UPDATE: Apologies, due to the high cost of providing this service it is with regret it has now been withdrawn for the foreseeable future.
While we have been producing thousands of great b&w slides over the past 20 years using our conventional E6 process workflow, there are times when only true monochrome slides hit the spot.
E6 (the name of colour reversal film process) slides have an image composed of microscopic grains of magenta, cyan and yellow dyes that together recreate all the colours of the rainbow. And if the colours are in equal proportions you get a monochrome-looking image. However, true monochrome slides have an image composed solely of minute grains of black sliver. This fundamental structure gives, to purists, a smoother and more authentic look.
In the past AGFA Dia Direct and then, in more recent times, AGFA Scala films were available. These monochrome films were specially made for slide production and included film processing in the cost. But those times have gone and the monochrome reversal processing became mainly the domain of the enthusiastic amateur, processing in the kitchen sink.
However, we have always has a soft spot for the velvety look of the AGFA Scala slides and often pondered how we could bring this to our commercial environment, and offer customers silver-based monochrome slides made from digital photography.
Spurred on by one customer who had a particular need for monochrome slides that could withstand hundreds of hours projection (ordinary slides being dye-based will fade over time) we ran some experiments and came up with a workflow that was both commercially viable and produced luscious results. And thus, from April 2016, we are pleased to be offering b&w slides from digital images – in unmounted, plastic mounted and glass mounted 35mm full frame format.
UPDATE November 2020: Apologies, due to the high cost of providing this service it is with regret it has now been withdrawn for the foreseeable future.