In photojournalism, there is no doubt that digital technology replaces film more and more these days. These sophisticated cameras are improving with each day and therefore, it isnt difficult to image a film-less profession in the very near future. However, until this day arrives, can you please tell me what the current standard color film is: reversal or negative? Thanks. - Steve

-- Steve Renaud (shrenaud@minet.ca), November 24, 1998

Answers

Yeah...this is an interesting question that I ponder a lot myself and discuss with other pros as often as I can. Firstly there is no doubt that negative is a lot cheaper and easier but the colour saturation can never match transparency....also once you have made a colour transparency it is "set in concrete"...it can manipulated sure but the information stored within the film is far superior. But I have many fine colour images sot on fugi 800 that could never have been shot on transparency.....so when do use transparency.....whenever you can! Cheers Dave Hancock

-- David Hancock (misty@mosman.com), December 06, 1998.

I prefer color negative now for one major reason, today's desktop film scanners are able to get more information from a color negative than from a transparency. Slide film is still the major choice for a lot of jobs, but I think negative films have gotton so good and also have the advantage of quick processing in the boonies that they'll overtake slides.

-- Lee Taylor (leetaylor@netradiomail.com), July 12, 1999.

It depends on what your client is looking for in a final product. For publication, transp. film is superior if exposed properly. For large prints, color neg films have warmer tones. Ask first.... then shoot both!

-- Donn Brown (photoguy@naples.infi.net), July 15, 1999.

I stopped shooting slides about ten years ago -- for quite a number of reasons. Probably the most significant was purely practical -- with the approach of middle-age, they were harder to see with the naked eye, than prints! But also, with negative being cheaper, I found myself less inhibited about shooting what might only turn out to be "record" shots (but which later I often found were better than I thought).

Nowadays negative is certainly easier and cheaper to scan than transparencies. And yet, if negative was less "inhibiting", nowadays digital is even more so: if you don't like what you got, you can just delete it. And do it again, if you are still there, or maybe just shoot a lot more at the time -- since it is "cheap". But therein lies a problem: it seems that photographs are becoming "cheaper" all the time.

Long ago, if you were shooting on half-plate or full-plate, you made sure everything was JUST so, before you even took off the lens cap. The times have changed, certainly. Indeed, this summer, in Xinjiang, China, I have come to see the advantages of digital. But I have also seen even more clearly the DISadvantages, too, so I won't be giving up my film camera yet awhile.

Both systems have their good and bad points, and, just like they claimed TV would kill radio, I don't see digital completely killing film, but becoming a useful ADJUNCT. Certainly it will make massive inroads, especially with consumers, who don't have to wait for their pix -- not even one hour.

Martyn G.

-- Martyn Green (kinabalu2000@hotmail.com), August 18, 2004.