Well We Are

Many moons ago, I shot with Fujifilm Velvia 100F on my Olympus OM-2000.

Yes, that famous positive slide film. The difference between this and a negative, is the chemical processing; slides appear just like the actual shot. Velvia is known for punchy colors and strong contrast.

I used to think that slide film needed a special camera, medium format or something, or needed to be loaded in the dark. Nope. Velvia 100F, in 135 format (35mm format) can be loaded like normal film. It looks and smells like normal film. (No, actually, it smells stronger. I like!) You only need to process it at a lab that can do the E-6 chemical process.

After that, you can also ask them to cut up the film and mount it on slides for a price.

You can also ask them to process it with the C-41 process, which gives different colors and is called cross-processing. The C-41 process is used for normal negative film can be done at any photo shop.

Thanks Yee Hou for sending the film to be developed to the lab in SS2! (There’s another in Pudu Plaza, aptly called E-Six, and Applied Imaging in Taman Tun Dr. Ismail but all are only open during office hours and take a few days to process.)

By opening the back of the OM-2000, and attaching a shutter release cable to the shutter to keep the shutter open in bulb mode, I could project a light through the back and make it project the image on screen!

(Yes, this was shamelessly ripped off Yee Wei‘s method.)

And so, a lamp shone through the slide, onto a white surface.

Turn off the lights, wrap the lamp with a black shirt to avoid light spillage (lowering contrast.)

Top-left: I wrapped a white plastic bag around a tungsten lamp. Unfortunately, it heats the air inside, creating a vacuum, sucking the plastic towards it and ultimately melting it! Top-right: A better version, with A4 paper and less texture being projected. Bottom-left: All that heat eventually melted the lamp. Bottom-right: The coolest solution; put the slide on a diffusing white object, on a plastic bag wrapped around a flourescent table lamp.

This is a sample of a low-contrast image from not completely sealing off light from escaping around the back of the camera.

Overexposure/underexposure kills the shot, on slide film which has a much lower dynamic range.

This, I swear, looks much better on slide. Regretfully some texture of the plastic bag can be seen.

From this point on, I shot the slides using the slide-on-diffuser-on-plastic-bag-on-flourescent-lamp method. I used the Sony A100 with 18-70mm F3.5-5.6 at 45mm, F11 with the Pro Tama 58mm +20 closeup filter to shoot the slides.

Digicolor, Mutiara Complex, Jalan Ipoh.