8x10" Velvia 50 passes grim price milestone

unityofsaints · Jul 26, 2020

Hi,

I'm back from a break in 8x10" shooting and I've noticed fresh Velvia 50 availability has gotten even worse. There used to be the B.S. Kumar, Facebook group buy and Amazon.co.jp "trick" methods but those are all gone now. Even Yodobashi still lists it but it's passed the 500$ mark there, same as on fleabay.

Is it time to give up on this completely? I still have some old sheets but at an eyewatering 25$ / shot (+ development!) I can't ever imagine myself using this stuff. With Ektachrome now available via Canham it's tempting to just switch for good and support a film manufacturer that still cares about large format slide film.

Did I miss any cheaper ways of sourcing this stuff? What's the reason behind these continued price rises vs. Provia / Velvia 100?

mshchem · Jul 26, 2020

unityofsaints said:
Hi,

I'm back from a break in 8x10" shooting and I've noticed fresh Velvia 50 availability has gotten even worse. There used to be the B.S. Kumar, Facebook group buy and Amazon.co.jp "trick" methods but those are all gone now. Even Yodobashi still lists it but it's passed the 500$ mark there, same as on fleabay.

Is it time to give up on this completely? I still have some old sheets but at an eyewatering 25$ / shot (+ development!) I can't ever imagine myself using this stuff. With Ektachrome now available via Canham it's tempting to just switch for good and support a film manufacturer that still cares about large format slide film.

Did I miss any cheaper ways of sourcing this stuff? What's the reason behind these continued price rises vs. Provia / Velvia 100?

Inflation. I wouldn't count on Kodak. It's miraculous that it's still available.

guangong · Jul 27, 2020

Yep! $500 a box at $25 a sheet isn’t cheap. Obviously not for those not expert in using it, unless well heeled. For comparison, when there were true art supply stores (the last, New York Central closed its doors several years ago), some water color papers went for $25 a sheet. Not for the beginner, but some watercolorists bought them. Not me.

I am a bit curious. How does one use or display an 8x10 slide?

Alan9940 · Jul 27, 2020

guangong said:
I am a bit curious. How does one use or display an 8x10 slide?

Ben Horne is the biggest user of 8x10 Velvia that I'm aware of and he scans/prints his film.

unityofsaints · Jul 27, 2020

guangong said:
I am a bit curious. How does one use or display an 8x10 slide?

I mostly view them on a light table and scan the ones I'm happy with. At art galleries I've seen 8x10" originals hung on walls and backlit, they're definitely big enough for that.

Alan Edward Klein · Jul 27, 2020

Devaluation of the dollar is going to make it worse in the future. I bought Velvia 50 from Kumar a few months ago. Isn't he still handling Velvia?

Alan Edward Klein · Jul 27, 2020

Alan Edward Klein said:
Devaluation of the dollar is going to make it worse in the future. I bought Velvia 50 from Kumar a few months ago. Isn't he still handling Velvia?

Velvia 50 in 4x5.

iakustov · Jul 28, 2020

Alan9940 said:
Ben Horne is the biggest user of 8x10 Velvia that I'm aware of and he scans/prints his film.

I visited Burkett's exhibition last year, I suppose he still prints from 8x10 slide film on Cibachrome..

Trail Images · Jul 28, 2020

Alan9940 said:
Ben Horne is the biggest user of 8x10 Velvia that I'm aware of and he scans/prints his film.

In speaking with Ben on line he was using the Japan Amazon approach for awhile. I think 4x5er Alan Brock came up with that idea originally. However, I've noticed Ben uses more and more Provia these days. I've used V-50 in MF & LF for years and could get decent results by remaining with one film media. Sadly, that is becoming almost out of the question with the additional hurdles every year. If anyone has cracked the code on the vacillation in the products let us know......

Alan9940 · Jul 28, 2020

Trail Images said:
In speaking with Ben on line he was using the Japan Amazon approach for awhile. I think 4x5er Alan Brock came up with that idea originally. However, I've noticed Ben uses more and more Provia these days. I've used V-50 in MF & LF for years and could get decent results by remaining with one film media. Sadly, that is becoming almost out of the question with the additional hurdles every year. If anyone has cracked the code on the vacillation in the products let us know......

