Given that I get my color film developed at a lab and scan it myself (and that I never project slides), I’ve got to wonder why I shoot chromes anymore. The film and processing are both more expensive, and with my workflow, all I get for the money is less dynamic range and no exposure tolerance.
The ~5 stops that most slide film can capture is simply not enough for many non-studio lighting situations. It’s quite common to be faced with the choice of having to severely blow out a bright area or severely block up shadows. Landscape photographers who shoot with view cameras or SLRs can sometimes get around this with split ND filters, but not everybody can take 20 minutes to set up a shot, not every subject has a brightness boundary that falls in a conveniently straight line, and there are plently of cameras that don’t let you look through the lens to see what you’re doing (rangefingers, TLRs, pinholes, toys, etc.), so it’s not a solution for everybody…
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The ONLY reason I have for slides any more is my personal 25% failure rate for PowerPoint presentations in public meetings.
The combination of differing software versions, tested connections that don’t work right before the presentation, and having to boot and recable leaves me with terrible frustration. I have seen guys diddle for 45 minutes trying to get a laptop, projector, and presentation burned to a CD to all work together – delaying the program. I had a program to give in March wherein I had the laptop and projector and presentation nicely tested before I went in and then when I plugged it all together at the program it would not come up without 10 minutes of frantic checking and recabling. GRRR. I hate it. Nothing as simple as a light bulb shining through a lens.