Steve,
Where did you get them processed? Have you looked at the negatives to
determine if they were corrected - at least the ones that look poor?
Having shot tons of slides and a ton or two of prints, I find that
print film usually is more forgiving provided you use a decent lab.
That is one of the tricks that most Pro wedding/portrait photog's do -
use a good lab. It makes quite a difference. For instance, my lab
makes sure that all pictures are color matched and about the same
brightness for the entire wedding. Costs a bit more and takes a bit
longer, but consistency is much higher.
Generally, here are the issues with slides for weddings:
Slides have narrower latitude for exposure so "Must Get" shots are at
greater risk.
Slides are inherently costly and frustrating to get good prints from.
Nobody looks at wedding albums from a Kodak carousel. So your final
cost of prints ends up being higher when shooting slides because you
must make prints of all of them. For me, that would be between
200-300 prints per wedding.
Slides are usually a bit too contrasty to handle black tuxes and white
wedding dresses together especially when prints are made from them.
I personally know of no pros shooting slides for paid wedding work.
They may be out there, but so might APS wedding photographers.
Slides can be gorgeous when viewed on a light table, but translating
them to nice prints is slow and costly. Seems the best approach
these days is to scan and correct them yourself. Be aware of
archivability as the wedding album is a treasure that is kept for
many, many years. It would be bad to have it color shift and fade.
>From what I have seen, to get the quality of scan that you are looking
for, you should invest in a film scanner. If slides are to be your
main film choice, make sure the scanner handles them well. My Minolta
Scan Dual II is so-so for slide scanning.
HTH,
Bruce
Wednesday, December 18, 2002, 2:10:43 PM, you wrote:
SP> I just got back 1 roll of Kodak Portra 160NC prints, &
SP> 1 roll of Fuji Astia pro. slides. Both rolls had
SP> numerous portraits/candids of my family. Both were
SP> shot with the same camera & lens. The slides seem to
SP> be much more consistent with the flash. Some of the
SP> prints show a little more "white out" on the faces.
SP> Is this normal? If so, I'm giving serious thought to
SP> shooting nothing but slides. It's cheaper, etc. Does
SP> anyone out there shoot slides for weddings?
SP> Last question-does anyone know if Costco's services
SP> offer the ability to scan slides onto a CD? Or
SP> another store that can do it reasonably-priced? I
SP> have yet to buy a dedicated scanner, but the Minolta
SP> III might be my next purchase. The shops that I talk
SP> to all want big bucks just to scan one slide!
SP> Thanks again all for your input...
SP> __________________________________________________
SP> Do you Yahoo!?
SP> Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now.
SP> http://mailplus.yahoo.com