Yeah, I used to get 8x10 Velvia from Amazon Japan, but I believe that approach has dried up. And, yes, it was Alan Brock's idea; or, at least, he's the first one I heard about it from. Ben does use more Provia nowadays, but I think he employs that emulsion when he needs a slightly wider latitude. You will notice that he many times photographs the same scene on Velvia, Provia, and Ektar. Choice is a good thing, if you can afford it!

Personally, Velvia 8x10 has gotten a bit too rich for my budget. But, even at $25 per sheet I wouldn't call it outrageous when compared to other films; $15 per sheet for Provia 8x10, $10 per sheet for Tri-X 8x10, $15 per shot for 4x5 New55 PN, etc. If I were still shooting Velvia, I'd batch up exposed sheets, then process myself in the Jobo which would somewhat mitigate the cost of processing.

thuggins · Jul 28, 2020

guangong said:
I am a bit curious. How does one use or display an 8x10 slide?

Check out the movie "Funny Face". There is a scene in the publisher's office where Fred Astaire brings in a stack of 8x10 trannies, certainly Kodachrome. On the desk is an easel style light table designed to fit three 8x10's side by side. It's enough to bring tears to your eyes.

Trail Images · Jul 28, 2020

Alan9940 said:
Choice is a good thing, if you can afford it!

Yep, I recall those days years back when I'd do some back to backs with various products. Now its down to whatever gets exposed at the time is my "right" choice these days....

DREW WILEY · Jul 28, 2020

Switch to 8x10 Ektachrome 100 if you can get it there. It won't save you any money - still gonna be about $30 a shot even here with processing - but it's reproduces better and has a higher quality Estar base. Cibachrome is no longer realistic; if any if left, there are going to be serious crossover issues. For that reason I switched to Ektar color neg film and printing on Fuji Supergloss. I make Portra internegatives via masks and contact for RA4 printing from my old 8x10 chromes. I doubt I'll even thaw any 8x10 color film this year due to travel restrictions. I sold all my stash of various 8x10 chrome stock to other photographers. I believe there are quite a few still shooting color 8x10. But there can be a temptation to scale back to 5x7 at half the cost; and Keith Canham might be able to get a custom cut of that in Ektachrome if there's enough interest. Otherwise, just cut down 8x10 sheets into two apiece yourself. I stick with 8x10 because it gives me more precise alignment with punch and register techniques like masking and generating color separation negatives; but for that, you want dimensionally stable Estar base. Working with triacetate base is a headache, though I've done plenty of that misery when it was the only choice available for awhile. ... I have no idea why someone like Ben Horne would prefer Velvia, especially for work in the Southwest, when its inability to handle the extreme contrasts is a real liability. Even the king of 8x10 glitzy SW Cibachromes, Fatali, almost never used it, and found Astia way more versatile under those conditions. I shot Velvia only about 5% of the time. It's more useful here on the coast for enhancing faint veiled fog colors. But if someone is just printing inkjet anyway, they might as well be shooting 4x5 with respect to end result, unless they enjoy 8x10 for other reasons. Inkjet just doesn't do justice to the incredible detail available with optimized 8x10 technique. And if one is scanning and Fauxtoshopping, there's the inevitable temptation to over-saturate any kind of color film simply because it's possible that way. No need for Velvia specifically.

Alan9940 · Jul 28, 2020

DREW WILEY said:
Switch to 8x10 Ektachrome 100 if you can get it there.

I haven't shot Ektachrome is something like 40 years. It used to have a "bluish" tint to it. Does the current emulsion reveal any obvious tint?

