Freeman Patterson then I recommend 'Photography and the art of Seeing'. A few years ago I had the pleasure in seeing the original slides used in this book and it made the enjoyment even more worthwhile.
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Old 13th February 2012, 08:02 PM
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Thank you for the recommendation hectorpaljr
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