Railroad "Slide" Programs in PowerPoint

[498]

I am curious how many of you are using PowerPoint now as a tool for the preparation of Railroad related "slide" programs? Training and technical presentations in the railroad industry are now using this program extensively due to the ease with which titles, music, and special effects can be included, 35mm slides are seldom seen any more as a direct presentation method. Would any of you who use PowerPoint for railfan presentations like to share any advice or make any comments based on your experience using it?

[railohio]

I recently presented for the Center for Railroad Photography & Art in Lake Forest, Illinois and decided to use Pro Show Gold instead of PowerPoint. The software was easier to learn and much more stable. I think it was about $70. Best part is that it can output shows to DVD or a stand-alone executable file; the software isn't required just to view the shows.

[498]

Brian, that's a very useful piece of information. Can you offer any recommendations on scan resolution for 35mm, 5x7, 8x10, etc. based on your experience? Do you use black background on your individual frames to make it look like a conventional slide show?

[railohio]

You should always scan at the highest resolution possible and then resize later to fit the screen size. This will capture the most detail and preserve it for other uses in the future. I know a scan of a medium- or large-format transparency will be extremely large but it will give the absolute best results.

I did use a black background for my show. I wanted to keep the most neutral background possible as to not distract from the photos. I think it worked well; the show was well recieved by many who attended.

[498]

Thanks for your comments, Brian. I have been using PowerPoint as it is what we have available on our computers. I start with a black background as you do, I usually do not expand the horizontal images out quite fully so as to make the area of horizontals and verticals more equal when shown, like it would be when using 35mm slides directly. So far PowerPoint has done very well with shows up to 250 slides, and I have been able to fade in caption boxes with arrows, titles and other features to aid in the narration, as well as custom transitions between slides. I recently did one program in a large auditorium with a 3000 lumen projector and the images were extremely bright and colorful.