Frequently Asked Questions about our slides

Slide preparation is a chore very few people enjoy, yet it's required of the planetarium professional. You have to glass-mount your show's slides; if you don't, when the heat from the projector lamp causes them to pop out of focus, your audience may want to pop out, too -- out the door. You have to mask or opaque the images, too; you can't have "floating GRIS (Gray Rectangles In Space)" in your presentation -- not when your audience is paying good money to see it.

Relax -- we've done the hard work for you! We've taken the "preparation" out of purchased planetarium slides! For less than the cost of unprepared film chips from other sources, Loch Ness Productions provides fully-prepared slides -- most with at least two carefully-registered film chips and custom photographic masks -- in Wess glass mounts, ready to drop in the tray.

Why do we make the extra effort? So you won't have to. You save time -- and your sanity. As you know, preparing photographic masks requires lots of time in a well-equipped darkroom. Hand-opaquing slides is a painstakingly slow process. Sometimes there simply isn't enough time to do it well (or do it at all) -- and that school group clamoring outside your door isn't making the job any easier.

You can rest assured our first-generation, custom-masked slides will look their finest on your dome -- and will make you look good, too!

But there's more to these slides than glass mounts and masks. The images are original artwork, created by our talented artists, graphics designers, and model makers, utilizing their years of planetarium experience. They're designed for planetarium usage: no starfields in the background of the spacecraft images, no floating gray rectangles in space! And, they're perfectly LEGAL to use in your shows -- copyright hassle-free -- since we grant you the permissions you need to present them in your shows. It's all explained in our Plain English Copyright and Usage Statement.

You should be spending more time under the dome, not at the light table. Loch Ness Productions slides will help you and your shows look better than ever. Why not order some today?

No. Consider this: if you were to factor in all the costs of making your masks -- the darkroom materials and equipment, the film, developing chemicals (or photo lab costs), the trial runs, the bracketed exposures, and what your time is worth -- we think you'll find it's more cost-effective for you to let us worry about all that. Besides, we've already taken the time to prepare custom masks specifically for each slide, just so you wouldn't have to. Why re-invent the wheel?

Can I order slides un-mounted? I already have Wess mounts.

No. Most of our slides contain two carefully registered chips of film, and we've taken great pains to make sure the masks are perfectly aligned. We stock all our slides that way, and it would defeat our purpose to take them apart -- thereby creating more work for you, not less.

You mean you don't just copy the slides one at a time on a copy stand when you get my order?

Correct. In many cases, we don't copy a slide master, we photograph the original artwork. While we're set up, we shoot more than one exposure, in small-run batches. This allows us more efficient handling of your order -- we just pull stock from the shelf when we receive it.

You're sure I can legally use these slides? Can I copy them without violating copyright laws?

Yes, and yes but. As in other Loch Ness Productions offerings, these slides are copyrighted -- and we hold the copyrights. We grant you the permission to project these slides in shows presented in your facility only -- which is what you want to do.

Regarding copying, we do allow you to make copies of the slides for archival or "insurance" purposes, just as you would back up an audio tape or computer software. But keep in mind that your dupe will be down a generation in quality. We've found that some of our fine airbrush artwork, particularly our telescope views of nebulae, simply can't be duplicated; the increased contrast inherent in the copy process destroys too much of the image detail. For this reason, even we have to photograph the original artwork. Also, your dupe would still need opaquing, masking, and glass-mounting. At our reasonable prices, you'd be better off ordering duplicates from us; they come ready-to-go, and you get original-generation quality to boot.

Can I scan the slide images into my computer? I want to use the images in my brochures and posters.

No. When you purchase a slide, we grant you in-house usage rights of the image -- as a slide. You can project the slide images in your shows, on your dome, even in your lobby. And we do allow you to make "safety" copies, in case your projector jams and the slide melts in the tray or some such disaster. But that's the extent of the license for planetarium slide usage. Converting the images to a medium other than 35mm slides is a copy right we reserve. To obtain print and electronic versions of the images, we've set up a licensing structure for just such purposes. Check it out!

It looks like I already have a lot of the stuff on your list. Right?

No. You surely don't have these visuals, since we're the exclusive source. While many were originally created for Loch Ness Productions shows, keep in mind that we allow the slides in our show packages to be used only in our shows. When you purchase these slides, you can use them in any of your shows. Unlike some of our mass-duplicated show packages, these slides are custom-masked and glass-mounted. Even if you already have an Earth chord or a Palomar panorama, for example, ours just might be better -- or more legal-to-use.

Where do you get this $12.50 price? I can buy a package of ten slides for five bucks in my gift shop.

Yes, but you can't buy ten slides of original art, created exclusively for planetarium usage, opaqued and glass mounted, with the in-house usage rights granted, for five bucks! And you surely wouldn't dream of insulting your audience's aesthetic senses by projecting unprepared, cardboard-mounted slides, would you? Your time is pretty valuable, and it would probably cost you more to do the work yourself. With these prices, there's no reason to.

Can I order individual slides from a full set?

I don't have 12 projectors in my pan system. Can I order half of a panorama?

No. Panoramas and lap-dissolve sequences come as complete sets, and cannot be ordered individually. As you probably know, sometimes film stock varies from roll to roll, or the processing does; sometimes the color comes out a little differently, sometimes the exposure is a tad brighter or darker. In order to ensure that all the slides of a sequence or panorama are consistent, we shoot and process the film in one session, then assemble the slides with masks, and stock them in the inventory cabinet. If we were to break up the set, we'd be left with the remainder that would be unusable. We've tried to accommodate such orders in the past, and attempted to "fill in the gaps" afterward. Even with the same film stock, the same camera settings, and the same photo lab for processing, the film color or exposure often doesn't match exactly -- at least not good enough to meet our quality control standards. We don't think a panorama should have a bright sector, or a slide or two that are bluer than the rest.