 Welcome to episode nine from the balcony. Hope you're all doing well. Staying safe, being healthy. Let's get into today's video. My name is David Patton. When I started photography, I wanted to make art. I wanted to be a landscape photographer. But with a family to feed and bills to pay, I decided it would be better to be a working photographer than a starving artist. So I took a job as a photo journalist. 25 years and thousands of assignments later, it was time to go back to my first love. It was time to follow my passion. Come along on my journey to become the best black in my photography I can be. Whether it be film or digital, I will be sharing what I learned through my successes and my failures and hopes to inspire and educate. This is my journey. This is right in the edge. It's live film, transparencies. If you must call it a reversal film. Is this still relevant? Is this still a good choice for today's photographers? Well, that's today's film talk topic. With all this extra time on my hands, I've been going back through my landscape and nature film photography archive and just scanning in some some of the images, just kind of revisiting them. And it occurred to me that all my images are on slide film or on transparencies. They got me thinking, is transparencies even something that photographers should be even using now? What are the benefits? What are you really getting when you're shooting slide film? Like most photographers back in days before digital, I started probably with print film or negative film. And it was most likely 35 millimeter. And it wasn't too long after I got into nature photography that I went to transparencies. And to start out, I started with Kodachrome. Kodak Kodachrome. And I didn't shoot a whole lot of that. I discovered Fuji Velvia and I just kind of fell in love with it. Really like the punchiness of it. I believe it was a 50 ASA speed film. And once I started shooting Fuji, I never looked back. It was always Fuji. I didn't I didn't even do any photography with Ektachrome. It was it was all Fuji Velvia or Provia as Provia came along later. I was all in on Fuji at that time. Then at some point, I wanted better image quality. So I moved up to 4x5 sheet film. But because it was so expensive, I was still shooting 35 millimeter. I used it to back up my images. I would take a shot with the 4x5 and then I would back it up with 35 millimeter. And then I also used the 35 millimeter to bracket my shots. So if my exposure was a little off, at least I would get it with the 35 millimeter. If you've never shot slide film, you gotta know right out of the gate, it is very unforgiving for exposure errors. There's very low tolerance for making mistakes with your exposure with slide film. It's just hard to shoot. It has less dynamic range. Very low tolerance for exposure mistakes. But when you get right, it's something to behold. So why was I using transparency film? First reason was publishing. Back then, all submissions were done with slide film transparencies. They dropped it in the light table. They could quickly look through the images and see if it's something they wanted to use, publish, use for stories. Pretty much all magazine work was being done with transparencies and calendars and pretty much anything printed. Back then, if you're going to do submissions to them, you would be sending a sheet of slides or a box of transparencies. The second reason was the punchy kelders. Even back then, we were wanting our images to be fairly saturated. And boy did Vilvi deliver on that regard. I actually prefer, I think, Provia now a little less saturated. When Vilvia came out, we really enjoyed how it depicted a lot of the nature scenes, a lot of the landscapes. I also really liked the fine grain. I was shooting ASA 50 speed films. Extremely fine grain. And I always felt like it was a little finer grain than the negative film. Now I can't prove that. I don't know for sure, but I always felt like the images were finer finer grain when I was shooting slides and then when I went up to my transparencies in 4x5, there was no grain there. It was just super smooth. Taking a transparency and putting it on light table and viewing it through a loop or just viewing it on light table was really something special. And I also liked to, it was easier to edit my images. I could take the shot, look at the image on the light table and I knew if it turned out or not. I knew, you know, with a negative it was hard to tell exactly what you had unless you had prints. But with a loop, you could look at your your slides and see if they were sharp enough for publication. So I really liked the ability to to put them on the light table. It's probably not something I actually need now. But back then that was important. That was before we were scanning images. And then eventually we were scanning the the slides. And I also liked how the images scanned. I think it's easier to still scan a transparency than a negative, except the dynamic range is so narrow that, you know, if you're not aware of that then there could be some problems. But if it will expose transparency, it'll scan very well. Plus you've got the positive there on the light table. You can see what it's supposed to look like. Now, although I used that film and got used to the difficulties, there were a number of difficulties. So in a nutshell some of the negatives of transparency film would be poor exposure latitude. You really need to be within a stop of the correct exposure. Poor dynamic range. I mean very narrow dynamic range. Four to five stops. It's not the best in certain lighting. The use of filters could be very useful and with using a slide film. And it's expensive. A roll of Velvia Provia could be running at something $15, $16, $17 for a roll with processing. You're looking over $20 just for one roll of film. You can't do a lot of photography on that kind of. I can't do a lot of photography at those prices. Four by five. Forget about it. It's like four or five dollars per sheet. You have time to click it and then you're looking at another almost five dollars prior to processing. So eight to ten dollars per click for transparency film. That's just my pockets aren't deep enough for that. So those are some pretty pretty steep negatives there. Those are some pretty well-defined negatives. Are there enough positives to outweigh the negatives? That's the question I've been asking myself. That's probably why I haven't shot slides of transparencies in many years. I just don't need it in my workflow anymore. I still like the look though. I still enjoy looking at my slides and I have to admit I'm tempted at times to pick up another roll. But I just can't afford it and I don't have a purpose for it anymore. If I'm going to shoot color film in the future, I'd most like to be Ektar. Something like that. I found that to be pretty fine grain. It does pretty well and I'm learning to scan it. Well I'm hoping to get off this balcony. They're starting to loosen things up a little bit around in my area. So I'm hoping to get back out with my camera here in the near future. So there shouldn't be a whole lot more of these from the balcony episodes to come. Even if I just have to go out in some little field around town, I gotta get out with my cameras. It's okay to talk photography but I really want to get out mixing images and I really like to take you long. So how about you? Are you still using slide film transparencies and do you find it still a viable choice for photographers? Is there something that it gives you that you just can't get in other film? I'd love to hear your thoughts. I'd love to hear how you're using it. Well I'm making today's video right here. So the next time, thanks for coming along for the ride. This one cactus plant. This is the fraction of the pups that I've taken from this cactus. I've given many many away. This one plant has spawned many a pup. Now you know I'm losing my mind when I start farming cactus.