Slide film

to Robert, I was saddened to read that you no longer do much picture taking because of the demise of slide film, although Fujichrome is still available through Amazon and other stockists, even though Fuji has recently stopped manufacture.

Going back to the days before digital, I used slide film most of the time, and also made my own Cibachrome (now Ilfochrome) prints. The results seemed impressive at the time, but the two problems I struggled with were the build-up of contrast and dust specks. Using my own improvised darkroom, I experimented with contrast reduction masks to give a better result, but this was a very time-consuming process. The Cibachrome paper and the developing chemicals were also very expensive.

When digital film scanners became available, I experimented with the conversion of some of my slides to digital.  This opened up the new possibilities of digital removal of scratches, dust specks and digital contrast control. I continued to use slide film in this way until about four years ago, when I succumbed to temptation and bought a second-hand DSLR. I confess I was impressed by the image quality, and used slide film less and less after that. The only situation in which slide film still excels is when it is used with a projector. I have not yet seen a digital projector which gives as good an image as a slide-film projector.

I would say that my experience with slide film has influenced my thinking as a digital photographer. I still try to 'get it right first time' to minimise any digital manipulation afterwards, although I shoot in RAW to enable me to rescue some shots that were misjudged at the time of taking. 

It is not necessary to use Photoshop etc if you adopt the same approach to digital photography as you did for slide film. It is also possible to buy a used semi-professional DSLR for a few hundred pounds (I now use a second-hand Canon EOS 5D, which originally sold for over £2000 and can now be bought for around £400 used), which will give results as good or better than slide film in most cases.

Hi Robert, the question about lenses and digital SLRs all comes down to what size sensor the camera has. The majority of DSLRs have a sensor which is smaller in area than the equivalent 35mm film camera (the standard 35mm film frame size is 24 mm X 36 mm). Therefore most digital sensors will crop the image area, making it seem as though the lens has a longer focal length than stated (this is not really a longer focal length, it is just that the image circle  is cropped by the sensor). There are however, a number of DSLRs with full-frame sensors, and for these, the focal length of the lens is exactly equivalent to film use.

There is a good explanation of sensor sizes on Wikipedia 

Personally I am a Canon fan, but the other main manufacturers are equally good. The choice of 'Glass'  is just as important for digital as film, and is becoming even more so as the sensor resolution increases year on year. Your wish to use your old zooms might be limited by electronic compatibilty. Unfortunately, not all old lenses are compatible with digital cameras, particularly those lenses made by third party lens manufacturers. I know all the Canon EF (Electro Focus) lenses will work equally well on the Canon EF Film SLRs and Canon DSLRs. See Wikipedia article on this. If your lenses are pre EF, then they won't work on Canon DSLRs.

You do not need to use the internal camera settings for image processing, and in my experience these do not necessarily improve the image. Most DSLRs allow you to capture the 'RAW' image data and then process this externally on the computer, in an analogous way to processing and printing in the darkroom. This gives you the freedom for greater or lesser sharpening and control of other image parameters.

Canon provide a very good free software package called Digital Photo Professional with their DSLRs, which allows considerable control of the RAW image data to produce what final effect you want.

There is a lot of information out there on the web, I suggest you browse on the topic and decide whether you want to 'go digital'. Unfortunately, as film is becoming very difficult to find these days, and it is also difficult to find a good lab to process it, you may have no option but to switch.

In my experience, when my slides returned from the processing lab, many of them were spoiled by exposure errors. The highlights might have been burned out on one, or the shadows underexposed on another. I soon learned the lesson that the eye perceives a far greater range of light intensity than any film emulsion is capable of. Eventually, I found that the most reliable method of exposure for slide film was the 'incident light method' using a Weston Meter with an Invercone

The same limitations of exposure apply to digital sensors. My knowledge of metering gained with film has influenced my approach to exposure control in digital photography. For 'difficult' scenes, the incident light approach will still give optimum results, although it might seem eccentric to continue to use a Weston Meter when modern digital metering systems are so good.

I can tell that Robert is hankering after the 'good old days' and this approach can still be done with a digital camera, provided it is set to 'Manual', both for focus and exposure. There are some excellent older DSLRs which would be suitable for someone wanting to work like this. Examples I can think of are the Canon 10D, 20D, 30D. I am only quoting Canon because I am familiar with these cameras, and the other big makers must have similar models. Cameras of this vintage can be picked up very cheaply now second-hand, since they do not offer the modern 'must-haves' such as movie mode or live view, but are very suitable for the thinking photographer.