This post attempts to show the look of Boots colour slide film by showing photos from the found-film archive which have been scanned without applying any post processing to the resultant images.
In an attempt to show how well Boots colour slide film coped with different lighting conditions and scenes, I've looked through as many different slides as I could find and selected ones which have as much variety as possible. I've also included scenes which have been under and over exposed to show how the film coped.
During the actual scanning process, I carried out a pre-scan to get the frame dimensions and set the cropping mask, and then set the histogram in SilverFast to 0 - 128 - 255 for the black, midpoint and white settings. Then, with all the other tools turned off, I carried out a scan.
Boots film was actually quite a popular option in the 1960s and 1970s; There were boots chemist shops in virtually every town in the country and although they sold all the major brands, their own film was quite a lot cheaper than the big name manufacturers. I remember that in our family, Boots was a regular choice for me, my Brother and my Dad, although we nearly always bought a roll of Kodachrome for anything important.
Of course it is highly likely that Boots didn't have a manufacturing plant and the actual film which Boots sold was made for them by one of the major film manufacturers. I did a bit of research and couldn't find out who this was, but it's possible that they used several different suppliers, or that they specified a particular emulsion chemistry and subcontracted it to any supplier who could meet their requirements.
Boots colour slide examples
So, here are the examples I picked from the slides I have in my collection. In my opinion, the slides look rather more muted and dull than I remember them looking at the time but that may be because the majority of these pictures were taken over 40 years ago and may have faded over that time. The film grain is quite low and for general use I would say the film was probably a reasonable choice when money was tight.
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