We took some positive slide film with us on a trip to America. This was our first time using slide film and we absolutely loved here. Here is a whole blog post all about us using the film and our thoughts on it.

What is slide film?

Most 35mm film used in film photography is a negative film, meaning that your physical image is a negative that is inverted when scanned. Slide film, or positive film, produces a positive image. This means it can be viewed in full colour without inverting the colours.

Slide film is more expensive than normal 35mm film. The cost of the film is slightly higher and the cost of development is almost double. Slide film is developed using E6 processing. Our partnered lab, Gulabi, offer this service.

What are the differences between positive and negative film?

As explained above, negative film is more common than positive film. Positive film is also more expensive, but there are a lot of benefits to using this film over negative films. 

Positive film produces more realistic colours, often exactly as they appeared in real life. You can expect less colour shifts from real life to your images. This makes it a popular choice for landscape photographers. 

As the film appears as a positive, the film can be viewed with the naked eye, whereas negative film needs to be inverted to view the image. This means that the film can be placed in slide mounts and viewed on slide projectors.

Exposure with positive film needs to be spot-on. Positive film is less forgiving than negative film. Highlights can be blown out and appear pure white, whilst shadows can appear dark black, if the film is not exposed correctly.

Which camera and film did we use?

We used our trusty Canon F-1 with the Canon FD 50mm f/1.2 lens for these photographs. It is one of our main cameras for travelling and getting reliable images. It is a mechanical beast!

The film we used was Kodak Ektachrome E100. This film was expired by two decades, however with slide film, you do not need to make the same adjustments for expired film as you do with negative film. 

For more information on how to use expired film, read our blog post here:

Gallery

Here are some of the images we created. The main thing we noticed is how vivid the blue colours are on slide film - exactly how they were in real life.

We definitely could have exposed for the shadows a little better as some of them came out very dark. For a first time using slide film, the exposures were pretty good and we were happy with most of the results.

Overall, we were pretty damn impressed with the depth of colour on the slide film. It picked up the light really well and showed things just as they were in person. This is often not the case when photographing things like sunsets on negative film. Slide film will be our go-to as often as possible for future travelling.

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