DREW WILEY · Jul 28, 2020

You're talking about old Ektachrome 64, Alan. Many landscape photographers loved that blue bias, and I liked the way its red-contaminated greens would render muted complex off-green hues like sage. But when Fujichrome 50 came out with brilliant true greens, Kodak starting losing sales and came up with new versions of Ektachrome. That was indeed nearly 40 years ago. The latest round of Ektachrome seems to be their best balanced ever, and their quality control has been very tight for quite awhile now. I've carefully tested it, and the color temp balance appears to be spot on at 5500K official "Daylight". At that point, all hues on the MacBeath Colorchecker chart come out quite realistic. Notably different color shooting temperatures will of course, shift things a particular direction. But there's no blue ball and chain like old E64, or any other out of proportion color bias for that matter. It's a really good product.

AgX · Jul 28, 2020

guangong said:
I am a bit curious. How does one use or display an 8x10 slide?

The photographers still using 8x10 transparancy films are seemingly those still in the belief that transparency film is the better choice to deliver to a print shop or an advertizing agency.

There were/are indeed 8x10 projectors, for huge outdoor projection. spreading the heat radiation over a greater film area. But the transparecy materials likely always were print-films and not taking-films anyway.

Of course one can display a tranparancy also on a light table or at a wall in a light box, or even free hanging with an opalescent backing. But again, here a print-film of same size would work too.

DREW WILEY · Jul 28, 2020

Print shops, ad agencies? Not much of a factor anymore; that era is long gone. Scan an 8x10, and then reduce it to one fourth that size for a picture in a travel magazine in this day and age, when they can access zillions of digital images and pay next to nothing for them? Even back in the heyday of massive stock image collections, 4x5 was the far more common size for scenics and so forth. The idea of a large format chrome was that is was easy to intuitively assess per subject, color, and quality atop a lightbox. Stock agencies also liked the fact they didn't fade as fast as color neg film, so were worthwhile archiving. Nobody projected them, and if they did it would require a carbon arc projector or monster halogen bulb that would ruin the dyes fast. Backlit transparencies for commercial displays were actually printed via enlargement onto a number of options over the years, including Ciba transparent stock; and it is still possible to do that today up to 60 inches wide by whatever length using RA4 film. But I've never heard of original shots being used; that would spoil their application for anything else, since backlit images suffered badly from the high UV output of fluorescent tubes behind them. ... And at one time, chrome film was married to Cibachrome printing, and the preferred choice for making separation negatives for dye transfer printing too. But anyone seriously shooting 8x10 color work today is more likely to have some large scale art print in mind, and is looking for an optimum quantity of detail, and might prefer chrome over color neg for several reasons: 1) its easier to see what you've got; 2) for some, it seems better for scanning; and 3) the higher contrast leads to richer color saturation while still maintaining a fair amount of neutrality within the confines of effective contrast range, unlike color neg film, which traditionally has much wider latitude, but also tends to lump certain hues into poorly differentiated generic categories, like all warm yellows and tans and oranges becoming just more of the "pleasing skintones" the film was engineered for, and most green being weirdly cyan inflected. So it's nice to have more choice again.

Alan9940 · Jul 28, 2020

DREW WILEY said:
But there's no blue ball and chain like old E64, or any other out of proportion color bias for that matter. It's a really good product.

Thanks, Drew! I'm definitely going to give it a try...I bet it'll be spectacular in 8x10!

unityofsaints · Jul 30, 2020

mshchem said:
Inflation. I wouldn't count on Kodak. It's miraculous that it's still available.

I've been tracking 8x10" film costs for a while and Velvia 50 increases at a much higher rate than even Velvia 100 or especially any of the Kodak colour films. What do you mean about not counting on Kodak? They've only just reintroduced Ektachrome in 8x10"

Alan9940 said:
Ben Horne is the biggest user of 8x10 Velvia that I'm aware of and he scans/prints his film.

I'd call this person the biggest user of 8x10" Velvia to be honest

thuggins said:
Check out the movie "Funny Face". There is a scene in the publisher's office where Fred Astaire brings in a stack of 8x10 trannies, certainly Kodachrome. On the desk is an easel style light table designed to fit three 8x10's side by side. It's enough to bring tears to your eyes.

I'm going to watch this film just for that scene now, thanks for the tip!

