Digital to slides - experiences shared
John New
sources onto film and bureaux have been recommended at over £5.00 a
shot. I thought I would outline what I have tried and succeeded with,
and importantly, failed with to avoid others making the same mistakes.
A) - Creating captioned title slides.
1) What works OK is working out a grid of the right size to fit a slide
mount, then getting what you want to say typed (or DTP'd) onto a sheet
of paper and photocopied onto acetate OHP sheets. Cut these up and put
them into a GEPE or similar mount. However this is boring in b&w which
I have tried. You may be able to do it on a colour photocopier but only
for plain colours I would guess.
2) Direct printing onto suitable coated OHP sheets from an Ink Jet using
coloured text and background. This works just about acceptably but the
slides are very grainy. However it is still cheap and gives a fairly
good projected image. Cut and mount as for (1).
See also c-5 below
B) Photographing archive pictures in books.
This was a nightmare of trying to get the right close up/macro lens and
exposure for the image being viewed. Also masking was a problem as was
setting up the book, camera and tripod in the right positions. Gave up
after several failures and tried scanning on a flat bed and digital
output. See next sections.
C) Printing images , actual size for mounting (35mm)
I tried several methods to do this, as set out below, and all were
unacceptable.
1) Sizing the images to the right size in Pagemaker 5 and printing out
to ink jet OHP material. Much too coarse a grain size on the OHPs for
the resolution available on screen to reproduce. Waste of money
although as OHP sheets are cheap I didn't waste much on that
experiment. Printed to full A4 for actual use on an OHP was however OK.
2) Taking the sheet of images printed at 1200 DPI on glossy paper where
they looked clear and acceptable to a photocopier shop and photocopying
onto acetate OHP sheets. This one also produced a very grainy print
which when mounted was useless.
3) Getting the sheet of images printed onto pre-press bromide sheets at
a typesetting firm. This didn't produce grain but the line screen used
meant that the image was broken up into dots where the ink would go if
being used for the real purpose and therefore this was also useless. It
was also relatively expensive at £30.00 for an A3 sheet which from
memory cut down to 16 images.
Methods (4 & 5) do work well -
4) For my occasional railway lectures I then tried scanning historic
archive photos from books onto a flat bed scanner (Epson GT-5500) and
printing them out onto glossy inkjet paper to A4, then shot them onto
slide film with a standard 50mm lens as that just covers A4 size prints
without resorting to close up tubes etc. Printer is a Lexmark 5700
1200 dpi printer. This worked fine once I had mastered the technique.
Using a graphics package also allows cropping and corrections to be made
before printing. Avoid flash and sunlight due to reflection. Light
shade on a bright day seems fine. Use a tripod and stop right down to
maximise depth of field and correct any minor focusing errors. This
works out at about £1.05 plus the cost of the mount, or less if you
process your own trannies. Ie 30p for the slide, process paid, and 75p
for a sheet of glossy paper.
5) Simple manipulation in a graphics package overlaying a background
picture with text before printing means you can get captioned title
slides that look slick by this method in both black and white and
colour. With the ones I have done I have gone for a pale yellow or
plain white text over a normal density picture so that the text is
readable. If the background image is light, a seascape or similar, dark
text should also work.
Bureaux are there and I am sure they produce excellent results at very
high resolutions. However this method is acceptable and gives resonable
results if your standard lens is a good one, well stopped down.
Cost my way for 30 shots for a lecture about £31.50 as opposed to about
£180 from a bureau.
Any one got any other methods that work, or don't work, if so lets share
them?
--
John New Webmaster for 5 sites - visit :-
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