Tag: transparency

Ken Wronkiewicz posted a rebuttal to my recent article, Why are we still shooting slide film?, bringing up something I completely failed to consider: slide film has a greater Drange (density range) than print film does. This means that while you give up dynamic range, you get a significantly better contrast range in what you do capture.

In light of this excellent point, I’ll keep shooting slides in low-contrast lighting such as overcast days. You can always get rid of unwanted contrast after the fact, but you can’t add it if you didn’t capture it in the first place.

Check out Ken’s complete explanation at wireheadarts.com.

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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