DREW WILEY said:
Switch to 8x10 Ektachrome 100 if you can get it there. It won't save you any money - still gonna be about $30 a shot even here with processing - but it's reproduces better and has a higher quality Estar base.

Velvia 50 is 25$ per shot + 5$ processing for me so Ektachrome at 18$ + 5$ ends up significantly cheaper. By "reproducing better" do you mean enlarging?

DREW WILEY said:
But there can be a temptation to scale back to 5x7 at half the cost; and Keith Canham might be able to get a custom cut of that in Ektachrome if there's enough interest.

Yes, in fact the first group order of the new Ektachrome in 5x7" only went out from Keith a few weeks ago.

DREW WILEY said:
I have no idea why someone like Ben Horne would prefer Velvia, especially for work in the Southwest, when its inability to handle the extreme contrasts is a real liability.

It all depends on what you're after to be honest, I get a kick out of Velvia on a light table and Ben drum scans it where imo the differences in colour reproduction matter vs. negative or Provia.

DREW WILEY said:
The latest round of Ektachrome seems to be their best balanced ever, and their quality control has been very tight for quite awhile now. I've carefully tested it, and the color temp balance appears to be spot on at 5500K official "Daylight".

Good to hear this! I've only used it in 35mm so far and it was beautiful but as you might know, emulsions can act very differently in bigger sizes.

AgX said:
The photographers still using 8x10 transparancy films are seemingly those still in the belief that transparency film is the better choice to deliver to a print shop or an advertizing agency. Of course one can display a tranparancy also on a light table or at a wall in a light box, or even free hanging with an opalescent backing. But again, here a print-film of same size would work too.

That couldn't be further from the truth! I shoot Velvia 50 for its look, something that Colour negative can't match (nevermind digital).

AgX · Jul 30, 2020

Concerning look, it depends whether you look at a transparency on a light box, at projection or as a result of it being scanned and the reproduced in whatever form.

I look at a transparency film from thre viewpoint of the engineer.

DREW WILEY · Jul 30, 2020

How about not being scanned at all, and printed otherwise? Scanners were an afterthought. New Ektachrome sheets have a certain mico-texture overcoat in common with Kodak's current color neg sheet films that is claimed to improve scanning. I find it helpful is reducing Newton ring risk in optical enlargement. But dye-wise, all of this represents a parallel evolution of particular refinements which apply to color reproduction in general, not necessarily the ability to post-correct errors by restructuring curves and saturation afterwards. If something is actually there it can be retrieved fully darkroom style too. Bu if it's something make-believe digitially added, well, I don't personally consider that to be photography at all, at least in the blatant sense one encounters such nonsense nowadays. I like being confined within the specific hue and contrast signatures of specific films. In that respect, choice is nice.

Alan Edward Klein · Jul 30, 2020

DREW WILEY said:
How about not being scanned at all, and printed otherwise? Scanners were an afterthought. New Ektachrome sheets have a certain mico-texture overcoat in common with Kodak's current color neg sheet films that is claimed to improve scanning. I find it helpful is reducing Newton ring risk in optical enlargement. But dye-wise, all of this represents a parallel evolution of particular refinements which apply to color reproduction in general, not necessarily the ability to post-correct errors by restructuring curves and saturation afterwards. If something is actually there it can be retrieved fully darkroom style too. Bu if it's something make-believe digitially added, well, I don't personally consider that to be photography at all, at least in the blatant sense one encounters such nonsense nowadays. I like being confined within the specific hue and contrast signatures of specific films. In that respect, choice is nice.

Drew: I scan Velvia. But I don't try to mach the color of the chrome when I digitally process the scans. When the color shows "right" on the screen so my eyes are satisfied, that's it. Why should I match what some probably dead Japanese engineer decided 50 years ago the color palette he liked when he formulated Velvia 50? I'm the "artist." of my pictures, not him. When I scan, I don't check to see if I matched the original Velvia colors. Having said that, I like starting with the Velvia colors and let the colors come up more or less "normal". When I had 16x20 enlargements printed 25 years ago of my Velvia 50 medium format, the pro lab shot an internegative 4x5 and printed that on I think R paper? (not sure). Wouldn't the lab have had latitude of how the colors printed even with chemical printing? How about with Cibachromes? So were the colors matched then chemically either?

