Slides from Digital Cameras
The digital revolution has been unstoppable. Most photographers (whether family snappers, serious amateurs or professionals) have moved away from silver-based film and chemical processing to silicon pixels and inkjet prints. Our professional studio shoots entirely digital now – for the same reasons as the amateur: economy of consumables, convenience, speed of delivery, instant proofing etc. However, there are times when a projected slide is required:
- conferences & meetings at home and abroad where technology is not available to project digital images or a fail-safe backup of a carousel of slides for when the digital projection/wifi technology fails (and it does)
- camera club competitions
- lectures
- submission for arts grants or gallery submissions
- art installations and examination submissions
- adding your newest pictures to your beloved slide collection (nothing quite like a family gathering, huddled in a darkened room, projector fan buzzing in the background, sons and daughters cringing at what they looked like as children while you revel in the nostalgia of Agfachromes and Kodachromes…
OK, whatever the reason, slides are no problem from digital camera files. Some points to consider though.
Are my images good enough for 35mm slides?
We can output from any image you create with no problem. If you are happy with the quality of digital images you produce you will be happy with the quality of the slides. If you want optimum quality you should consider the following information:
Quality: the old saying of rubbish in, rubbish out is entirely valid here. The better your camera, the better your slides. If you are using 5 or 6 megapixel cameras and are not using heavy JPEG compression then you have no problem. A ten-year-old digital camera with high JPEG compression will definitely show it’s digital origins. Why is this so? Digital is the best quality, isn’t it? Sadly this is often not the case and doesn’t match film based technology. At small print sizes and on small PC monitors the images may look fine but we output slides at 4096×2732 pixels (exactly that and always that). Your digital files are perhaps 1280×960 or maybe 2592×1944 pixels so our software has to create pixels where there are none to achieve film resolution and can lose sharpness as a result. If you are the sort of person who fits 300 images onto the 16mb card that came with your camera you are not getting the best from your digital camera and therefore will not get the best quality slides.
Summary
35mm slides from digital camera images are no problem and usually look great. The better the equipment, operator and technique, the better the results – ain’t that just life?
Notes:
Image ratio
35mm slides have a dimension ratio of 3:2, most compact digital cameras have a squarer ratio which will give black bands on either side of the 35mm frame (this isn’t visible when projected of course – black is the absence of light). If you don’t want this please ask us to ‘fill the frame’ and we will crop the image (which we will do by eye to avoid inappropriate cropping of your image). Note that images are never stretched or distorted to make them fit, just cropped.
Colour management
If you use colour management then we can use any embedded profile and if you don’t use colour management then sRGB gives predictable results.
JPEGs for uploading please
Don’t email/upload/FTP/Drag’nDrop large TIFFs or PSDs – high quality JPEGs only please. Wasting bandwidth costs everyone time and money, one way or another, and the bigger the files the longer the transmission and the more likelihood of transmission interruption or failure. Big files are fine if you are sending CDs or memory sticks by post though!
Unsure? Just ask!
Ask first – if you are not sure of the quality of your images then just email an example and we will advise.
We are a professional studio and a bit obsessive about quality (you guessed already). What we think is a bit ‘iffy’ you may think is perfectly fine so please don’t be put off giving our service a try!