What Is Slide Film? Here’s Everything You Need to Know

Field magazine

This lack of dynamic range can be a hindrance when shooting in high-contrast lighting conditions, such as the middle of the day. In unforgiving light, there may not be enough exposure latitude to capture all the details in both the shadow and highlight areas. While you can always balance this in post when using good quality color negative film, with slide film, the highlights will be unrecoverable and shadows muddied. As such, it’s best to shoot slide film in good, consistent lighting.

On that note, it’s also important to mention that slide film also can’t be color corrected in post (we’re really selling this, aren’t we?), so the film must be balanced for the type of light you are shooting. Today, most slide film is daylight balanced (another limitation in itself), which some photographers may find restrictive. In the past, it was possible to buy tungsten-balanced slide film, but those days are no more (though you could use a filter, if you wanted).