8x10" Velvia 50 passes grim price milestone

[DREW WILEY]

Less is more. Velvia has its inherent strengths and weaknesses. If you try to retrieve too far down into the shadows, it will be evident that the DMax is not neutral but bluish, so you might as well just live with the higher contrast and print the deepest values as black. But Velvia is capable of differentiating rather subtle distinctions between green and yellow hues to a degree other films cannot. Trying to print those subtle distinctions can be hell. But at least on a lightbox you discover they truly exist. One of my brother's favorite films was a pre-E6 Agfachrome grainy and contrasty as heck, with miserable green reproduction, but that would capture warm colors like nothing I've encountered since, even fluorescent lichen effects.
So even a film missing on four out of six cylinders by modern standards was excellent for certain things. This new E100 Ektachrome is what might realistically be termed the best "middle of the road" Kodak chrome film ever. It's more neutral than Fuji Provia, and coated on a superior base.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

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'.

I have tried Velvia 50 120 with portrait. It's difficult to get the colors so they're not gaudy. This was my attempt. Don;t know if I was successful.
https://www.flickr.com/search/?sort...via50portrait&user_id=55760757@N05&view_all=1

Regarding matching landscape, my point was that I try not to get to the level where a viewer says that the picture couldn't exist in the real world because it's oversaturated. Or oversharpened, or over anything. I find that's a distraction to the composition and the overall effect. I understand your point about creativity. But gaudiness to me isn't creativity. I have to live in my culturally created realm as well. Otherwise I'm just copying someone else style and belief system. I'm out of my own comfort zone. But you're right. To each their own.

 

[B.S.Kumar]

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?

I still sell film, though not as much as when Acros sheet film was still around and Velvia wasn't priced so high.
Current prices for Velvia 50:
4x5 -- 14,760 JPY per box
8x10 -- 48,600 JPY per box
plus shipping.

Kumar