Here are two MF Velvia 50's taken seconds apart on the same roll of film, different lenses. Can anyone really say which matches the original shot and which doesn't? Probably neither? Heck. I don't know and would have to pull out the original chromes to check.

Portland Head Lighthouse on Cape Elizabeth, Portland, Maine, USA by Alan Klein, on Flickr

DREW WILEY · Jul 30, 2020

Hi Alan. There is absolutely no color photographic medium which reproduces things exactly as our eye sees them. Digital printing is no exception. Every film and print medium has its own idiosyncrasies. The whole point is to thoughtfully understand these, and like any good illusionist, render a personal impression of reality which seems convincing at some level. Most labs were on the clock and had to make compromises. Internegative results were among the worst in this respect. I know what is involved in making very high quality internegs, and it's a lot of work. If I were to offer this as a service to others, I'd realistically have to charge ten times as much as the commercial labs did, maybe way more than that. As per Cibachrome, the dyes were geared to fade-resistance and matching dye-destruction chemistry. Results could be stunning; but again, if one wanted optimal results, you began with a chrome that made sense for the characteristics of the medium itself. Ciba was indeed quite idiosyncratic with respect to color reproduction, but no worse than current inherent inkjet flaws, just different. Modern chromogenic RA4 papers are better balanced, but color neg film itself has a lot of odd characteristics, depending on what prime usages a particular film has been engineered to do best. So just pick what you enjoy doing, do it well, and don't worry about it.

Alan Edward Klein · Jul 30, 2020

DREW WILEY said:
Hi Alan. There is absolutely no color photographic medium which reproduces things exactly as our eye sees them. Digital printing is no exception. Every film and print medium has its own idiosyncrasies. The whole point is to thoughtfully understand these, and like any good illusionist, render a personal impression of reality which seems convincing at some level. Most labs were on the clock and had to make compromises. Internegative results were among the worst in this respect. I know what is involved in making very high quality internegs, and it's a lot of work. If I were to offer this as a service to others, I'd realistically have to charge ten times as much as the commercial labs did, maybe way more than that. As per Cibachrome, the dyes were geared to fade-resistance and matching dye-destruction chemistry. Results could be stunning; but again, if one wanted optimal results, you began with a chrome that made sense for the characteristics of the medium itself. Ciba was indeed quite idiosyncratic with respect to color reproduction, but no worse than current inherent inkjet flaws, just different. Modern chromogenic RA4 papers are better balanced, but color neg film itself has a lot of odd characteristics, depending on what prime usages a particular film has been engineered to do best. So just pick what you enjoy doing, do it well, and don't worry about it.

That's good advice. Whenever I adjust saturation, contrast, curves, etc., I try not to overdo it. I'll even back off a little just in case. My theory is I don't want people to think it was photoshopped by overdoing anything. I want them to look at a natural landscape picture and say that it actually could have looked like that when I was there. Of course with Velvia, that's often hard to do. For example, of the two samples above, I think the first is more natural. The second is more saturated and contrasty, although by itself, people may like it more that way.

Lachlan Young · Jul 30, 2020

It's also worth remembering that if you are using photography for creative (as opposed to reprographic) purposes, exactly reproducing what you saw is often very precisely not the point. And if you are going to reproduce those images on paper, a negative film (with its built in correction mask) is generally going to give you an easier time of it than dealing with a transparency (which owes at least as much of its longevity to the ease of telling a repro house 'match it' as it did to immediately being able to tell if your/ your lab's process was off target). I don't mind Velvia, but all too often it gets used in service of a kind of instantly forgettable paint-by-numbers landscapery (so much of which is reproduced in 4-colour anyway!) rather than for its inherent qualities - it can make a very interesting portrait film - once you understand that the only limitations to its use are your culturally conditioned ones learnt from self-appointed 'experts'.

8x10" Velvia 50 passes grim price milestone

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