Another color film to pair up with Velvia?

[rayonline_nz]

I do mainly landscapes. With light, Velvia works nicely. Under a overcast day / afternoon or after sunset with a dark blue or black sky what film would you use? Still Velvia or would you use Provia or Ektar? I haven't used Ektar before.

Re: skintones rather than starting another thread. I don't do much portraiture. Some people enjoy overexposing Portra 400 / Fuji ProH for the pastel colors. If one wanted less pastel colors, more colorful one would just shoot Portra 160/400 rated by the box?

Thoughts? Cheers.

 

[DREW WILEY]

Either way, if you want to handle that blue cast, you'll need some kind of warming filter. I'd recommend an 81A at a minimum. The main difference is
that sometimes blue casts come out looking pleasant in chrome film, but not with Ektar. I won't attempt the technical explanation here. Let's just say
I learned a lot at the school of hard knocks.

 

[rwreich]

Ektar handles contrast better than slide films, but it does have a unique character. The closer you get to the perfect exposure, the more realistic Ektar will behave. Overexposing color-neg film is more of a safety net than good practice. Rather than rating the film at 200, I rate portra at 400 and get very realistic colors by simply metering for my shadows and letting the highlights fall where they may (backlit scenes excepted).

 

[Poisson Du Jour]

Go for the blue cast of evening light -- something Velvia excels at. Only change to something like Provia 400X when the light approaches darkness. There still exists legacy stocks of this excellent emulsion that also pushes very well to EI 1600. Most of my shooting in the morning and evening at Milford Sound/Piopiotahi, were casted in ethereal blue on Velvia. Viewers of the 80x70cm prints were enthralled, and most have been sold (including two to expat New Zealanders! )

 

[ericdan]

I like how Ektar behaves in shade. very nice blues

 

[DREW WILEY]

Ektar is a piece of cake if you expose it with as much care as chrome film. But it's not an amateur film where some "latitude" nonsense model of
exposure is realistic. Nor are the shadows artificially warmed like Portra products. It's a good film is you want something in color neg that will reproduce colors more like a chrome film. I love it for landscape work. But chromes still have the distinct advantage that you can just slap them
on a lightbox to evaluate your results. But with Ektar, any flaw in printing calibration or a scanning process inevitably gets blames on the film itself
before people understand how to properly use it. Otherwise, I strongly recommend shooting all these Kodak pro color neg films at actual box speed,
or if you must err on the side of caution, only SLIGHTLY overexposing them. Ektar has by far the most contrast of the group, but less than any slide
film. You get about one more stop either side than chrome film, but not enough to gamble with.