Question about Kodachrome slides

[Mike Buckles]

I know this isn't super 8, but it's still Kodachrome! I have some slides I took about 10 years ago that I want to use in my little project that I'm making to go with my super 8 films transferred to video. Do Kodachrome slides look pretty good when transferred to video? We have an excellent lab here in town that specializes in slides, so they could convert them...what format should I use and at what resolution do I ask for..or is there a standard resolution? My video will be in NTSC 720x480...I may want to use my adobe software to zoom in a bit on some of the pics. Another question: do Kodachrome slides transferred to a digital format have that "film" look, and how does the sharpness and color compare to a digital still 1.3 megapixel camera? I was thinking of taking some new slides if they will look better on video than pics from my digital camera...the color and sharpness from my old slides are astoundingly beautiful...just like super 8! Mike

[Alex]

I do Kodachrome slide transfers with my 3-chip camera and a century precision close-up lens from time to time.

They look terrific, and they look like film!

A question for the forum.

Does scanning technology allow for slides to be transferred into the computer at high resolution?

What DPI would be considered high quality? The small size of the slide does complicate the issue of scanning slides into the computer.

[wahiba]

If you have enough slides and can afford it get them transferred onto a CD in the Kodak .pcd format. I think the average CD takes up to 100 slides at one go. Pictures are accessed in a range of resolutions. In the UK it costs around 50 GBP say 80 USD/Euros.

Any decent processing house will offer the service. There is a pro-format that has an even highker resolution.

All decent phot editors accept the images so van be easily converted to formats for video editors. As the resolution is high then clipping the image for video is not a problem.

[Cranium]

I'd been looking for a scanner that could do transparencies for a while. Lot's of them will do slides/negs, but few will handle large format (which I know isn't a problem for you.) I've got about 300 6x6 negs from my wedding I'd like to scan at some point, so I wanted the big transparency capability. I ended up with this one, which specs out pretty dang good:
http://consumer.usa.canon.com/scanne...0uf/index.html
I'm very satisfied with it. It's very clear, with good color. Actually, it's too clear. I've made scans so detailed, they point out just how unsharp my lenses are! The stuff I've shot on Provia 100f has turned out pretty incredible.

BTW- Anybody that's not already shooting slides should start. It's a great way to get used to reversal shooting, and they look SOOO good.
As far as color/sharpness compared to that 1.3MP digi-cam, there's no comparison. ESPECIALLY if you plan on doing some cropping. You can zoom and crop before the scanning process, which means you won't be blowing up pixels, just grain. Then if you shoot Provia, you won't even have the grain to contend with.

<font color="#a62a2a" size="1">[ August 06, 2002 10:07 AM: Message edited by: Cranium ]</font>

[Mike Buckles]

Cool scanner...I wonder if the quality is the same as a lab scan...this scanner will scan in the 2000 dpi range...I saw a lab that can go up to 4000 dpi...is that overkill? I'm not too familiar with scanning. Cranium, what resolution do you usually scan your slides at? I would probably like to scan some at a higher resolution, so I could zoom in on it in Adobe After Effects w/o losing sharpness. What is Provia? I really like Kodachrome 64, and have had no problems with it. Is Kodachrome 64 balanced for daylight, or tungsten...and should I be using some sort of filter, like the super 8 cameras have? mike

[Cranium]

Don't know about the comparison with a lab scan, but I'm digging my scans. I've really just started, so I'm still doing 1200dpi stuff, which is too dang big. I just scanned a slide that I cropped about 20% off, and it's 2772x2136. If you're planning on zooming or cropping, I'd just do it during scanning.
Provia is a daylight slide film from Fuji. It's being discussed a lot on the web, and I think it's deserving of the hype. With reasonable exposure, I'm not noticing any grain at all, even zooming in on a frame the same dimensions as S8. It just gets a little fuzzy at that size, and I think that's mostly because of the 35mm camera I'm using. I've got a roll of Provia in a super8 cart that I'm going to shoot soon, and I'll see how that turns out.
I've just shot my first roll of K64, and I haven't gotten it back yet, so I can't really comment on it. It's a daylight film, so figure out when you'll need the filter.

[Mike Buckles]

Well, against my pocketbook's advice, I went out and got a scanner this weekend...got the new model of what Cranium has..a Canon D1250u2f...has the same specs as Cranium's, but can't do 4 X 5's, which doesn't bother me. The results I got from transferring my Kodachrome slides were acceptable..I did notice a slight loss in detail, and after the initial scan, you have to tweak the color, contrast and luminance levels a bit..but by using the original slide as a guide, I can get it pretty close. I also transferred some old 110 negatives and a few print pictures..it seems the print pictures had good detail, about as good as the slides! Do you think the slides small size is the reason for the slight detail loss? Which would give better scans...slides or color negatives? Also, curiosity got the better of me, and I did scan a few frames from an 8mm movie I have...turned out fuzzy and bad...guess it's just too small for that scanner to make a decent scan from a small guage.